In 2000, the California State Legislature passed what is now known as the Juvenile Justice Crime Prevention Act (JJCPA). This effort was designed to provide a stable funding source to counties for juvenile programs that have been proven effective in curbing crime among juvenile probationers and young at-risk offenders. The Corrections Standards…

In a nation where 42 percent of children live in low-income families, too many schools face the challenge of teaching students burdened with unmet needs that pose obstacles to learning. Community schools that align schools and community resources are a promising strategy for improving student outcomes by providing wraparound services that meet the…

What are the socioeconomic implications of the time allocation decisions made by low-income adolescents? The way adolescents allocate their time between schooling, labor and leisure has important implications for their education attainment, college aspirations, job opportunities and future earnings. This study focuses on adolescents and young…

This toolkit offers program managers a hands-on guide for implementing quality programming in the after-school hours. The kit includes tools and techniques that increased the quality of literacy programming and helped improve student reading gains in the Communities Organizing Resources to Advance Learning (CORAL) initiative of The James Irvine…

The Afterschool Alliance and the Nellie Mae Education Foundation have been exploring the answers to questions like these throughout New England in a series of reports designed to examine afterschool in the region today. "Spotlight on Maine" is the fifth installment of the Afterschool Alliance's "New England After 3 PM" series,…

During the last decade, policy and public attention have focused increasingly on the out-of-school hours, and programs to fill this time have proliferated for children and youth. These programs serve varying purposes, including providing child care and a safe haven, improving academic performance, enhancing general youth development, allowing…

Teaching is not an easy task, but it can be mastered. Many students graduate from high school with few life skills. The success of each teacher lies in his or her ability to identify student weaknesses and turn them into strengths, which will eventually increase student confidence and desire to learn. Discipline, classroom management, and…

How can teachers extend learning and successfully connect with students, enabling them to work on art over the summer months? An activity developed by this author challenged students to craft a personal image based on items they received in the mail from him while he was visiting Japan over the summer break. The students were asked to create and…

The author, a narrative arts educator, was teaching an after-school drama program to 11 abused boys in a residential treatment center. The program promised them the opportunity to tell and stage their own story. The author began by sharing a story about an abused boy he befriended in seminary who ended up killing himself. The following week, he…

This paper examines the use of mixed methods for analyzing users' avatar-related activities in a virtual world. Server logs recorded keystroke-level activity for 595 participants over a six-month period in Whyville.net, an informal science website. Participants also completed surveys and participated in interviews regarding their experiences.…

The purpose of this quantitative study was to examine the academic impacts of the Twenty-First Century Community Learning Centers on students who participated in this program. The following research questions guided the study: (a) are there significant differences between the Criterion Reference Competency Test English Language Arts scores of…

Extra classes have been a fixture in the educational system in India. They pre-date all existing educational programmes and examinations. Yet more recently the justification and reasons for the maintenance of these classes have been called into question. There have been unsubstantiated claims that in some cases the classes have been…

After-school programs specifically designed to improve students' mathematics achievement in collaboration with classroom teachers' planning and in class daily instruction have been found to be successful in improving student learning (Hock, Pulvers, Deshler, & Schumaker, 2001). The purpose of this article is to describe the results of an…

Project Exploration's Sisters4Science (S4S) is an afterschool program for middle and high school urban girls of color. Designed to "get" girls interested in science, "keep" girls interested in science, and "equip" girls with skills and experiences that enable them to pursue science, S4S creates a science-rich learning…

This study examined and analyzed selected middle school teachers' perceptions of grade retention, and informed teachers about current and past research on grade retention. Through analysis of teacher interviews and using a Likert scale instrument, responses indicated that teachers continue to support and to use retention when students do not…