One of the most powerful but neglected supports for children's learning and development is family involvement both in and out of school. Over 40 years of steadily accumulating evidence show that family involvement is one of the strongest predictors of children's school success, and that families play pivotal roles in their children's cognitive,…

As schools struggle to meet federal achievement standards, after-school programs are increasingly viewed as a potential source of academic support for youth at risk of school failure. The hope among youth advocates and policymakers is that after-school programs can partially compensate for the inequities that plague the nation's schools and play a…

Evidence indicates that after-school programs are beneficial to children in the elementary school years, especially when they target more than just problem behaviors, but also focus on a wide range of positive developmental outcomes such as critical thinking, self-awareness and self-confidence (Catalano et al., 2002). The most effective programs…

Out-of-school time programs can enhance academic achievement by helping students learn outside the classroom. The purpose of this practice guide is to provide recommendations for organizing and delivering school-based out-of-school time (OST) programs to improve the academic achievement of student participants. The five recommendations in this…

Evaluation of after-school programs that are culturally and place-based and promote positive youth development among minority and indigenous youths has not been widely published. The present evaluation is the first of its kind of an after-school, youth-risk prevention program called Hui Malama O Ke Kai (HMK), that emphasizes Native Hawaiian values…

In its second year, the Tech Savvy Girls Project adopted "Teen Second Life" as a platform for interest-driven learning and designed projects and objects around themes important to them and their futures as technology-using, creative people. By using the building tools in an open-ended virtual world, they were able to pursue interests common to…

This commentary highlights the work of the Collaborative for Building After-School Systems (CBASS), a collaborative of mature, city and county-wide nonprofit OST intermediaries, to develop and adopt common youth-, program- and system-level measures that are easy and cost-effective for local systems to implement. By agreeing to adopt and publicly…

The Broader, Bolder Approach to Education Task Force is made up of 62 national policy experts, with diverse political affiliations, who come from fields that include education, social welfare, health, housing, and civil rights. This article presents a shortened version of the Task Force's recently released statement on the Broader, Bolder Approach…

This investigation addresses the mediational role of friends' characteristics between adolescents' activity breadth (i.e., variety in activity participation) and their later adjustment. Data were drawn from 2 longitudinal studies: the Childhood and Beyond (CAB; N = 925) study and the Maryland Adolescent Development in Context Study (MADICS; N =…

For the past 4 years the special education program at History University has partnered with a Long Island, New York school district in an after-school tutorial program for eighth grade students receiving special education services or considered "at risk." This partnership emerged as a result of a state improvement grant offered to…

This pilot study sought to determine if participation in an after school community-based exercise program would result in improved fitness, self-concept, and social skills in a heterogeneous sample of children and adolescents with disabilities. Eighteen participants with physical and/or cognitive disabilities were recruited for an 8-week exercise…

Children's perceptions of the developmental opportunities afforded by school and afterschool were studied. The data support prior research showing that inequitable patterns exist, across gender, ethnicity, age, and socioeconomic status, in children's perceptions of the opportunities provided by school. Afterschool programs, conversely, are faring…

This article describes the formation and enactment of a student and teacher-generated framework for re-authoring a troubling representation of Black masculinity in a popular culture narrative. This data-driven framework highlights the ways students and teacher provided a means for literacies to serve students' desire to re-author images and words…

Basic quality-of-life indicators including employment, access to health care, and involvement with the criminal justice system paint a grim picture for the lives of urban Black males; thus, it is increasingly important to identify prevention and intervention strategies that can improve outcomes for this group. After-school programs have been…

Authority is an important component of adult-youth relations. Little work has been done exploring authority outside of families and classrooms. This article consolidates findings from two studies of urban after-school programs. The article examines youths' experiences of authority in after-school programs, compares those with their reports of…