Identifies key aspects of producing talent shows and outlines helpful hints for avoiding pitfalls and ensuring a smooth production. Presents suggestions concerning publicity, scheduling, and support personnel. Describes types of acts along with special needs and problems specific to each act. Includes a list of resources. (MJP)

Reports the prevalence of school-based after-school programs and discusses extracurricular activities, child care, extended-day programs, enrichment programs, and efforts to make the schools community hubs. Outlines implementation challenges to program expansion: governance, space, program quality, funding, and accountability. (SLD)

US youths' lives are increasingly divided between the academic requirements of school and immersion in new media and culture outside school. Educators can help bridge in-school and out-of-school literacy practices by encouraging students to engage with hybrid texts that draw on multiple modes of representation. In this paper, we analyze the…

This article describes a four-year ethnographic and pedagogical project set in an urban community with historical ties to rural Appalachia. It begins with a close reading of pedagogical discourse situated in an after-school reading project for preteen girls. It then traces the deep roots of language seeped in class meanings--words such as "nasty"…

The challenges facing America's youth are multifaceted and include violence, drug abuse, gangs, school dropouts, suicide, delinquency, and despair. As President Bush made addressing these issues an agenda item during his second term, putting the youth in national spotlight, it is tempting to develop more programs designed to fix kids by providing…

Under the No Child Left Behind Act, districts that have failed to demonstrate adequate yearly progress for two years in a row must pay for low-income students' private-sector tutoring. As No Child Left Behind enters its fifth year, a report by the Washington, DC, nonprofit Center on Education Policy found that of about 300 districts surveyed, 10…

Experiences that are deeply engaging and enjoyable, engender full concentration, and present a balance between challenge and skill propel or push development forward. For the past twenty years, researchers have sought to locate environments in which this combination of effort, skill, interest, and enjoyment is more likely. This article describes a…

The purpose of this study was to develop the Scale for Program Facilitators (SPF) to assess the effectiveness of after school achievement programs through four steps: (a) identification of a theoretical framework, (b) formulation of the initial scale, (c) test of content validity, and (d) conducting confirmatory factor analyses (CFA). A…

This article examines how out-of-school time programs can promote youth involvement in civic action by focusing on four interrelated programmatic strategies: establishing organizational readiness that fosters engagement; promoting youth-adult partnerships; engaging youth as leaders and decision makers; and involving youth in research and…

Out-of-school programs provide a context for enriching academic experiences. This study describes a 12-week after-school reading program, Project Expanding Horizons, which is based on the Schoolwide Enrichment Model-Reading (SEM-R) framework. SEM-R has three phases: exposure, supported independent reading, and choice. The exposure phase is…

This article discusses an open-door policy and innovative program of Thorncliffe Park Public School, located in the heart of the diverse immigrant community in Toronto, that greatly expands community use of public schools. Community use of schools is hardly a new concept in Canada or in the United States, where schools have traditionally been the…

School districts are central players in the child care delivery system: they operate a mix of child care centers and programs, serve a range of children of different ages, and fund their programs from a variety of federal, state, and local sources. This report provides a range of programmatic and fiscal information about the federal and state…

This report presents results from a multisite, quantitative evaluation of the international Spirituality for Kids (SFK) after-school program. Despite its name, SFK is a nonreligious program that seeks to build resilience in children by teaching them to access inner resources and build positive connections with others. The SFK program is unlike…

A study examined specific reading competencies after participating in Hmong literacy instruction in an after-school setting in the Thermalito, California School District, grades kindergarten through 4. Control and treatment groups were established to compare the English literacy skills of the Hmong students who participated in 40 hours of primary…

This report is based upon survey responses from 139 school districts and 59 nonpublic schools in Minnesota that offer School Age Child Care (SACC), or extended day programs. The report presents data on public and private SACC programs related to: (1) administration and growth; (2) number of children served; (3) types of services offered; (4)…