In September 2005, the New York City Department of Youth and Community Development (DYCD) launched the Out-of-School Time Programs for Youth (OST) initiative to provide young people throughout New York City with access to high-quality programming after school, on holidays, and during the summer at no cost to their families. Working closely with…

In September 2005, the New York City Department of Youth and Community Development (DYCD) launched the Out-of-School Time Programs for Youth (OST) initiative to provide young people throughout New York City with access to high-quality programming after school, on holidays, and during the summer at no cost to their families. Working closely with…

America's schools are facing a critical shortage of teachers just as student enrollments are rising and more rigorous assessments of student achievement are being implemented. The shortage is especially acute in hard-to-staff schools in urban and rural areas, as well as in high-demand subjects such as math, science, and bilingual and special…

Conducting market research for out-of-school-time planning can replace assumptions with facts, give kids and parents a voice to express their needs and preferences, and help build stakeholder buy-in and support. This practical guide shows community leaders, policymakers and out-of-school-time practitioners how to use market research to make more…

This document examines the policy implications of recent findings of the Promising Programs study, conducted by researchers at the University of California at Irvine, the University of Wisconsin at Madison, and Policy Studies Associates, Inc. Most efforts to improve after-school opportunities focus on strengthening the effectiveness of individual…

After-school programs are popular with parents and the community, but are a lot of extra work for headteachers and the staff involved. This book will provide headteachers and administrators with the guidance they need to build a successful and sustainable after-school program. Based on a national study conducted by the author, this hands-on…

This article explores the study of learning through drama in light of contemporary theories of knowledge acquisition. The learning explored includes acquiring content knowledge represented in the topics of dramatization, interpersonal and personal understandings gained through enacting situations, and the development of attitudes and motivations…

After-school programs can be implemented by school nurses to facilitate healthy lifestyle choices in children with the goal of decreasing obesity. Kids Living Fit[TM] (KLF), an after-school program designed by community hospital nurses, was implemented in elementary schools and focused on best lifestyle choices regarding foods consumed and…

This paper describes how an after school elementary arts program served as a teaching lab for undergraduate pre-service teachers. The program was designed and implemented by an art education faculty member as an undergraduate service-learning course and research investigation on the outcomes of an inquiry-based K-12 art curriculum. It also became…

So well-chronicled are the challenges faced by schools in large urban and metropolitan areas that a lay person may perceive the nation's rural and small-city schools as bucolic settings where educators do not have a care in the world other than keeping the occasional cow from wandering onto the playground during recess. The reality, of course, is…

Throughout history, societal investments in children have resulted in increased prosperity for individuals, communities, states and nations. This proved to be the case for California in the 1950s and 1960s, when the state strongly supported children's futures. Despite once following this path to prosperity, California has de-prioritized children…

Education outside the classroom can be defined, in its broadest sense, as any structured learning experience that takes place beyond the classroom environment during the school day, after school or during the holidays. It can include, among other activities, cultural trips, science and geography fieldwork, environmental and countryside education,…

This paper examines the presence of spontaneous imitation within the social interactions of young people with developmental delay and their adult carers. There have been only a handful of observational studies examining imitation in this population, despite the relevance of such work to contemporary theoretical debates about imitation and the…

Embedded hierarchical relationships between children and adults constrain children's voice. For adults to support children's participation in decisions they need to learn new ways of working; to enable children to communicate their views, develop their ideas, make group decisions and take joint action. This article explores the different roles…

The No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act of 2001 requires that public schools adopt research-supported programs and practices, with a strong recommendation for randomized controlled trials (RCTs) as the "gold standard" for scientific rigor in empirical research. Within that policy framework, this paper compares the relative utility of…