Program Quality 

This report was released in August 2009 by the Alliance for a Better Community. It documents that after school programs are a key resource for English Learners citing Preliminary research on English learner student performance in after school programs shows that such programs have a significant role in increasing language acquisition rates for English learners and decreasing the time it takes English learners to redesignate into mainstream English classrooms.

Two new Child Trends briefs draw on research across the fields of college readiness, workplace readiness, and youth development to identify the skills and competencies high school students need to master for future success.

According to a recent Children Now Report, currently, 137,000 positions are available within the after school workforce in California, the equivalent of nearly 75 percent of the elementary teacher workforce or all police and firefighters in California combined. The annual rate of workforce turnover in after school, however, reaches or exceeds 40 percent.

Learning Point Associates and the Collaborative for Building Afterschool Systems (CBASS) have recently released the Enhancing School Reform Through Expanded Learning report. The report explores the benefits of integrating expanded learning opportunities into overall school reform. The report finds that well designed expanded learning programs can improve overall school performance and increase positive academic, developmental and health outcomes.

The Center for American Progress has issued The Race Against the Clock report to examine the role that time plays in the education and learning for English Language Learners (ELL). The report also discusses how increasing the learning time can be a key strategy to improve the educational outcomes for ELL students. Finally, districts and schools who offer before-, after-, or summer school learning programs are highlighted to provide examples of expanding learning opportunities and lessons learned.

The Federal Office of Special Education Programs recently released a toolkit and parent materials on teaching and assessing students with disabilities.  For more information and to access the toolkit, click here.

Afterschool Investments recently released their National After School Profile. The profile contains demographic information on school-age youth, reviews various after school financing strategies, addresses the role of collaboration and alignment of community resources to support after school programs, highlights some quality efforts occurring nationally and includes information on the largest federal funding sources. To view the Afterschool Investments National Profile click here.

The Center for Afterschool Education at Foundations Inc. launches free “Use That Book!” webnairs. The webnair is designed to help staff access afterschool style guides. The first webnair is a 45 minute interactive presentation on GraffitiWall. This presentation will be held on October 16, 2008. Participants will receive a tour of the book and participate in a question and answer session. The Center offers additional free webnairs throughout the 2008-2009 calendar year.

This report synthesizes the last 10 years of findings from Public/Private Ventures and other researchers' work to address one of the most demanding challenges facing today's after-school programs-how to create and manage programs that stand the best chance of producing specific, policy-relevant outcomes. It examines recruitment strategies that attract young people to activities, the qualities that make activities engaging and motivate participants to attend regularly, and the infrastructure-staffing, management and monitoring-needed to support such activities.

A new report from America's Promise Alliance has stunning data about the high school graduation rate in our nation's 50 largest cities: only about half (52 percent) of students in the main school systems actually finish high school with a diploma -- the number is as low as 35 percent in Baltimore, Cleveland, Detroit and Indianapolis.

A new report from the California Dropout Research Project investigates the causes of high school dropout through dialogue with youth throughout the state. The study found that Teacher-student relationships are a powerful force in determining student's overall experiences of school; the absence of support seems fundamental to the rationale for dropping out.

This article by Robert Granger of the W.T. Grant Foundation examines program evaluation literature, observational studies, and commentaries to summarize after school programs impacts on academics, components of successful programming, and identifies approaches to program improvement.  To view this article, click here.

This EdSource report describes the state's English learners, their primary languages, what grades they are in, and where they live. The report also describes the process by which students are designated as English learners, the CELDT test used to measure English proficiency, and how they are reclassified as fluent English proficient (RFEP). It also discusses variations in English proficiency, differing reclassification rates from district to district, and how these students are meeting the state's rigorous academic standards.

The Research Speaker Workshop held at UCLA on January 24, 2008 featured Denise Huang Ph.D. (UCLA) spoke about her participation in the recently released Department of Justice longitudinal study regarding the positive impact of the L.A.'s BEST after school program on juvenile crime rates, and Professor Deborah Vandell (UCI) spoke about her recently released study on the academic and social benefits of eight nationwide after school programs. The event also featured a focused question and answer session.

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This Child Trends study analyzes family and community data for children ages 6 to 17 from the 2003 National Survey of Children's Health and finds that nearly half of children in high-risk families are not involved in any out of school time activity regardless of neighborhood risk level. While children from all levels of neighborhood risk that do not have high risk families participate in out of school activities at much higher rates.