After School Research

This report, recently released by Fight Crime: Invest in Kids California outlines California’s groundbreaking commitment to after school programs. It outlines that California’s investment in after school programs is concentrated in low-income, high-need neighborhoods. The report outlines the investment that has been made in after school programs by county and legislative district. The report also documents that while California is making a considerable investment in after school programs, there is still a large unmet need for after school programs in California.

This report, recently released by Children Now, identifies many critical issues affecting children's well being and threatening to compromise public health and the economy. The report assigns letter grades to individual issues. This year, California received a "B+" in afterschool programs. This letter grade reflects the state's national leadership in providing extended learning opportunities. Overall, California received the worst grade point average the state has received in the 20-year history of the Report Card.

The California Afterschool Network will work with SRI International, an independent nonprofit research and development institute, on a recently funded project from the National Science Foundation (NSF). The project is a five-year research study focused on science in afterschool settings. Researchers will examine the types and quality of science offerings within afterschool programs and the factors that influence them.

This tool draws upon selected examples of fiscal mapping research by statewide afterschool networks that track funding for out-of-school time programs. The tool provides an overview of fiscal mapping - a research approach that identifies the current expenditures for services for children and youth and their families. Organized into three parts, the tool provides an overview of the six steps in completing a fiscal mapping process, considerations and strategies for data collection, and worksheets to help readers collect the data itself.

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.

This brief offers ideas for state and local policymakers to develop interagency collaboration, expand access to affordable afterschool programs, and advance general program quality. Examples of promising practices from across the country are included to show leaders concrete ways of promoting the sustainability of afterschool programs. To view PDF click here.

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.

Children Now recently released The California Report Card 2009: Setting the Agenda for Children. The Report Card provides an overview of key 2008 public policy and budgetary developments that affect children; defines policy objectives for improving children’s well-being; and lays out immediate actions for California’s leadership to pursue. To learn more about the Report Card, click here

This Research Brief entitled More Than a Hunch: Kids Lose Learning Skills Over the Summer Months was recently released by the Center for Summer Learning. The brief summarizes research on summer learning loss and provides recommendations for policy makers and tips for program providers. The two-page brief can be accessed by clicking here.

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.

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.

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 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.