ExpandED Schools National Demonstration: Lessons for Scale and Sustainability

Can schools and community organizations come together to provide children with critical enrichment activities that enhance knowledge and expand horizons beyond core academics during the school day? This report by Policy Studies Associates, Inc., highlights some ways in which they might.The report investigates schools' use of the ExpandED Schools model, which seeks to use partnerships between public schools, community organizations and intermediary organizations to increase enrichment opportunities for children. In the model, regular school staffers focus largely on core academics, while a community-based organization offers enrichment activities during expanded school hours. A third, intermediary organization often coordinates and supports the effort.Researchers studied the use of this model in 10 schools in three cities—New York City, Baltimore and New Orleans—over four years. In this report, they identify the parts of the model that were easiest for the schools to implement, parts that proved more challenging and strategies schools used to overcome hurdles along the way.It finds that the partnerships were generally most successful in adding new activities to an expanded school day and were able to coordinate efforts between school staff and community organizations. But many schools struggled to find reliable sources of funding and to use data to drive programming and instruction

Evidence of Program Quality and Youth Outcomes in the DYCD Out-of-School Time Initiative: Report on the Initiative's First Three Years

Examines New York City's progress in improving out-of-school-time program quality and serving more children and youth, participants' and parents' overall satisfaction with quality and accessibility, and links between programming, quality, and benefits

The Beacon Community Centers Middle School Initiative: Final Report on Implementation and Youth Experience in the Initiative

The report evaluates New York City's Beacon Middle School Initiative, which was launched to increase services to middle-grades youth through programs in academics, life skills, career awareness, civic engagement, physical health, and arts and culture. The report describes youth characteristics and participation, program features, connections to school and communities, youth reports of their experiences, and relationships between program characteristics and youth outcomes

Evaluation of the Beacon Community Centers Middle School Initiative: Report on the First Year

Evaluates the first year of an initiative to provide structured after-school and summer programs for fifth- through eighth-graders. Examines the centers' adaptation to the new focus, enrollment and participation levels, and implementation of core goals

The Afterschool Leadership Landscape: Supporting and Strengthening Racial Equity

In 2019, the National AfterSchool Association (NAA) convened a series of leadership conversations focused on creating a culture of professionalization in afterschool, which included a discussion of the need to build a leadership pipeline and to foster more diverse leadership, starting with a focus on supporting and retaining leaders from minoritized racial and ethnic backgrounds. These leader-focused discussions were a natural next step in NAA's long track record of commitment to equity and advocacy for the professionalization of the afterschool field, including through the development of Core Knowledge and Competencies for Afterschool and Youth Development Professionals, and by annually honoring the Next Generation of Afterschool Leaders. NAA is now elevating the importance of building a diverse leadership pipeline through the launch of a Professional Learning Community (PLC) in spring 2020, with grant support from the S.D. Bechtel, Jr. Foundation and in partnership with the California School-Age Consortium (CalSAC) and Development Without Limits (DWL). NAA also engaged Policy Studies Associates (PSA) and Public Profit as learning and research partners. This brief, researched and authored by PSA and leveraging interview and survey data from Public Profit, results from a collaborative effort intended to frame efforts to embrace, support, and retain afterschool leaders of color.

Supporting Social and Cognitive Growth Among Disadvantaged Middle-Grades Students in TASC After-School Projects

The field of after-school programming remains rife with unanswered questions. What constitutes quality in after-school programs? Are after-school opportunities valuable for participants regardless of their quality? Are differences in quality associated with differences in participant benefit? This sub-study of the longitudinal evaluation of The After-School Corporation (TASC) looks at how after-school opportunities with varying features affect urban middle-grades (6-8) adolescents who live in impoverished circumstances. Supported by the William T. Grant Foundation, the study explores the associations between after-school project features and the social and cognitive outcomes of disadvantaged middle-grades participants in TASC programs. The study relies on data collected during the 2001-02 and 2002-03 school years in eight TASC projects serving middle-grades students

Supporting Social and Cognitive Growth Among Disadvantaged Middle-Grades Students in TASC After-School Projects

The field of after-school programming remains rife with unanswered questions. What constitutes quality in after-school programs? Are after-school opportunities valuable for participants regardless of their quality? Are differences in quality associated with differences in participant benefit? This sub-study of the longitudinal evaluation of The After-School Corporation (TASC) looks at how after-school opportunities with varying features affect urban middle-grades (6-8) adolescents who live in impoverished circumstances. Supported by the William T. Grant Foundation, the study explores the associations between after-school project features and the social and cognitive outcomes of disadvantaged middle-grades participants in TASC programs. The study relies on data collected during the 2001-02 and 2002-03 school years in eight TASC projects serving middle-grades students

The Beacon Community Centers Middle School Initiative: Report on Implementation and Youth Experience in the Initiative's Second Year

Evaluates the second year of an initiative to offer fifth-to-eighth graders structured out-of-school-time programs. Looks at implementation, such as engagement, staffing, and activities; youths' social and educational development; and underlying factors

Improving information flow on tree farming policies on private land through the radio School On The Air program

Improving information flow in a particular knowledge system helps a project achieve its goals and objectives. Inevitably, information could make the participation of all project stakeholders possible. One of the research projects of ACIAR on smallholder tree farming in Leyte, the Philippines, is the Radio DYAC’s School on the Air (SOA) program on tree farming policies on private land. This program seeks to improve people’s knowledge and awareness − particularly the smallholder farmers on government policies related to tree registration, harvesting, transport and marketing. It also aims to inform private landowners and other stakeholders on tree growing, educate them to improve their understanding on tree farming policies, and motivate the tree farmers to register their trees and adopt related tree farming policies. Since this was a collaborative project, the local government units in the three purposively chosen project sites of ACIAR (Hindang, Bato and Isabel) provided the transportation expenses of their farmer-graduates during the SOA graduation. The Development Communication students of the Visayas State University (VSU) also produced the SOA’s dramatized spots and jingle. For the research component using paired samples test on means, a highly significant difference (

Evaluation of the New York City Out-of-School Time Initiative: Report on the First Year: Executive Summary

Describes an out-of-school program initiative serving more than 51,000 youth citywide. Presents data on the first year of program implementation and findings on participant engagement and associated academic and social development outcomes