Supporting Success: Why and How to Improve Quality in After-School Programs

This report examines the program improvement strategies, step-by-step, that allowed The James Irvine Foundation's CORAL initiative to achieve the levels of quality needed to boost the academic success of participating students. And, it makes specific policy and funding suggestions for improving program performance. Communities Organizing Resources to Advance Learning (CORAL) is an eight-year, $58 million after-school initiative to improve educational achievement in low-performing schools in five California cities

Making Every Day Count: Boys & Girls Clubs' Role in Promoting Positive Outcomes for Teens Executive Summary

This executive summary highlights the main findings from P/PV's three-year study of the role Boys & Girls Clubs play in the lives of the youth they serve. Drawing on several sources of data -- surveys of a low-income, ethnically diverse sample of approximately 320 youth (starting when they were seventh and eighth graders and following them into the ninth and tenth grades), Club attendance records over a 30-month period, and in-depth interviews with a sample of ninth graders -- we investigated the relationship between participation and three outcome areas identified by Boys & Girls Clubs of America as central to its mission: good character and citizenship, academic success and healthy lifestyles

Making Every Day Count: Boys & Girls Clubs' Role in Promoting Positive Outcomes for Teens

The third in a series of reports from P/PV's three-year study of the role Boys & Girls Clubs play in the lives of the youth they serve, Making Every Day Count examines how Club participation is related to youth's positive and healthy development in three outcome areas identified by Boys & Girls Clubs of America as central to its mission: good character and citizenship, academic success and healthy lifestyles.The report draws on several sources of data -- surveys of a low-income, ethnically diverse sample of approximately 320 youth (starting when they were seventh and eighth graders and following them into the ninth and tenth grades), Club attendance records over a 30-month period, and in-depth interviews with a sample of ninth graders -- to investigate the relationship between participation and outcomes. The findings show that teens who had higher levels of participation in the Clubs experienced greater positive change on 15 of 31 outcomes examined, including increases in integrity (knowing right from wrong) and academic confidence, decreases in incidents of skipping school, and a lower likelihood of starting to carry a weapon or use marijuana or alcohol.Qualitative data bolster these findings, providing insights from youth and staff about the practices and strategies that support the influence of the Club, as a whole, on youth's lives. The data suggest that there is a confluence of things the Clubs are doing right to serve teens and sustain their connection to the Club as they transition from middle school to high school. Interviewed staff and the teens spoke about the overall Club environment, the safe place it provides and the role of interactions with supportive adults and peers as crucial -- and, in their view, more important than specific programming -- in helping promote teens' positive development.The findings from the evaluation offer a promising picture of the role Clubs can play in the lives of teens; they also point to valuable lessons for the larger out-of-school-time field, where there is increasing interest in the question of how to effectively engage teens -- a population that has been critically underserved in many low-income communities

Launching Literacy in After-School Programs: Early Lessons from the CORAL Initiative

The James Irvine Foundation launched the Communities Organizing Resources to Advance Learning (CORAL) initiative in 1999 with the goal of improving the academic achievement of children in the lowest-performing schools in five California cities. In 2004, CORAL adopted a more targeted approach toward reaching this goal by integrating a regular schedule of literacy instruction into its after-school programs. This interim report, based on research conducted between Fall 2004 and Summer 2005, documents CORALs progress toward implementing high-quality and consistent literacy programming. The report presents early results in terms of youths positive reading gains and describes the program components that appear to have contributed to these gains. It also identifies challenges CORAL sites faced and successful strategies for addressing those challenges

Iron Acquisition Mechanisms and Their Role in Staphylococcus aureus Survival and Virulence

To microbes and humans alike, iron is both essential, and potentially toxic, where homeostatic concentrations must be stringently maintained. Within the iron-restricted host, the survival and proliferation of microbial invaders is contingent upon exploiting the host iron pool. Staphylococcus aureus is a formidable pathogen, whose success is partly attributable to its multiple, and often redundant mechanisms for acquiring iron. A decade of research in staphylococcal iron acquisition has identified several uptake mechanisms, including, but not limited to, the elaboration of high-affinity iron scavenging siderophores (staphyloferrins A (SA) and B (SB)) and the expression of an iron-regulated surface determinant (Isd) pathway for heme-iron acquisition. Factors influencing the expression or utility of these systems in vivo, however, have largely gone unaddressed and were the subject of this thesis. Both SA and SB are citrate-based siderophores and, in Chapter 2, we endeavored to identify the enzymatic source of this staphyloferrin precursor molecule. We demonstrate that citrate derived from the TCA cycle citrate synthase, CitZ, is essential to the production of SA, whereas SB may obtain citrate from either CitZ, or the iron-regulated citrate synthase, SbnG. Activity of the TCA cycle is thus a key determinant in the elaboration of SA. Notably, the TCA cycle is downregulated during iron-restricted glycolytic growth, which we suggest has fundamental implications to the in vivo expression of SA. We propose that S. aureus requires two citrate synthases because SA and SB each fulfill unique, yet partially overlapping, roles in the metabolism and pathophysiology of the bacterium. Although Isd has been extensively characterized in heme-iron acquisition, isd mutants often lack a growth-defective heme-dependent phenotype. In Chapter 3, we report that Isd functions as a biologically relevant, high-affinity heme acquisition system, with utility on physiological concentrations of hemoglobin. Isd function is masked at high heme concentrations, which we hypothesized to occur through low-affinity heme acquisition by a putative di-/tripeptide (DtpT) or oligopeptide permease (Opp). No Opp was found to function in heme acquisition, and while DtpT was found to have a reproducible yet minor role in this function, under the conditions tested, it was confirmed as a transporter of di-/tripeptides

Design of a Mission Data Storage and Retrieval System for NASA Dryden Flight Research Center

The Western Aeronautical Test Range (WATR) at the NASA Dryden Flight Research Center (DFRC) employs the WATR Integrated Next Generation System (WINGS) for the processing and display of aeronautical flight data. This report discusses the post-mission segment of the WINGS architecture. A team designed and implemented a system for the near- and long-term storage and distribution of mission data for flight projects at DFRC, providing the user with intelligent access to data. Discussed are the legacy system, an industry survey, system operational concept, high-level system features, and initial design efforts

Beyond Safe Havens: A Synthesis of 20 Years of Research on the Boys & Girls Clubs, Full Report

P/PV recently launched a multiyear study to understand the role that Boys & Girls Clubsplay in the lives of early adolescents. Beyond Safe Havens, a prelude to the larger study, reviews the range of evaluations that have been conducted on Boys & Girls Clubs over the past 20 years. The report identifies the potential benefits of the many discrete programs provided by Clubs and discusses three additional studies that examined the broader club experience. It also outlines the strategies that seem to have contributed to the Clubs' successes, as well as any challenges that may have impeded more positive results. The report concludes with a brief description of a planned longitudinal evaluation of Club members as they transition to high school -- an evaluation meant to provide documentation of the effect of teens' broad Club experiences on a wide range of outcomes

Beyond Safe Havens: A Synthesis of 20 Years of Research on the Boys & Girls Clubs, Executive Summary

P/PV recently launched a multiyear study to understand the role that Boys & Girls Clubs play in the lives of early adolescents. Beyond Safe Havens, a prelude to the larger study, reviews the range of evaluations that have been conducted on Boys & Girls Clubs over the past 20 years. This Executive Summary provides a brief outline of the full Beyond Safe Havens report. Specifically, it identifies the potential benefits of the many discrete programs provided by Clubs and discusses three additional studies that examined the broader club experience. The Summary also outlines the strategies that seem to have contributed to the Clubs successes, as well as any challenges that may have impeded more positive results. The Summary concludes with a brief description of a planned longitudinal evaluation of Club members as they transition to high schoolan evaluation meant to provide documentation of the effect of teens broad Club experiences on a wide range of outcomes

One-step inactivation of rpoS to investigate its role on Escherichia coli O157:H7 biofilm formation and survival

Homologous linear recombination using the recombinogenic capabilites of phage red genes exo, bet and gam, has been used increasingly to generate targeted gene replacements in Gram-negative bacteria

More Time For Teens: Understanding Teen Participation -- Frequency, Intensity and Duration -- In Boys & Girls Clubs

Written midway through a three-year longitudinal evaluation of the role Boys & Girls Clubs play in the lives of the youth they serve, this report explores a topic of continuing interest to program operators and funders: What does it take to involve teens in positive out-of-school-time activities? Drawing on survey data from a low-income, ethnically diverse sample of approximately 400 seventh and eighth graders, Clubs attendance data tracked over a period of 17 months, and in-depth interviews with a sample of ninth graders, More Time for Teens identifies a set of factors that appear to contribute to three specific aspects of Club participation: frequency, duration and retention. The report highlights links found between accessible, safe places that provide a variety of informal and formal activities of interest to teens and higher levels of participation. It also distills lessons for programs interested in boosting teen participation. These include establishing relationships when children are younger (these relationships often endure through the teen years), taking into account the importance teens place on friendships and working with teens to establish flexibility in attendance policies as they enter their high school years