2009-2010 21st Century Community Learning Center Continuous Improvement Process (CIP) Data Snapshot

The purpose of the 21st Century Community Learning Center Continuous Improvement Process (CIP) Data Snapshot is to provide grantees and their individual school sites with the performance, process, and outcome data necessary to craft meaningful continuous improvement plans with key stakeholders, as required by the Nebraska Department of Education 21st Century Community Learning Center grant program.

Charting The Benefits of High-Quality After-School Program Experiences

Findings of the Promising Programs study suggest that plans for high-quality after-school programming should span entire communities. When all parties with responsibilities for and interests in the welfare of youth, especially disadvantaged youth, unite to engage them in high quality after-school experiences, they are more likely to succeed in promoting positive development for the largest number of youth at risk. Working alone, after-school programs, community-based organizations, and schools can offer only relatively narrow sets of choices, so youth and their families may look to less positive settings for youth to spend some or all of their after-school time. Working together, these same organizations can provide a wider array of opportunities for youth, especially disadvantaged youth, and hence ensure better outcomes for the overall population.

A New Day for Learning Report
(Mott Foundation)

A bold new report asking for a fundamental rethinking of how children and youth use their time for learning. The Task Force calls for immediate action to design a comprehensive learning system throughout the day, early to late, and year round so that young people have a seamless learning experience with optimum opportunities to learn and develop. It should provide students with multiple ways of learning, anchored to high standards and aligned to educational resources throughout a community. We need a new day for learning where there is no final bell.

Supporting Student Outcomes Through Expanded Learning Opportunities
(Priscilla M. Little)

This paper looks at the role of after school and summer learning programs in supporting student success. The paper explores how to bridge the divide between out-of-school time programs and schools by offering research-derived principles for effective expanded learning partnerships. Inside this paper, you will learn about:
The benefits of expanded learning, including less disciplinary action, lower dropout rates, better academic performance in school, greater on-time promotion, improved homework completion, and improved work habits.

Why and how schools and programs should partner and five principles that support transformative, sustainable partnerships.

A warrant for future research on expanded learning and education reform, including implementing and testing a variety of expanded learning opportunity models.

Structuring Out-of-School Time to Improve Academic Achievement
(Department of Education Institute of Education Sciences)

Out-of-school time is an opportunity to supplement learning from the school day and provide targeted assistance to students whose needs extend beyond what they can receive in the classroom.  This guide is intended to help educators, out-of-school time program providers, and school district administrators structure academically focused out-of-school time programs.

Pathways to Success for Youth: What Counts in After-School
(The Massachusetts Afterschool Research Study)

This Massachusetts Afterschool Research Study report has two major goals: (1) to identify those program characteristics that are most closely related to high quality implementation, and (2) to explore the links between program quality and youth outcomes.  It offers insights into what afterschool programs look like, approaches to providing high quality experiences for youth, and the connections between high quality and improved outcomes for the young people attending these programs.