Today, students' academic achievement is slowly seeing a return to pre-pandemic trends. Researchers do not estimate a full recovery in the near future, and studies show students continue to struggle with feelings of stress, isolation, anxiety, and depression. As the nation seeks solutions to help young people amidst these struggles, voters and…

Jon's Heroes in Training (JHT) represents a strong cross-sector collaboration that was created and has evolved over the past five years. JHT is an after-school program where children (ages 3-22) with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) diagnosis come to the local university to engage in high-quality physical education lessons designed and…

This article takes up three interrelated elements of Iris Murdoch's moral philosophy into an initial conceptual framework for moral education and explores a practical application of this framework to a lesson plan. The three elements are moral vocabulary, moral perception, and the quality of our states of consciousness. The framework constituted…

The Wallace Foundation commissioned Research for Action and McClanahan Associates to study how out-of-school time intermediaries (OSTIs) responded to the COVID-19 pandemic and the role they could play in supporting communities moving forward. Citywide out-of-school time (OST) systems encompass a wide variety of afterschool and summer programs and…

A powerful way to build students' mathematical power and agency is through Teaching Mathematics for Social Justice (TMfSJ), where students read and write the world with mathematics (Gutstein, 2005). Reading the world with mathematics uses mathematics to understand relations of power, resource inequities, and disparate opportunities between…

Most educators believe that social and emotional learning (SEL) skills are a fundamental part of good teaching and learning. Long before the pandemic, surveys showed that teachers believed these skills were essential for students to learn at school, and research confirmed that they are linked with measures of academic success. Educators need…

This Practice to Policy brief, based on insights from UnidosUS's Affiliate Network of community-based organizations and public charter schools in Illinois, Florida, Texas, Arizona, and California, highlights the critical role of Out-of-School Time (OST) programs in supporting the Latino community, particularly in the aftermath of the COVID-19…

The Center for Research in Educational Policy (CREP) has partnered with the Virginia Department of Education since 2005 to evaluate the Commonwealth's 21st Century Community Learning Centers program. The 21st Century Community Learning Centers (CCLC) is a federal grant program established by Congress as Title X, Part 1, of the Elementary and…

Achieving equity in education--that is, ensuring every student has the resources and tools they need to succeed--has become a key issue for the nation's schools. Equity does not apply just to classroom learning, however; it matters in afterschool, summer, and other out-of-school-time (OST) programs, too. Yet while research on equity in the OST…

Out-of-school programs can offer personalized and meaningful learning experiences that deepen students' knowledge and cater to their passions and interests, but it has been a painful reality that many such programs have been available only to students and families with privilege and resources. Karen Hammerness, Anna MacPherson, Preeti Gupta,…

Youth are natural scientists at birth, discovering and exploring their world and trying to make sense of it (Bers, 2008). A child's education is not limited to just the time they spend in the classroom. Children learn at home with their families, in public libraries, or through out-of-school-time (OST) experiences provided at community centers and…

Due to changing federal and state policy as well as increased community concerns about pollinators, assisting clients interested in pollinator health is taking more Extension agent time and resources. In addition, many gardeners tend to be beginners in need of support to recognize best management practices related to pollinating and beneficial…

In most modern countries, much learning in childhood and adolescence takes place outside of regular school hours. That holds for community-based programs -- like afterschool programs -- as well as for private offerings -- like private tutoring. In the international research literature, this field of learning opportunity is called extended…

This is the technical appendix to a report that offers early lessons from an initiative focused on social and emotional learning (SEL) in elementary schools and out-of-school time (OST) programs. In 2016, in an effort to gain knowledge about how to help children develop SEL skills, The Wallace Foundation launched a six-year project called the…

The poster is a promising mechanism for inclusive scholarship. Inclusive scholarship provides direct opportunities for inclusion and representation. Community partner and youth participants in an urban gardening program were engaged in program-related scholarship via involvement in creation of a poster and its presentation at a community…