Conducted a meta-analysis of methodologies used to evaluate after school programs and attempted a synthesis of evaluation findings. Results show that evaluation reports demonstrate moderate compliance with the Program Evaluation Standards of the Joint Committee on Standards for Educational Evaluation but evidence did not allow for meta-analysis of…

The National Center for Community Education provides training to local 21st Century Community Learning Cetners to enable them to provide learning opportunities for children and families. The future will depend on community education programming, community involvement, advocacy, and public will. (JOW)

Discusses how Texas established 21st Century Community Learning Centers in the state. Describes a typical day in a local center and the impact on participants. (JOW)

Parents, schools, and the community no longer share equally in the teaching of youth. Extension after-school programs aid in school enrichment; nontraditional 4-H projects get youth involved in their communities; and traditional 4-H programs and project camps provide adult role models and subject knowledge for youth. (SK)

Describes three schools' efforts to introduce afterschool programs to one middle school (grades 6-8) and two junior high schools (grades 7-9). (ASK)

Adolescents with type 1 diabetes are likely attending most middle and high schools. These youth often do not receive the support needed to manage their diabetes during or after school. Nurses (n = 110) from 3 states responded to a survey examining perceptions of barriers to and supports for diabetes management during school and after school…

How do out-of-school-time (OST) programs get from attendance to active engagement? School researchers propose that engagement is composed of three "ABC" components, affect, behavior, and cognition, which can also be applied to OST programs. Affective engagement refers to positive and negative reactions to teachers, classmates, the academic…

To provide another perspective on evaluation within nonformal settings, "New Directions for Evaluation" recently interviewed David Smith, the coordinator of the Professional Learning to Close the Achievement Gap program for the Kansas City, Kansas, Public Schools, who has extensive background in education and educational research. He formerly held…

I investigated eight preservice teachers' understandings about culturally responsive pedagogy as they participated in a writing methods course in which they tutored children from different ethnic, socioeconomic, cultural, and linguistic backgrounds in an afterschool program at a local community center. I also investigated how these preservice…

For many children in America, summer vacation means camp, trips to new or familiar destinations, visits to museums, parks and libraries, and a variety of enriching activities--either with families or as part of a summer learning program. But for millions of others, when schools close for the summer, safe and enriching learning environments are out…

This case study examines the learning, identity and language development experienced by "overage" 8th-grade students who have been left behind two or more years in their New York City middle school and are participating in an extended-day video documentary program. The students practise a range of literacy skills naturally embedded in…

In its second year, the Tech Savvy Girls Project adopted "Teen Second Life" as a platform for interest-driven learning and designed projects and objects around themes important to them and their futures as technology-using, creative people. By using the building tools in an open-ended virtual world, they were able to pursue interests common to…

This commentary highlights the work of the Collaborative for Building After-School Systems (CBASS), a collaborative of mature, city and county-wide nonprofit OST intermediaries, to develop and adopt common youth-, program- and system-level measures that are easy and cost-effective for local systems to implement. By agreeing to adopt and publicly…

The Broader, Bolder Approach to Education Task Force is made up of 62 national policy experts, with diverse political affiliations, who come from fields that include education, social welfare, health, housing, and civil rights. This article presents a shortened version of the Task Force's recently released statement on the Broader, Bolder Approach…

This investigation addresses the mediational role of friends' characteristics between adolescents' activity breadth (i.e., variety in activity participation) and their later adjustment. Data were drawn from 2 longitudinal studies: the Childhood and Beyond (CAB; N = 925) study and the Maryland Adolescent Development in Context Study (MADICS; N =…