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…

After school programs are held in many schools nationwide. This research reviews the knowledge, motivation and organizational influences related to staff's ability to provide active and engaging activity plans to the students enrolled in the Los Angeles Expanded Learning Program. The study utilized mixed methods via both a survey and focus groups.…

High school students from low-income backgrounds experience academic under-preparedness, financial distress, and socialization challenges when entering college. For these students, challenges may begin in the K-12 setting, where this population is more likely to face limitations in college counseling, lack highly qualified teachers, and have…

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…

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is an effective treatment for youth experiencing anxiety. While various group-based CBT programs have demonstrated effectiveness for anxious youth, few have integrated SMART technology into service delivery to increase engagement and active learning. The On Second Though (OST) program is a social-emotional…

In this article, we present a reconceptualization of sport as a series of collaborative contests with players on different teams scoring goals cooperatively: players on both sides lose or both sides win together depending on whether they can improve the scores they earn in overcoming limitations and obstacles by working with the other team. When…

Given that input-based language and literacy environments provide socioculturally-enriched contexts for bilingual and biliteracy acquisition, the current study aims to explore the contribution of early input in various sociocultural contexts to later biliteracy development among ­college-level Chinese heritage language (CHL) students. A group of…

Current research underscores that there are only a few evidence-based programs that teach STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) as part of their curriculum, especially for autistic students. Even fewer programs focus on engineering and design learning. Hence, we developed an informal afterschool maker program to develop autistic…

This paper examines the utility of youth participatory action research (YPAR) and critical media literacy as strategies to promote the sociopolitical development (SPD) of Black youth. We use the case example of Our Voices, an afterschool program implemented with Black high school students in which participants analyzed the representation of Black…

Research suggests diverse experiences with homelessness can affect students' PK-12 school success and, relatedly, postsecondary opportunities. Exploring postsecondary preparation and planning in the context of housing instability, this study draws on the framework of community cultural wealth to explore the lived experiences of accompanied…

Social aspects among Mexican society are based on gender hierarchy influencing every decision-making process. I was taught from a young age that every decision needed to come from me. While I had the opportunity to learn an activist approach to working with youth during my doctoral journey, I never thought it would challenge the epistemology of my…

This study explores the "Youth Leadership Experience" (YLE), (pseudonym) an afterschool experiential learning and leadership program for 9th and 10th-grade high school students from the midlands area of Columbia, SC. The study aims to identify and document the experiential learning and leadership practices at "Youth Leadership…

The purpose of this research is to examine the effects of teaching the subjects and concepts under "life in nature" unit of the 3rd grade life science lesson, on the academic achievement and attitudes of the students. In order to achieve this aim, a quasi-experimental model with pretest posttest control group was used in the study. In…

Patterns of afterschool activities were studied in low-income, ethnically diverse children (n = 1796, M age = 8.7 yrs). Cluster analyses indicated four reliable clusters: (a) regular participation in a high-quality afterschool program, (b) regular participation at the afterschool program combined with other extracurricular activities, (c)…

Parents increasingly view afterschool as important to the healthy development of children. Afterschool programs support healthy development. Parents of color and families with low incomes especially value afterschool's role in supporting healthy development. America After 3PM is a nationally representative survey of randomly selected adults who…