After-School Programs to Promote Child and Adolescent Development Summary of a Workshop (2000) / Chapter Skim
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After-School Programs to Promote Child and Adolescent Development
After-School Programs to Promote Child and Adolescent Development
Pages 1-34
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Programs after school and during weekends and summer hours may provide an opportunity to engage these children and adolescents as partners in their own development by ensuring that they have access to the kinds of constructive learning and development opportunities that they both need and want during their out-of-school time. On October 21, 1999, under the auspices of the Committee on Community-Level Programs for Youth, a workshop was convened by the Board on Children, Youth, and Families to review the current knowledge base about after-school programs as a strategy for ensuring the safety, security, development, and well-being of children and adolescents ages 5 to 14 and to consider the implications of this knowledge for the next generation of 1
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Rather, the report should be seen as a reflection of ideas expressed by workshop presenters and participants that may lead to continued and enhanced support of existing programs, new program models, additional and different research, and more collaboration among researchers, policy makers, and practitioners. Given the limitations of both time and scope, this workshop could not address a variety of issues that are certainly important when considering how children and adolescents spend their after-school hours.
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Workshop presenter Karen Hein, of the William T Grant Foundation, pointed out that the highly publicized school shootings that occurred in the communities of Littleton, Colorado, Conyers, Georgia, and Johnsboro, Arkansas, in which children attacked their classmates and teachers, have raised questions about the influence on children and adolescents of how they spend their out-of-school time.
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Department of Education, explained that an estimated 28 million school-age children have parents working at least part time, including 5 million to 7 million "latchkey children" who get no adult supervision after school (Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, 19981. And 77 percent of married mothers with school-age children worked outside the home in 1996 (U.S.
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Workshop presenters Terry Peterson, of the U.S. Department of Education, and lane Quinn, of the DeWitt Wallace-Reader's Digest Fund, presented the results of polls and studies of voters, educators, parents, and adolescents about after-school programs that collectively argue for the need for more and higher-quality after-school services: · In a survey of the voting public conducted by a bipartisan polling team, 93 percent of respondents favored making safe daily enrichment programs available to all children; 86 percent of voters thought that organized after-school activities were a necessity; 11 percent of voters thought they were not necessary (Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, 19881.
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Department of Education's 21st Century Community Learning Centers program experienced a dramatic increase in funding: from $1 million in fiscal 1997 to $40 million in 1998, $200 million in 1999, and $450 million in 2000. The focus of this school-based program, authorized under Title X, Part I, of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, is to provide expanded learning opportunities for children in a safe, drug-free, supervised environment.
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Many states, including California, Connecticut, Delaware, ancl Georgia, have made significant investments in programs for school-age chilclren (Davicl ancl Lucile Packard Founclation, 19991. Workshop presenter Toy Dryfoos aclclecl that there has also been extensive support from foundations for after-school programs, ancl important new public/private partnerships for after-school programs.
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Developmental Changes There are obvious physical changes that children experience during middle childhood and early adolescence, including dramatic physical growth. Early adolescence encompasses the biological changes of puberty, as well as sexual and psychological awakenings.
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However, children need a whole array of skills to move through middle childhood and early adolescence into adulthood. Afterschool programs provide an important opportunity to help children and adolescents explore different areas of interest in which they can exercise their talents and achieve success.
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To develop effectively, children and adolescents need to be in environments in which they have the opportunity to feel confident, to master skills, and to acquire autonomy (Cornell and Wellborn, 19911. Workshop presenters discussed the idea that participation in after-school programs with young people of different ages can create opportunities for children and adolescents to master a range of different skills and abilities.
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There is often a public perception that children and adolescents getting together and congregating in the neighborhood are going to cause problems and get into trouble. Unstructured play is not a priority in schools, but workshop presenters discussed that it can and should be a priority in after-school programs.
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The focus, substance, and purposes of school-age child care and youth development programs may overlap, but they are not always interchangeable. This lack of clarity about how to describe these activities generates confusion for parents making decisions about what type of program will best meet their children's needs, as well as uncertainty by funders and policy makers who are making decisions about the types of programs to support and promote.
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There is overlap among after-school programs, school-age child care, and youth development programs, but not all after-school programs serve a child care function, and not all after-school programs take a youth development approach. Responsibility and Location After-school programs are offered by a range of providers and in many different settings school districts, libraries, national youth-serving agencies, parents' groups, independent community-based organizations, reli.
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The new 21st Century Community Learning Centers Program has helped many schools play more of a leadership role in designing and implementing after-school programs. Workshop presenter Toy Dryfoos predicted that in the future all schools would remain open during afternoon and evening hours and on weekends.
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3. School-community partnerships, commonly referred to as "community schools," represent partnerships between a school and a community-based organization and offer after-school programs in the context of "total school reform." Examples are the programs of the Children's Aid Society Community Service Schools in New York and the West Philadelphia Improvement Corps.
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Some programs offer daily activities, including weekend and school vacation events, while others are more limited to after-school hours (e.g., 3:00 to 6:00 pimp. Workshop presenter Karen Hein highlighted the importance of understanding these distinctions in focus, structure, and scope and how programs are being designed.
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COMPONENTS OF HIGH-QUALITY AFTER-SCHOOL PROGRAMS Essential Ingredients Workshop presenters discussed essential ingredients that appear to characterize high-quality after-school programs. They indicated that while each of these components may not be present in all high-quality programs, programs that include some or all of them are more likely to attract and retain young people's interest and be supported by parents and the community.
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As discussed by workshop presenter Robin Jarrett of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, effective program administrators are often people who view this work virtually as a calling. They have an unusual love and passion for what they do.
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Teen parents involved in after-school programs may also benefit from opportunities to learn how to make decisions and how to parent. After-school programs may provide them with learning opportunities that could lead to increased confidence and motivation in school and as a parent.
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Workshop presenters discussed the importance of involving parents in programs. The more competent parents are the better their children will function in school and after-school endeavors.
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They seek to provide a seamless program without clear boundaries between what happens during the school day and what happens after school. CAS community schools are funded by a variety of public and private sources, including the New York City Board of Education.
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Program Features Integration with the Schools For CAS community schools, planning for and implementation of after-school programs is done jointly by CAS staff and each school. The goal is to create and build on what goes on during the school day while expanding children's learning opportunities.
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Project LEARN has five components: homework help and tutoring, high-yield learning and leisure activities, parental involvement, collaboration with schools, and goal setting and incentives. Staffing CAS community schools strive to reflect their school-community partnership focus in their staff.
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The Boys & Girls Clubs of America has found that it is most important to hire staffwho have been educated and can teach children from their own educational experiences and therefore encourages individual clubs to recruit staff directors with college degrees. The programs are always led by paid full-time professional staff and supplemented by part-time people and volunteers, such as college students and parents.
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The CAS community school established an off-site educational program. It was an important message: even though some of the adolescents had lost their privileges to participate in activities in the regular CAS community school, CAS continued to work with them outside the school and eventually welcomed them back.
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Establishing independent space for the CAS programs in schools is a constant challenge. The Boys & Girls Clubs find that meeting the specific needs of at-risk, underserved, or unserved children a challenge.
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For these reasons many programs are undergoing evaluations. Workshop presenter Robert Halpern, of the Erikson Institute for Graduate Study in Child Development in Chicago and the Chapin Hall Center for Children at the University of Chicago, facilitated a discussion about program evaluation.
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Evaluation tools that measure program features and characteristics, such as quality, collaboration, the integration of youth development and educational activities, and the presence of caring and supportive adults are difficult to design and apply. The structure of these programs also makes it very difficult to determine for whom each program service is most effective or the amount or "dose" of program service required to achieve desired outcomes.
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Workshop presenters discussed the important role of organized programs during afterschool hours in engaging young people in activities that may support their development and well-being, develop competence and confidence in different domains, and prevent violent and high-risk behaviors. Whether it is because there are more working parents, riskier streets, concerns about aca
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Workshop presenters discussed areas in which future policy development, program design, and evaluation would further enhance after-school programs. Design and Implementation In designing and implementing after-school programs, workshop presenters observed that it is important to avoid uniform "cookie cutter" programs that do not respond to the needs of different communities, children, and adolescents.
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Several workshop presenters also expressed concern that after-school programs and policies are often too clearly identified as activities for young children. Older adolescents have not been as well engaged in after-school programs, particularly ones that are designed around a youth development approach rather than being topic specific.
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She explained that this would be detrimental to low-income families, many of whom have both younger children and adolescent children. Families that are already paying a significant share of their income for their younger children to be in child care usually do not have resources left to make copayments for older children.
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There is increasing pressure to develop strategies that are affordable and that help local communities with performance measurement, evaluation, and accountability. Workshop presenters suggested that an evaluation strategy should be more than just an evaluation of a particular program model; it should extend to a system of community services that includes practitioners, policy makers, parents, researchers, and children and adolescents themselves.
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Finally, workshop presenters called attention to the value of research and evaluation to the continued development and enhancement of high-quality after-school programs for children and adolescents.
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