Best school life
In the past decade after school programs have transitioned from the margins to the mainstream of national education policy discourse. Both the push for after school care by employed parents and a new emphasis on test driven accountability Learning are the two main reasons. Reflected in these pressures federal funding for after school programs has expanded exponentially in the past five years. During the period 1998-2002 federal funding for the 21st Century Community Learning Centers program increased from $40 million to $1 billion.
State and local government have also boosted their funding Best school life with California pledging to a six fold growth in funding for after school programs within the next few years. As a new wave of evaluation findings has just emerged policymakers are rightly keen to be able to find some evidence that all these investments are yielding University of Cambridge returns. The aim of this review is to set out the findings of four recent evaluations in order to extract the lessons we have learned to date and to highlight the questions that remain unanswered.
The following four studies are summarized each of the following assessments is explained in greater detail 21st Century Community Learning Centers 21st CCLC Completed by Mathematica Policy Research and Decision Information Resources and published in January 2003 the evaluation targeted a sample of elementary and middle school centers. Middle school assessment employed statistical controls to equate participants and non participants of the schools where after school programs were situated. Elementary school program assessment employed random assignment for a sample of 18 centers with greater numbers of applicants than openings. That sample of centers was larger for 34 centers in a second year of findings not yet published.
The assessment continues. Administered by Policy Studies Associates the study of 96 New York City after school centers is conducted over a four-year period. The study did not involve random assignment but compared results between participants and non-participants through statistical controls. Both groups attended the same schools where the after school activities took place. The study continues. Data collection is done and final analysis and report are in preparation.
Brief Description of the Programs
While not all the programs conformed Cambridge International to the standard model the typical after school program included in these studies ran for two or three hours at the close of the daily school schedule four to five days a week. The first hour was most often reserved for academic material although the level of adult supervision and the balance between instruction and mere homework completion was varied. For instance, in some programs students would work on their homework independently. In others, students would divide into small groups to do work with staff members getting extra instruction pertaining to the homework topic.
The academic content hour was usually followed by an hour of structured activity that included games sports activities presentations by local community organizations or training in personal skills such as conflict resolution or leadership. Student to staff ratios were generally around. After school programs were generally housed in neighborhood Cambridge Assessment International Education schools with a high population of disadvantaged students. For instance in the New York City sites funded by TASC for 2000 01 81 percent of the students at the participant and non participant schools were African American or Hispanic and 88 percent qualified for the free or reduced price lunch program.
In the ESS assessment 52 percent of the youth participants were African American or Hispanic and 72 percent. The youth were less disadvantaged by Key Stages, British Curriculum, Boarding School, Checkpoint Exams, International Curriculum, these standards. In SFBI programs 50 percent of participants and 28 percent of non participants at host schools were free or reduced price lunch recipients and 78 percent were African American Hispanic or Asian Pacific Islander of whom the overwhelming majority 48 percentage points were Asian Pacific Islander.
Rates of Participation
As presented in each of the programs reported participation differently and creating difficulties in making comparisons. For instance Inquiry-Based Learning the 21st CCLC middle school evaluation characterized a participant as a young person who had visited at least three times a center in the first month of operation. In the ESS and SFBI evaluations participation had to include attending at least one session over a school year. The TASC assessment measured the percentage ever participating.
Despite as much of the TASC assessment as possible being directed toward active participants who took part in the program at least 60 days throughout the school year and at least 60 percent of the time while in attendance whatever definition Postgraduate, Colleges, Dissertation, Seminars, Faculty, was employed the average participant appeared to participate very intermittently.
The average days attended by middle school participants was .9 days per week in the 21st CCLC evaluation. Participation was slightly more regular in elementary schools 1.9 and 2.4 days per week in the 21st CCLC and ESS evaluations respectively.
Only the TASC assessment reported significantly higher attendance levels 2.9 days a week for the typical middle school member and 3.9 days a week for the typical elementary school member. First the program required parents to commit to dropping their children off five days a week instead. The requirement for a commitment in advance might have caused parents to more frequently drop off children or might have caused individuals who had less demand for frequent after school care to self select away from the program.
But since families were seldom dropped due to occasional attendance and since the penalty of being dropped from the program would have been least expensive for those who were anticipating occasional attendance this explanation is not likely to cover all of the difference. Second the schools that were covered under the TASC program were high need schools 88 percent of the kids in the site schools were eligible for the free or reduced-price lunch program.
Yet the elementary schools in the 21st CCLC review were also high need schools three quarters of the centers were in schools with over 75 percent free and reduced price lunch eligibility but their participation rates were considerably lower than those attained under the TASC program.
A third explanation is that the New York City Department of Youth and Community Development funded its contribution to the program based on actual enrollment, relying on audited enrollment reports. This fiscal incentive might have prompted programs to engage in strategies for increasing attendance.
Evaluation Designs
The greatest challenge in any impact evaluation is the building of a reasonable estimate of what would have occurred in the treatment group if the program being evaluated had not existed. Only the evaluation of 21st CCLC elementary Interview Process school centers employed random assignment to accomplish this. Since the elementary after school sites were over enrolled, the evaluation team was able to randomly select treatment group members from a pool of applicants.
Statistical methods that Interview Process controlled for observed differences between treatment group and comparison group members were used in the remaining evaluations such as the 21st CCLC middle school evaluation. The comparison group within the non experimental studies comprised non participants enrolled in the same schools who for any reason did not join the programs.
Elementary School
The middle school evaluation sampled sites that appeared to represent the national program. But for the elementary programs the random assignment evaluation design compelled the evaluators to select from among the subset of sites with too many applicants. Consequently that evaluation was restricted to the subset of programs that were oversubscribed. It is unclear whether they were oversubscribed because the programs themselves were of unusually high quality or whether those sites were deficient in other programs for children.
Yet the children in the elementary school program sites chosen for the study were very different from children in elementary program sites across the country. Sixty seven percent of students at the elementary school sites were African American compared with 23 percent of elementary school sites across the country. Over two thirds 71 percent of the elementary school sites were in schools with over 75 percent of the students being free International General Certificate or reduced price lunch eligible, as opposed to 45 percent of the elementary sites nationwide.
Conclusion
After school programs have evoked a lot of interest as a means of maximizing the utilization of public structures during after school hours for increasing student safety and most recently for enhancing academic performance. Attendance in such programs is, however, generally sporadic. The participating students usually show up one to two days a week. Furthermore, not all of the program participating students would have been alone with an adult if the program were not available. In fact, the 21st CCLC assessment indicates that most of the participating students would have been at home with a parent.
If subsequent outcomes Cambridge Progression Tests verify such results they would set the bar higher for after school programs not only do they need to provide a safe haven for youth they need to be more worthwhile than spending a few extra hours at home after school. Programs Cambridge Lower Secondary need to do a better job of identifying the youth who are currently home alone or wandering the streets after school and persuade them or their parents to participate.