March 2011 Archives

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and both houses of the state legislature are in the process of passing a new $132.5 billion budget for next fiscal year, which would mean reductions to after-school funding and some significant cuts for youth-services programs.

The budget agreement, reached this past weekend, would reduce one of the state's after-school funding streams by roughly $4.5 million, which is estimated to result in the loss of about 5,000 slots for students and 500 jobs in the state's after-school programs. This would also mean many after-school program grants would not be renewed and no applications to establish new programs would be accepted.

"We remain gravely concerned about the funding cuts in New York state's budget that continue to erode our after-school and expanded-learning system," said Sanjiv Rao, director of the New York State Afterschool Network (NYSAN), a state public-private partnership that works to support out-of-school time programs in New York through favorable state policies and improved programming.

"The cuts mean that fewer kids will have opportunities to participate in high-quality after-school programs, particularly at a time when the demand for these services far outstrips the supply," he said.

These newly proposed cuts would follow roughly $20 million in progressive decreases over the past few years, which the network estimates so far have already meant 20,000 fewer children in after-school and expanded-learning programs and more than 2,000 jobs.

But generally youth-services programs would be hit harder than after-school programs. Delinquency-prevention programs face a $14 million to $17.6 million cut, chopping their budget by at least half. Funding for the state's program for runaway and homeless children is also facing a 50 percent whack.

While the reductions to after-school funding were "hard to bear," Rao said, he recognized that state leaders had worked to preserve these programs, particularly given other cuts that will be made to the state's programs for the needy.

New York faces a situation similar to what many other states are facing, where a substantial budget deficit has resulted in the slashing and, in some cases, dismantling, of social-service programs, many that serve youths. But New York's funding cut proposals are noteworthy, as the state (and New York City) has been a leader in dedicating the dollars and infrastructure to establish quality after-school programs for underprivileged kids.

Approximately 644,000 children, or 21 percent, of New York's children are in after-school programs, most of which are publically supported through four funding streams: the federal 21st Century Learning Community Centers grant program, the state's Advantage After School and Extended School Day/School Violence prevention programs, and other municipal and regional funds, such as New York City's Out-of-School Time initiative, run through the city's Department of Youth and Community Development.

Funding from all sources, along with the state's juvenile-delinquency programs, totaled roughly $274.6 million this past year.

In most cases, schools and districts partner with local community-based organizations or nonprofits to run expanded-learning programs at school sites. Funding via all streams is awarded through grant-application processes, which are similar but with a few differences, primarily with performance targets and accountability requirements. Many program sites blend several public grants, as well as private dollars, to support their after-school programs. Seven regional networks and 107 youth bureaus help with funding and program implementation.

The high levels of participation and satisfaction with these programs put New York on the list of the "Top 10 States for Afterschool," according to the Afterschool Alliance.

However, even with several significant funding sources available, many after-school programs in New York have not been able to secure money or enough of it to operate. During the last grant-application round for the Extended School Day fund, 430 programs applied for funding, and only 90 received it. Funds have also been inequitably distributed across the state, even though some areas have the same level of need, according to several state after-school leaders.

New York after-school stakeholders, including the state education department, are currently working to streamline funding-application protocol as well as to make resources, including infrastructure, program-assessment tools, and organization support services, available consistently and equally statewide.

This week, I will have several blog items on New York after-school programming, with a focus on New York City, which operates the largest municipally financed after-school initiative in the country. Moving forward on the blog, I hope to continue to profile other cities around the country with innovative after-school program models. Be sure to send me suggestions.

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Fight Crime: Invest in Kids, a nonprofit organization of law-enforcement authorities that works to curb youth violence, reports that 3 to 6 p.m. is the peak time for juvenile crime. Studies by independent research groups and organizations like the Afterschool Alliance have shown that good quality after-school programs can often lower the rates of youth crime and delinquency.

Today, NPR's Morning Edition released another story on youth crime in Chicago, part of a report on the Chicago district's efforts to make schools safer in the third-largest district in the country. In today's piece, "Chicago's Silent Watchmen Guard School Route," David Schaper reports on specific measures some Chicago schools are using to amp up security and safety measures to ensure students get out of the building and home safely. Education Week reported on the violence that spurred some of these measures, specifically the 2009 murder of 16-year-old honors student Derrion Albert.

Last year, 700 children in Chicago were hit by gunfire, 66 of whom died, the NPR piece says. None of those acts took place on school grounds. Because of extreme violence in out-of-school-time hours, the district's out-of-school-time safety supports include a recent expansion of its Safe Passage program, which facilitates partnerships with students and their families, the community, and the schools to ensure student safety off campus.

Through the Safe Passage program, the district has spent $5 million on contracts with Community Based Organizations and nonprofits to provide guards along the routes students take to and from school. According to the report, one of these groups is Leave No Veteran Behind, a nonprofit that supports military vets, some of whom are now being hired for $10 an hour to stand sentinel at violence hotspots as students make their way home.

There are no significant numbers yet as to whether the guards and enforcement presence have lowered crime rates in out-of-school-time hours.

The district also offers a number of out-of-school-time programs, including the after-school programs After School Matters and After-School All Stars. New anti-violence efforts have also included mentoring programs, "peace rooms" on campus, and onsite social workers and psychologists.

There are roughly 409,000 students at 675 schools in the Chicago district, 86 percent of whom come from low-income families.

According to Tara Andrews, deputy executive director of policy and programs at the Coalition for Juvenile Justice, federal funding for juvenile-justice and crime-prevention programs nationwide has declined by 50 percent since 2002, resulting in significant cuts to state and local programs. These funding streams helped support localized programs at the discretion of states and municipalities, and given cuts, many have been wiped out completely, Andrews said.

Additionally, the recent congressional continuing resolutions passed last month cut earmarks that support other juvenile-justice and crime-prevention programs and efforts by $91 million, effective immediately, Andrews said. The appropriations bills proposed in the House and Senate could add further cuts of $20 million to $100 million for these earmarked funds, which can be used for one-time monies to jump-start new programs to reduce crime and promote safety for youths.

Posted by Nora Fleming at 2:57 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Hello all. Today, I take over full responsibility for the Beyond School blog here at Education Week. Even though I've been contributing entries on this blog since December, I haven't formally introduced myself.

I come from a family with many members who are involved or have been involved in some facet of education—from state department of education employees to principals to teachers to special education instructors. I myself spent some time working in out-of-school-time programs, as well as serving as a counselor in a school in Los Angeles through AmeriCorps, but most of my work experience and education background have focused on journalism. I worked at several publications, including as a reporter for a local newspaper in California. I ended up covering the school district/education beat for a while and became hooked on writing about education. Because I wanted to pursue a career in writing about education—and Washington is where so many important policy decisions are made—I moved back to the East Coast.

After-school and out-of-school-time policy issues strike a personal note as well. In addition to working in a few programs as a counselor and instructor years ago, with two working parents, I myself attended after-school programs throughout elementary school. I was fortunate to have access to high-quality programs, as well as extracurricular lessons and sports, and many, many summer programs from elementary through high school, such as pre-college programs at universities. But I am aware that many children have not had and do not have that kind of access. Knowing how significantly those out-of-school experiences helped develop my own interests and sense of self as a child and young adult, I feel privileged to explore this topic further on the blog.

And if you can help—with comments, suggestions, you name it —all the better. Feel free to email me at nfleming@epe.org.

Posted by Nora Fleming at 10:36 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Dear Readers,

After nearly a year of blogging for Beyond School, I'm moving on to a new position at Education Week. From here on out, I'll be Ed Week's deputy Commentary (or opinions) editor. I'm going to miss Beyond School as I've met so many great advocates for children in covering this arena, and I'm truly impressed by the creative ways schools and communities are reaching out to kids to inspire learning in nontraditional ways.

But my departure from the blog does not mean Beyond School won't go on. Far from it, in fact. Rather, Nora Fleming, who has been blogging here in recent months and has contributed some great stories, including this one on L.A.'s BEST, will be the new full-time proprietor of this blog. Please contact Nora with story ideas and news. You can reach her by writing to the blog or by sending her an email at nfleming@epe.org.

And, if you have something that you think might make a great addition to Education Week's opinion pages—whether in print or online—please contact me.

It's been a privilege covering the after-school/beyond-school/extended-learning/summer learning community, and I look forward to keeping up with the news through Nora's updates.

Best,
Mary-Ellen Phelps Deily

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Today seems as good a time as any to think about news in the beyond-school world, so here's a wrap-up of a few out-of-school-time headlines:

The Washington Post writes about Lego robotics design and competitions. Such programs are popular in the suburbs, the Post says, but the initiative highlighted in this article involves minority kids from the inner-city—seemingly a new twist and a successful one. Much of the work at this charter school Lego program takes place outside the traditional school day.

Meanwhile, the Boston Globe reports on a grant-funded effort to get kids fitter. The reason the piece makes this blog? Well, meeting all the goals of the program has meant providing certain fitness opportunities, such as an early-morning jump-rope class, before the school day officially starts.

And, in St. Paul, Minn., the mayor has been honored for, among other things, his work on out-of-school-time programming. "Mayor [Chris] Coleman's leadership on education and his commitment to eliminating the achievement gap in our schools is recognized around the country," Barbara Moore, the executive director for Democratic Municipal Officials (the group that recognized Coleman) says in MinnPost.com

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Chicago's Project Exploration is doing a good job of engaging urban, minority students in out-of-school science learning, and the long-term payoff is impressive, a recent study finds.

In "10 Years of Changing the Face of Science: A Retrospective Evaluation," researchers report that Project Exploration—which targets students who may not have been academically successful—has had a positive and significant impact on the 1,000 children the researchers tracked. The study was undertaken by Bernadette Chi and colleagues at the Center for Research, Evaluation and Assessment at the University of California, Berkeley. It was underwritten with funding from the Palo Alto, Calif.-based Noyce Foundation. (To be transparent, Noyce is providing support to Education Week for an upcoming special report on informal learning.)

In a "Lessons Learned" article on the report, Project Exploration co-founder and Executive Director Gabrielle Lyon, notes that 95 percent of the students studied have graduated from high school or are on track to graduate. The percentage is almost double the overall rate for youths in the Chicago public schools, researchers say. In addition, an unusually high number of the students who participated are pursuing science-, technology-, engineering-, and math-related degrees in college.

"Data from the report underlines the link between meaningful experiences in science, technology, engineering and math—known as 'STEM' learning—and the pursuit of science careers," Lyon writes. "The value of Project Exploration programs extends beyond simply exposing students to new ways of understanding science—as important as that is. In fact, the Project Exploration 'youth-science' model keeps students involved with science long after they finish programs."

Researchers also found that the sense of community and "family" that Project Exploration built was noteworthy. The report states that:

• 83% of alumni said they felt part of a special community.


• 95% said they agreed or strongly agreed that "adults showed an interest in my academic success," enabling students to discuss and explore new educational and career opportunities.


• 91% agreed or strongly agreed that Project Exploration had increased their self-confidence—and 89% felt better about their futures because of their experiences.

Lyon writes, however, that, post-research, one question remains unanswered: "Now, with the results of the research report in hand, we must ask a new question: How can Project Exploration's proven model be shared locally and nationally?"

Do you have an answer?

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What is after-school? How do organizations build professionalism in their after-school workforces? Those are among the big questions that the National AfterSchool Association attempts to answer in a new draft platform.

The 21-page draft, which is updated annually, addresses a wide range of topics, including what after-school "is" and what it is not. NAA is accepting public comment on the document now, which the organization's board of directors will likely approve next month.

NAA President and Chief Executive Officer Paul G. Young is heading up the drafting process. The new document represents a compilation of many views on after-school and comes at a time when such definition is needed. After-school "means a lot of things to a lot of people," Young told me in a phone interview. "After-school, first of all, has grown up a lot. It's no longer just babysitting."

According to the draft document, after-school represents "programs which provide an array of safe, supervised, and structured activities for children and youth (grades K-12) that are intentionally designed to encourage learning and social development outside of the typical school day," NAA says.

What after-school is not: "While providing a safe environment for unsupervised children and youth is certainly a worthy goal per se, programs that are unstructured, permit irregular participation, and/or do not measure the quality and impact of their services do not meet the definition of afterschool," the platform states.

The statement also addresses extended learning time. NAA writes that it supports federal efforts to expand on the traditional school day and year, but that such efforts can raise concerns about the diversity and value of after-school programs and community collaboration, among other things.

NAA recommends that any expansion of extended learning be accompanied by policies on local flexibility, community involvement, and "complementary learning strategies" that build on, but don't replicate, what happens during the traditional school day.

On the professionalism front, the NAA platform makes a range of recommendations, including:

• Development of a thorough examination of program needs when hiring new staff.


• Implementation of an in-depth orientation process for all new employees.


• Development of job descriptions that are aligned with the mission and goals of the program and reflect the responsibilities of the job and the skills needed to perform the job well.


• The creation of monitoring, observation, and communication systems that provide feedback leading toward increased job performance and effectiveness.


• Utilization of an evaluation process that is clearly defined and includes ongoing informal and formal opportunities for reflection.

"After-school professionals must willingly and enthusiastically speak in public settings and accept responsibility for leading young people. We must lead our profession. We must step up and become comfortable in the limelight. Positioning ourselves to perform more visibly and in a positive manner will lead to powerful outcomes!" Young wrote.

Meanwhile, also on the professionalism front, the association is conducting a survey to determine what those in the after-school field earn.

The 25-question survey can be found here. The association says the survey "is designed to collect information and data which can be used by our members to compare compensation levels and trends locally, regionally, and nationally."

And, NAA is still soliciting feedback on the draft platform. To comment on it, e-mail Young at pyoung@naaweb.org. For a full list of the committee work on the platform, click here.

Posted by Mary-Ellen Phelps Deily at 12:16 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Holding after-school programs accountable can be a challenge, according to some after-school leaders. Difficulties retaining staff and a lack of concrete assessment objectives have left many programs without the tools to evaluate themselves.

Programs receiving grants from California's After School and Education Safety Program (ASES) are held to some accountability measures that can factor into whether their grants are renewed. The ASES program, which spends $550 million annually supporting after school at 4,000 schools in the state, requires sites to submit the attendance records of participants and some method to evaluate student outcomes, either standardized-test scores or a measure of student-behavior change, homework completion, or skill development.

Because standardized scores are more readily accessible, in the past, most sites have submitted test scores as a measure of student outcomes, said Deborah Lowe Vandell, chair of the education department at University of California, Irvine. But the state department of education is currently supporting efforts to provide sites with other measures to assess the impact ASES programs have had on youths.

Lowe Vandell is now working on a project funded by the state department of education and the David & Lucille Packard Foundation called the California Afterschool Outcome Measures Project (CAOMP). It will assess, through an online data system called the "online toolbox," whether after-school programs have affected student performance and behavior.

Sites can opt to submit student self-surveys or staff or classroom-teacher reports on student performance (or all three) for assessment. The survey questions, which ask, for example, about student persistence, independence, and socialization, were created after reviewing literature on what student behaviors were indicators of improvement that could be influenced by a quality after-school program.

"There are other ways to look at student outcomes other than standardized-test scores," Lowe Vandell said. "As we start to measure additional behaviors consistently and reliably and they are validated against other outcomes we care about, they can help develop a broader array of measurement tools that drive [after-school] programming."

Last fall, the outcome-measures project collected data through the online toolbox from 157 sites, totaling 6,000 students, 4,300 staff members, and 670 teachers. Spring data will be pulled next month, and by summer, programs will be provided overall report assessments on positive/negative changes in their student outcomes over the school year. Sites can see how their assessments stack up against their site peers throughout the state, and use the data to fulfill the accountability requirements requested by the state department. Project leaders hope to open the toolbox to after-school programs nationwide by the fall, though will eventually charge a modest fee for usage.

The California AfterSchool Network, an organization that works to support state after-school programs and favorable out-of-school-time policies, sees a link between student outcomes and the general quality of after-school programs.

Since the rapid expansion of after-school programs in California as a result of the grant program, many new sites have struggled with having the know-how to assess the quality of their programs and improve them, said Jeff Davis, a program coordinator with the California AfterSchool Network. The data currently required for the state department of education examines more general student-performance markers and less program quality components that can lead to improved student outcomes, he added.

With collaboration among state after-school leaders, the California AfterSchool Network has developed an online "Program Quality Self-Assessment Tool" that will help with a staff-directed evaluation process. The tool helps programs assess themselves on 11 criteria they deemed important to deliver a well-rounded program by measuring how well programs are meeting those objectives in tiered levels. Categories include community partnerships, school alignment, staff professional development, diversity and inclusion, and English-learner support.

Most of the criteria evaluators are applicable to after-school programs throughout the country, Davis said, other than the English-learners objective, which is more geographically specific.

Read more about after-school programs in California in my article this week on LA's BEST, a Los Angeles-based after-school organization that receives significant support from the ASES program.

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I was recently out in Los Angeles pursuing the after-school beat for a story on LA's BEST, the largest after-school organization partnered with a school district in the country. The news feature is running in the print edition of EdWeek that's being delivered to mailboxes this week. You can also check out the full story online.

LA's BEST, in its 23rd year of operation, runs after-school programs at 180 sites that serve 28,000 students in the Los Angeles Unified School District, the second largest school district in the country. The program and the leadership of its president, Carla Sanger, were influential in the "movement" in California in the past decade to increase support for after-school programs statewide.

The majority of LA's BEST sites receive state funding through California's After School and Education Safety Program, which supports after-school programs at 4,000 school sites throughout California. The state spends roughly $550 million a year in grants to these programs, the only state in the country to support after-school programming this heavily.

While out in L.A., I visited Kingsley Elementary, a Title I school in Hollywood with roughly 500 students, 100 or so of whom are in the LA's BEST program that runs from the end of the school day till 6 p.m. On the day I visited, students were participating in an art class with a professional artist and a healthy-lifestyles program to combat childhood obesity, and working on science projects for an upcoming science competition.

The Kingsley students follow a curriculum all LA's BEST programs follow called "three and a half beats," which features academic, enrichment, and recreation components, along with a snack. While these staples are present at every site, staff members are able to implement special programming to meet the particular needs/interests of staff and students at their individual sites.

"The structure of the school day doesn't lend more time for exploration or for students to go deeper into something they're interested in," said Debe Loxton, LA's BEST chief operating officer in an interview. "There isn't this page, at this time, or only 20 minutes of art today at LA's BEST. More than anything, the program provides an opportunity for extended learning time for what kids want to explore."

Throughout the week, I'll be delving more into LA's BEST and California after-school programs.

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The big story on after-school programs right now is the federal budget, and all indications are that it's going to be tough sledding on Capitol Hill.

On the Politics K-12 blog, my colleague Alyson Klein reported yesterday on the House's passage of a bill that would keep the federal government running for two more weeks while also cutting $4 billion in spending in the current year's budget. The Senate is expected to pass the measure, as well. She writes:

"The measure also includes significant cuts to education programs that would extend beyond the two-week period, including entirely scrapping the $250 million Striving Readers program, the $88 million Small Learning Communities Program, and the $66 million Even Start program."

I highlight this since Even Start supports family literacy projects, which I see as part of the "Beyond School" world. Reading is Fundamental would also see its funding cut in the measure.

The Afterschool Alliance highlighted the federal spending bill last month, calling for after-school advocates to contact Congress, both about the continuing resolution bill designed to keep the government open and fiscal 2011 funds flowing and next year's fiscal 2012 budget. A GOP plan would cut $100 million from the 21st Century Community Learning Centers program in fiscal 2012. President Obama's spending package would add $100 million to the centers initiative.

"Now is the time to make the case for support and funding of school- and community-based before-school, after-school and summer learning programs that inspire learning, keep kids safe and help working families. Encourage your members of Congress to visit after-school programs, talk to them about after-school, and send an email today in support of after-school programs," the Alliance says.

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