Archived -- Extending Learning Time for Disadvantaged Students, Volume 1; A Willingness to Resolve or Work Around Obstacles

Extending Learning Time for Disadvantaged Students - Volume 1 Summary of Promising Practices - 1995

A r c h i v e d I n f o r m a t i o n

A Willingness To Resolve Or Work Around Obstacles

Extended-time programs for disadvantaged students face many challenges to planning and implementation, including problems with attendance, transportation, staffing, and safety during non-school hours. Many programs have found ways to resolve these problems. In some cases, the very elements that made a program successful--such as active community involvement or administrative partnerships between schools and community agencies or private educational organizations--engendered additional challenges and innovative solutions.

The key to successful implementation is flexibility and continual planning, according to one project director: "While other after-school programs figure out what works and then do it over and over, we keep looking for new projects and new materials to keep students interested. We follow their lead as to what they want to explore."

Building and Maintaining Attendance

Attendance could be a problem for voluntary, academically oriented programs that extend learning time, especially for students who lack transportation or face pressure to find after-school employment. However, none of the programs reported serious difficulties with student attendance. In fact, several programs--including Kids Crew, the Educational Program for Homeless Children and Youth, and Raising Hispanic Academic Achievement--reported difficulty in keeping up with demand. These programs attracted students by offering hands-on activities, enriched learning, flexible timeframes, and other incentives.

Hands-on enrichment activities complement the instruction students receive during the regular school day. These activities emphasize meaning and understanding, which research demonstrates is highly effective for inculcating advanced and basic skills, and engage children more extensively in academic learning.

Another key to maintaining good attendance is flexibility and creativity in handling time conflicts with other activities in which students participate. Some extended-time programs provide students with opportunities to enroll in other extracurricular or academic programs that may occur outside of the regular school day, such as competitive sports or theater productions; others make allowances for the financial and family needs of disadvantaged students. For example:

Omaha's public housing development after-school study centers are open two days a week from 4:30 to 7 p.m., so students who participate in other after-school activities can visit the centers later in the day.
The Summer Institute for At-Risk Migrant Students gives participants stipends to help migrant families offset some of their children's lost potential earnings.
Students who attend intersessions in the Socorro, Texas, school district can attend intersessions at other schools as well as at their home school; teachers help students locate intersessions that focus on their particular interests.
Participants in the TAP summer program receive wages for the 20-25 hours each week they are in the classroom, as well as for the jobs they hold during the afternoon.
Bilingual support staff of the Youth Employment Program for At-risk Students in Indiana visit participants' families to help with housing, employment, health, and education needs that may hinder students' success.

Several programs described here also rely on more traditional incentives to entice students to attend. Volunteers for Raising Hispanic Academic Achievement make more than 400 phone calls each week to maintain contact with tutors and tutees. The Summer Enhancement Program offers pizza parties and ice cream on Fridays for classes with perfect attendance.

Providing Transportation

Transportation can be a barrier to attendance in extended-time programs because disadvantaged students often lack cars, cannot afford public transportation, or live in remote areas. To solve this problem, many extended-time programs are either located within walking distance of most participants, or the program provides bus transportation, often at significant cost. Also, some districts help cover transportation costs. For example, participants in the Program for Homeless Children and Youth in Devil's Lake, North Dakota, receive transportation from a local agency serving troubled families. In other cases (such as the TAP Summer Youth Employment Program), students receive passes to use public transportation to and from the extended-time program sites.

Securing Staffing

The staffing concerns of extended-time programs revolve around two issues: Are there enough qualified staff, and will they stay motivated? One answer to both of these questions appears to be the fairly common and sometimes extensive use of volunteers as managers or instructional staff. Volunteer staff usually offer their services because they believe in--and are willing to devote their time and energies to--the goals of a particular program.

However, most extended-time programs need to pay some staff to oversee the program. For example, Omaha Housing Authority staff coordinate the after-school study centers, which otherwise rely completely on volunteer tutors. Even if funds, supplemented by volunteers, can provide adequate staffing, however, extended-time programs still must grapple with preventing burnout among staff who have other, usually full-time responsibilities during the regular school day, week, or year. Possible solutions include:

Offer frequent and varied staff development opportunities. Options range from annual orientation sessions to monthly workshops on instructional techniques, enrichment and hands-on activities, interpersonal skills, subject-matter expertise, cultural awareness, or special student needs.
Involve instructional staff in planning and managing the extended-time program. Often, committees charged with providing oversight or feedback to an extended-time program evolve from the program's original planning or design committee; members may include teachers, parents, administrators, community members, or students. In the Socorro School District, for example, which has adopted site-based management in each school, a school improvement team guides the development of intersession and regular session activities. The team consists of a teacher from each grade level, parents, community members, administrators, and some students. The team determines the goals and objective for the year; if a school has high writing scores but low performance in reading, the team may focus intersession activities on building reading skills.
Provide staff with as much planning time as possible. Staff at the Title I Summer Program for Private School Children receive as much as an hour and a half of planning time daily.

Ensuring Safety

Whether programs are located in cities, suburbs, small towns, or isolated, rural areas, students must be safe traveling to and from extended-time programs. Often, when participants walk or use public transportation, extended-time program staff maintain contact with parents or guardians to make sure that students do not need to take public transportation alone or after dusk. For example, staff of the Kids Crew program pair students who live close to each other and arrange for older students to walk younger participants home. Raising Hispanic Academic Achievement avoids the night-time safety problem entirely by scheduling its activities on Saturdays.

Additional Challenges Faced by Partnership Programs

Extended-time programs run by or in partnership with community organizations or private educational organizations illustrate additional challenges and solutions. Planners of the programs described here noted problems with coordinating regular school staff, establishing accountability, and dealing with the special needs of at-risk populations.

Coordinating regular school staff. Programs located in a school but managed by non-school staff may have trouble enlisting teacher support or storing materials in the school. Leaders of these programs must make special efforts to fully inform school staff of the nature and goals of the extended-time program. Raising Hispanic Academic Achievement found that disseminating information to tutors and students was difficult when classroom teachers, who did not fully understand the program, failed to respond. In some programs, staff address this problem by meeting with principals and teachers to explain the program and emphasize that it is designed to enrich and expand, rather than replace, effective instruction during the regular school day.
Establishing accountability. Programs run by more than one group must define program "ownership" clearly and early, with specific responsibilities assigned to each partner. At the Summer Program for Homeless Children and Youth, a lack of accountability for specific tasks proved problematic when it was time to evaluate the program; the evaluation consequently was not as extensive as expected.
Meeting the needs of at-risk populations. Staff of extended-time programs run by community agencies may need to deal with social and personal needs faced by at-risk youth, far beyond the educational needs that the programs are designed to address. Staff at the Brooklyn Children's Museum met this challenge by cultivating relationships with community leaders who were active in local counseling and family resource programs, thus permitting the extended-time program to make appropriate referrals rather than trying to provide counseling.
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