What is the Path Forward for Supporting Afterschool and Summer Programs for Youth?

In case you missed it, Senior Policy Analyst Joseph Gavrilovich was a guest blogger for the DC Fiscal Policy Institute (DCFPI) earlier this week:

The DC Council should act this budget season to ensure resources will be available for afterschool and summer programs for low-income students, following the recent news that the DC Trust will be dissolved due to financial mismanagement and other problems. For over a decade, the Trust has served to distribute funds from DC government for these important programs run by community-based organizations. 

The collapse of the Trust raises a question that affects the lives of thousands of DC kids: Without the DC Trust, what is the path forward for funding youth development in the District? For the coming year, a short-term solution makes sense. A group of youth-serving organizations recommends allowing a local foundation to allocate the $4.9 million in the Mayor’s fiscal year (FY) 2017 budget for community-based afterschool and summer programming. This will give the Mayor and DC Council a year to work with community stakeholders to develop a permanent solution.

To read the rest of his blog, please visit DCFPI's site. 

Summer Learning Loss: How Communities Are Reversing the Trend

 

In her June 19 Summer Learning Day message, First Lady Michelle Obama thanked communities for their summertime investments in youth: “Summer shouldn’t just be a vacation. Instead, it should be a time to get ahead, to branch out and learn new skills, to have new experiences…and for anyone who’s fallen behind, it’s a time to catch up on lessons they missed.”

Research shows that summers without quality learning opportunities put our nation’s youth at risk for falling behind – year after year – in core subjects like math and reading. These losses over the summer are cumulative and contribute significantly to the achievement gap between lower- and higher-income kids.

At the National Summer Learning Association (NSLA), we continue to develop and provide resources around strengthening and expanding summer learning programs in communities. With the support of the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, our new report, Accelerating Achievement Through Summer Learning is an essential resource for program providers, education leaders, policymakers, and funders who are making important decisions around summer learning programs as a way to accelerate student achievement.

The report profiles thirteen diverse, replicable summer learning program models and demonstrates how these programs address a variety of K-12 education priorities to deliver strong outcomes for children, youth, and educators. As described in the report, we know a lot about the power of summer learning for students and teachers.

• Summer learning programs can erase early reading deficits. More than 80 percent of low-income youth in this country are not proficient in reading by the end of third grade, making them more than four times as likely to drop out of high school as their peers to who reach this critical benchmark. K-3 summer learning programs have been shown not only to mitigate summer learning losses in reading in the early grades, but to accelerate skill development to get young people up to grade level by third grade.

• High-quality summer learning programs level the college and career playing field. Alarming data on the skilled workforce pipeline and need for remedial coursework in two- and four-year colleges have created a national sense of urgency around work-embedded learning, apprenticeships and college preparation programs, particularly for first-generation attenders. Summer youth employment programs are proving critical to keeping students productively engaged and learning, making meaningful contributions to their community, learning valuable job skills, and exploring potential careers.

• Pre-service and in-service teachers want to make the most of their summers. Quality teaching is consistently linked to successfully closing achievement gaps, but most teachers today have between one and two years of experience. Summer learning programs are an increasingly likely place to find the kinds of pipelines into and through the teaching profession that are working. Offering training, mentorship, leadership, and ownership of their work, community-based programs give new teachers additional time to hone their skills, refine lesson plans, and build deeper relationships with students.

Many kinds of high-quality learning opportunities during the summer can make a difference in stemming learning loss. These opportunities can be voluntary or mandatory, at school, community organizations, or even at home. And we know that “quality” is well-defined and rooted in research. A major study from the RAND Corporation shows that individualized academic instruction, parental involvement, and smaller class sizes are a few components of high-quality programs that produce positive results for young people. The “Best Practices in Summer Learning for Middle and High School Youth” resource from NSLA and the New York Life Foundation is an online guide in text and video offering effective ways of engaging older youth in summer learning.

Across the country, NSLA is seeing many states and cities embrace summer learning as a key strategy in helping their students make measurable academic progress.  We hope that if you haven’t already, you will take the pledge to keep kids learning and place your program on our interactive map. Together, we can ensure that students have the opportunity to engage in meaningful learning all year long.

Rachel Gwaltney is the Director of Policy and Partnerships for the National Summer Learning Association (NSLA). She leads development and implementation of services, projects, and partnerships that strengthen summer learning policy and build capacity of state and national leaders and organizations. Learn more about DCAYA's fantastic partner, the National Summer Learning Association, at www.summerlearning.org. And consider attending their Summer Changes Everything annual conference, October 12-14 in Baltimore, MD.

Budget Cuts to DC Afterschool Programs

It’s that time of year again: The DCAYA team brings you our analysis of the newly released DC budget.

This year, we’re going to split our analysis into two sections. Part 1, today’s blog, will focus on cuts in the DCPS afterschool budget. Next week, Part 2 ,will focus on our concerns related to older youth services and system level investments.

**To preface, this analysis is in its working stages. We are actively tracking down greater details about the budget. Nonetheless, we have identified some clear areas of concern that we did not want to delay in getting out to parents, service providers, and other community partners. I strongly encourage you to continue to visit our blog, Twitter, Facebook and website for updates as the budget analysis process continues.

Concern regarding Afterschool Funding:

Overview:

Just last year, DC ranked #2 in the country for having the best afterschool programs. Over 7,200 students were enrolled in afterschool programs and  DCPS stated its commitment to universal access to afterschool programming. Why? Afterschool programs, or expanded learning opportunities, have been shown to improve academic, social/emotional , health and safety aspects of students’ lives. Working parents, particularly for those with younger children and limited income, need afterschool programs for economic stability and the safety of their children.

Yet, after examining the budget documents for the upcoming year, which were released April 2, we know with certainty that broad, deep funding cuts will result in thousands of students not being able to attend afterschool programs next year, unless Council makes immediate changes to the budget.

Afterschool Programs For The Win!

In DC, 35% of children and youth participate in afterschool programs, while 66% would participate if a program was available. This week, we have a special guest blog from WNBA assistant couch Eric Thibault who witnesses firsthand the transformative power of sports on a young person's social, mental, and physical development. Eric is a DCAYA "Afterschool Champ" for his advocacy in expanding access to afterschool sports programs for DC girls.

The blog 'tips off' DCAYA's eBay auction for the "Ivory Latta Experience". The highest bidder will practice their backswing with basketball star Ivory Latta at the Top Golf  driving range. Along with spending quality one-on-one time with a WNBA athlete, the lucky winner will receive a signed Latta jersey and mini basketball. All proceeds will go toward DCAYA's work in expanding access to quality afterschool and summer programs for all District youth. 

Enter Your Bid for the "Ivory Latta Experience"

 
As an assistant coach for the WNBA’s Washington Mystics, I’m very lucky to have sports pay the bills. But before basketball was ever my profession, it was what I looked forward to every day: at recess, on Saturday mornings, and after school let out in the afternoon. While basketball has stuck with me and become a central part of my life, it was never the only after-school activity to grab my attention. Baseball, soccer, tennis, golf, band, creative writing, math club – I can point to each of these experiences as having a key part to play in my social, mental, and physical development.

Learning to be a valuable part of a team is an essential and irreplaceable component of growing up, and one that is most readily accomplished through sports. Among countless other lessons, playing sports taught me how to handle winning and losing, to pursue and achieve both personal and group goals, to relate to others with different backgrounds, viewpoints and abilities than myself, to sacrifice for the good of a group, and how to handle myself in pressure-filled situations. When I was in graduate school, a classmate expressed frustration with one of our sports management group projects. Our professor, with a laugh but clearly not joking, told him to “get used to it – life is a long string of group projects.” The professor was completely right; whether you are a coach, a teacher, a chemist, a musician, an administrator, or a politician, there’s no substitute for learning how to interact and succeed within a group of varying opinions and attributes. Almost without fail, the people in that class that grew up playing team sports adapted more quickly to the tasks at hand than those who lacked that experience.

In a more immediate sense, after-school activities directly improve the quality of life for kids. Sports help with nutrition and combat obesity, a growing problem in our country. Art and music are backed by endless amounts of research that indicates they improve academic performance. After-school programs of all kinds can help keep kids living in high-crime or poverty-stricken areas from falling into more dangerous situations. On a personal level, I know I learned arithmetic from studying basketball stat sheets and understood geometry more easily with the help of passing angles. Understanding how to curve a golf shot went hand in hand with physics class. Playing the drums in the band showed me the importance of getting on the same page with my peers in those interminable group projects.

Above all, the part of my sports experience for which I’m most grateful was the opportunity to establish relationships with people I would not otherwise have befriended. When I was 13 years old and in middle school (a mostly-white, upper-middle class middle school), I played on a predominantly black basketball team. Some players came from money, some did not. Some had two parents at home, some had one, some had none. The thing that we all had in common was a love for basketball, and that bridge allowed us to move past any awkwardness and get to know each other as individual human beings. When you get to spend that quality time around people from different backgrounds, it shapes how you see the world. You start to see the world in shades of gray, and move away from lazy stereotypes. It’s one thing for your parents to explain tolerance, it’s another to learn it on a day-to-day basis. I have no doubt that our society would be a more accepting place if more people had similar opportunities at age 13, or younger. Being part of a sports team, school band, or debate club offers an environment where that becomes a natural consequence, where kids develop attitudes and habits that will serve them well for the rest of their lives.

Who's your #AfterschoolChamp? Tell us on Twitter from March 25 - April 1 for a chance to win a "DCAYA Afterschool Champ Badge"!

To read more about youth issues in DC you can FOLLOW us on Twitter, LIKE us on Facebook and VISIT us at www.dc-aya.org.

Expanding Our Approach to Education

Photo Courtesy of Beacon House

Education is a top issue in DC. There are constant debates around truancy, graduation rates, charter schools, credit attainment, assessment scores, teacher supports, community involvement, student engagement, and the list goes on. DCAYA focuses on one educational topic at the heart of these debates: Expanded Learning.

To give context, the Expanded Learning Model adds time to the school day by partnering schools with community-based providers (CBOs). These partnerships enhance the curriculum by bringing enrichment activities, led by CBOs, into the classroom to compliment the traditional school subjects taught by teachers. The partnership also allows teachers to spend more time planning the curriculum and engaging in professional development opportunities, while CBOs are working in the classroom with the students. DCAYA supports this model because it is a win-win situation for everyone: CBOs enhance the school climate, students are offered personalized and hands-on learning experiences, and teachers have extra time to plan and grade work without feeling overwhelmed and/or burnt out by the longer school day.

See all of the benefits of an Expanded Learning Model in DCAYA’s latest one-pager:

Expanded Learning Issue Brief

So what would it take for DC to adopt the Expanded Learning Model?

DC currently has certain pieces in place to smoothly transition schools into an Expanded Learning framework: a high-concentration of quality community-based providers, extended days for certain schools, and the infrastructure to facilitate community collaboration. In fact, DC already has an example of a functioning and thriving Expanded Learning Model at Kelly Miller Middle School through their partnership with Higher Achievement.

However, in order for DC to scale the model responsibly and successfully, District-wide data must be collected on afterschool and summer programming to fully understand the landscape. Both the Children and Youth Investment Trust Corporation (DC Trust) and DC Public Schools (DCPS) are in a position to collaborate and gather such data, which would allow the District to begin building a strategy to connect schools with CBOs. The data would also be used to assess students current limitations and access to afterschool and summer programming and ensure that at-risk students are receiving ample educational supports.

To further understand the Expanded Learning Model and DCAYA’s 2015 policy asks, be sure to read the one-pager and reach out to our policy analyst Katie Dunn at katie@dc-aya.org for more information on testifying at DC Council hearings.

In addition to educating the public and policymakers about the benefits of an Expanded Learning Model, DCAYA is also advocating to protect current afterschool and summer programming. In the coming weeks, look out for another #LightsOnAfterschool social media campaign to ensure that Trust grantees receive full funding for their summer programs. 

To read more about youth issues in DC you can FOLLOW us on Twitter, LIKE us on Facebook and VISIT us at www.dc-aya.org.