This qualitative evaluation of Emory's Oxford Summer Experience Program examined rural students' college aspirations. Educational and economic barriers hinder rural students' college enrollment and degree attainment (Adelman, 2002; Byun, Meece, & Irvin, 2012; Means, Clayton, Conzelmann, Baynes, & Umbach, 2016). Because of these barriers,…

Text Steps was a project piloted by Ascendium Education Group in 2015 and expanded to 13 school districts in Wisconsin between 2018 and 2020. Its goal was to combat summer melt through a texting program. Summer melt, in which college-intending high school students are unable to enroll in the fall for any number of reasons, is a well-documented…

Writing is an important content area that pervades all subject areas and is required for post-school success, yet many students with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) often struggle in written expression. In this article we discuss the characteristics of students with ASD that make writing difficult, and the strengths, such as the use of technology,…

Research evidence suggests that summer breaks contribute to income-based achievement and opportunity gaps for children and youth. However, summertime can also be used to provide programs that support an array of goals for children and youth, including improved academic achievement, physical health, mental health, social and emotional well-being,…

This article describes a service learning project implemented jointly by undergraduate and high school students during summer. The service learning project was designed through a Summer Research Institute hosted at a Midwestern University; the institute encouraged faculty to recruit undergraduate students who would partner with area high school…

In response to requests from out-of-school time (OST) providers, the authors have created this practitioner's guidebook for integrating adolescent literacy development initiatives into a wide variety of OST programs. As readers will discover in subsequent chapters, the authors' definition of adolescent literacy development represents a…