This study assesses the impact of five years of community level activities in the Pomona Youth and Family Master Plan (PYFMP) on four school-related risk and protective factors including academic failure, low school commitment, school opportunities for prosocial involvement, and school rewards for prosocial involvement. The intervention and…

In this exploratory study, we describe the learning experiences of adolescents from a social project called "Orquestrando Talentos," which offered violin and viola lessons in two high-needs schools for low-income students in Erechim, Southern Brazil. Grounded on the central tenets of popular education, on Paulo Freire's work, and on…

Parent, school, and community engagement is widely established as a collaborative strategy to improve the school experience and educational outcomes for children and youth (Epstein & Sanders, 2006; SEDL, 2013; Weiss, Lopez, & Rosenberg, 2011; Barr & Saltmarsh, 2014). Consistent with this viewpoint, the Houston Independent School…

The purpose of this report is to demonstrate the power of connecting Children's Savings Account (CSAs) to college access-success programs and show that, when done together, they produce greater outcomes. First, we briefly describe these closely related fields and explain the merit of partnerships between CSA initiatives and college access and…

This evaluation study provides information about the implementation and outcomes of the 21st Century Community Learning Centers (21st CCLC) program in West Virginia, from September 2015 through May 2016, in which 12,388 students participated overall. The report draws on information from online surveys of directors of thirty six 21st CCLC programs…

This study investigates the benefits of no-stakes educational testing during students' summer vacation as a strategy to mitigate summer learning loss. Fifty-one students in Grades 3-8 from the Every Child Valued (ECV) and Lawrence Community Center (LCC) summer programs in Lawrenceville, NJ, took short, online assessments throughout the summer,…

This study evaluated the efficacy of an intentionally brief school-based mentoring program. This academic goal-focused mentoring program was developed through a series of iterative randomized controlled trials, and is informed by research in social cognitive theory, cognitive dissonance theory, motivational interviewing, and research in academic…

The relationship of participation in school, community, and church activities to the academic achievement (i.e., end-of-year school grades) of African American youth in rural low-income communities was examined. Participants included 280 students (177 girls and 103 boys) in the 7th and 8th grades of two public middle schools. Participation in…

This paper reports on a qualitative study which generated detailed case study information about the transition experiences of seven Indigenous students as they moved from Year 7 in their community school to Year 8 in their new urban high school context (Rennie, Wallace, Falk & Wignell 2004). In particular the study aimed to document the literacy…

Although critical ethnographers have explored in some depth the ways that social critique informs how youth assess their schooling experiences, the implications of social critique by educators themselves have been of much less interest. Yet, numerous professional educational movements have been wrought from social critique or, at the very least,…

During the year 2004, 20% of eighth-graders and 60.3% of twelfth-graders reported that they had gotten drunk at least once over the course of just one year, according to the National Institute of Drug Abuse (NIDA). Of the 10.7 million underage youth who drink, 7.2 million or 31% of all high school students binge drink with a frequency of at least…

Data from the National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988 (NELS:88) provides information about critical transitions experienced by students as they leave elementary or middle school and progress through the educational system to the world of work. The Extension NELS study reported here used NELS:88 data for the base year sample of 24,599 eighth…

Project Discovery is a community-based educational intervention program for low income and minority students. It operates outside the traditional public education system. The following projects comprise the program: (1) Project Discovery for ninth to eleventh graders, which is a College Option Orientation program; and (2) Discovery Groups for…