National Center on Afterschool and Summer Enrichment Resource Library

This research brief explores the ways in which typical thinking about leadership focused on individualism, meritocracy, and equal opportunity often contributes to producing and maintaining racialized dynamics. It identifies a set of core competencies associated with leadership that advances racial justice and makes recommendations for effectively supporting racial justice leadership.

The National Center on Afterschool and Summer Enrichment (NCASE) has developed a number of resources focused on supporting the out-of-school time (OST) workforce. This publication, NCASE Workforce Resources, is part of a series compiling NCASE resources on a particular theme for the benefit of state, territory, and tribal Lead Agencies and their designated networks. The goal is to promote professional development and capacity building.

Resources include archived webinars, a practice brief, and the OST Professional Development System Building Toolkit. Questions for reflection and prompts for action steps that organizations can take guide the use of these resources.

Positive outcomes are made possible through school-based and community programs supported by successful partnerships and innovations. Schools and community-based programs, including center-based child care programs and family child care programs, work together to meet the needs of families in their communities.

This practice brief shows how state-level partnerships combined with innovative practices serve to strengthen and coordinate available resources for the benefit of thousands of children and families.  The brief was introduced in a NCASE webinar on February 24, 2021, that included state examples and resources from key Out-of-School Time stakeholders.  You can view the webinar here.

This field guide has been revised for Summer 2021 camps. It includes 14 sections on basics on screening and preventing COVID-19 and a new section on vaccines. It has revised information on testing and non pharmaceutical interventions (NPI) that will still be critical in 2021 given the rate of COVID-19 and the risks from highly contagious variants. There are support videos on key topics like screening for day and overnight camps, cohorts, and NPIs. This resource supports the COVID-19 response.

This webinar series explores tools, tips, strategies, and resources for programs to deliver high-quality virtual programs. The first webinar is called Transforming from Virtual Bleh to Virtual Yeah! It offers a wealth of concrete tips to provide structured and consistent programming, increase student engagement, and battle virtual burnout, plus a review of online tools. The second webinar is Engaging Families Online; it shares resources to engage families such as virtual field trips and scavenger hunts, and ways to support families participating in this virtual learning world. This resource supports the COVID-19 response.  

These social-emotional check-in activities are designed for K-12 students and can be especially helpful in keeping the focus on relationships and social-emotional learning. The activities can be useful in times of distance learning, as well as in-person programs. This resource supports the COVID-19 response.  

This tool provides a four-step process to create a program sustainability plan. It suggests that the program create a team that will: (1) identify sustainability goals, (2) build a financial plan, (3) build capacity to leverage resources and partnerships, and (4) create a long-range strategic plan. It provides guiding questions for each step of the planning process and an action plan. While this process is designed for 21st CCLC programs, it can work for programs with all types of funding sources.  

This report explores early lessons learned from a three-pronged study of cross-sector collaborations for education: historical development of cross-sector collaborations, samples of collaborations, and this summary of comparative case studies. It describes issues of governance, leadership, funding, data use, and outcomes with an in-depth look at collaborations in Buffalo, Milwaukee, and Portland/Multnomah County and five additional locations. Collaborations are showing some early success and will require more time to expand goals and go to scale on successful strategies.  

This report shares evaluation findings from 2017 of the longer-term impacts of a summer learning project in five school districts: Boston, Dallas, Duval County in Florida, Pittsburgh, and Rochester. It explores the effects of two consecutive summers of voluntary, full-day programming for at least 20 days three school years after the second summer of programming. While high attendees performed better on math, language arts, and SEL scores in 2014, the benefits were not statistically significant in 2017, but still educationally meaningful.  

For a short (3 minute) video summary of the report findings by one of the coauthors, see: https://www.wallacefoundation.org/news-and-media/blog/pages/take-a-minute-or-three-for-summer-learning.aspx?utm_source=The+Wallace+Foundation&utm_campaign=1395a79075-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2021_05_05_02_18&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_59ab24ca7b-1395a79075-221150077

This report summarizes survey data collected in 2020, both before and during the pandemic; it is the fourth survey, preceded by findings from 2004, 2009, 2014. There are five major findings: (1) unmet demand is up 60 percent since 2004; (2) demand is surging; (3) barriers like affordability, availability, and transportation block participation; (4) inequities are evident; and (5) support for public funds is strong. Beyond the report, there is also analysis of national and state-level data, a fact sheet, and media resources. A webinar provides a good overview of the findings at http://afterschoolalliance.org/webinars.cfm?ID=6B18D83F-5056-A82E-7AD861E6B597FD23  

For more information on Black communities, see http://afterschoolalliance.org/AA3PM/data/topic/Black%20Communities/overview?utm_source=sendinblue&utm_campaign=AA3PM_Black_and_Latinx_oversample_announcement&utm_medium=email and for more information on Latinx communities see http://afterschoolalliance.org/AA3PM/data/topic/Latinx%20Communities/overview?utm_source=sendinblue&utm_campaign=AA3PM_Black_and_Latinx_oversample_announcement&utm_medium=email

This resource supports the COVID-19 response.