RAND researchers assess voluntary, district-led summer learning programs for low-income, urban elementary students. This third report in a series examines student outcomes after one and two summers of programming.
For children and youth, summertime presents a unique break from the traditional structure, resources, and support systems that exist during the school year. For some students, this time involves opportunities to engage in fun and enriching activities and programs, while others face additional challenges as they lose a variety of supports, including healthy meals, medical care, supervision, and structured programs that enhance development. Children that are limited by their social, economic, or physical environments during the summer months are at higher risk for worse academic, health, social and emotional, and safety outcomes. In contrast, structured summertime activities and programs support basic developmental needs and positive outcomes for children and youth who can access and afford these programs. These discrepancies in summertime experiences exacerbate pre-existing academic inequities. While further research is needed regarding the impact of summertime on developmental domains outside of the academic setting, extensive literature exists regarding the impact of summertime on academic development trajectories. However, this knowledge is not sufficiently applied to policy and practice, and it is important to address these inequalities. Shaping Summertime Experiences examines the impact of summertime experiences on the developmental trajectories of school-age children and youth across four areas of well-being, including academic learning, social and emotional development, physical and mental health, and health-promoting and safety behaviors. It also reviews the state of science and available literature regarding the impact of summertime experiences. In addition, this report provides recommendations to improve the experiences of children over the summertime regarding planning, access and equity, and opportunities for further research and data collection.
Strengthen programs of family and community engagement to promote equity and increase student success! When schools, families, and communities collaborate and share responsibility for students′ education, more students succeed in school. Based on 30 years of research and fieldwork, the fourth edition of the bestseller School, Family, and Community Partnerships: Your Handbook for Action, presents tools and guidelines to help develop more effective and more equitable programs of family and community engagement. Written by a team of well-known experts, it provides a theory and framework of six types of involvement for action; up-to-date research on school, family, and community collaboration; and new materials for professional development and on-going technical assistance. Readers also will find: Examples of best practices on the six types of involvement from preschools, and elementary, middle, and high schools Checklists, templates, and evaluations to plan goal-linked partnership programs and assess progress CD-ROM with slides and notes for two presentations: A new awareness session to orient colleagues on the major components of a research-based partnership program, and a full One-Day Team Training Workshop to prepare school teams to develop their partnership programs. As a foundational text, this handbook demonstrates a proven approach to implement and sustain inclusive, goal-linked programs of partnership. It shows how a good partnership program is an essential component of good school organization and school improvement for student success. This book will help every district and all schools strengthen and continually improve their programs of family and community engagement.
Preparing Principals for a Changing World provides a hands-on resource for creating and implementing effective policies and programs for developing expert school leaders. Written by acclaimed author and educator Linda Darling-Hammond and experts Debra Meyerson, Michelle LaPointe, and Margaret Terry Orr, this important book examines the characteristics of successful educational leadership programs and offers concrete recommendations to improve programs nationwide. In a study funded by the Wallace Foundation, Darling-Hammond and the team examined eight exemplary principal development programs, as well as state policies and principals' experiences across the country. Using the data from the study, they reveal how successful programs are structured, the skills and knowledge participants gain, and what they are able to do in practice as school leaders as a result. What do these exemplary programs have in common? Aggressive recruitment; close ties with schools in the community; on-the-ground training under the wing of expert principals, and a strong emphasis on the cutting-edge theories of instructional and transformational leadership. In addition to highlighting the programs' similarities, the study also explains the differences among the programs and sheds light on the effectiveness of approaches and models from different states and contexts?East, West, North, and South; urban and rural; pre-service and in-service. The authors analyze program outcomes for principals and their schools, including illustrative case studies and educators' voices on the influence of programs' strategies for recruitment, internships, mentoring, and coursework. The ideas and suggestions outlined in Preparing Principals for a Changing World are presented with the goal of increasing the number of highly qualified, thoughtful, and innovative educational leaders.
With today's increasing accountability requirements, developing and sustaining leaders is a major challenge for all educators. Developing Sustainable Leadership brings together eleven outstanding writers to provide insights, frameworks, and ideas on sustaining school leaders and developing values-based leadership to counter existing short-term management solutions. Andy Hargreaves, Dean Fink, Michael Fullan, Brent Davies, Kenneth Leithwood, David Hopkins, Geoff Southworth, Brian Caldwell, Chris Day, Terrence Deal and Gib Hentschke represent some of the most powerful thinkers and writers in the educational leadership field. Their contributions take leadership thinking to the next level, help empower school leaders, and make this book a key source of strategies, insights, and frameworks for anyone involved in sustaining high-quality leadership.
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, the acquisition of skills, and the development of interests. This report is intended to provide practitioners, policymakers, and funders current information about the effectiveness of summer programs designed for children and youth entering grades K-12. Policymakers increasingly expect that the creation of and investment in summer programs will be based on research evidence. Notably, the 2015 Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) directs schools and districts to adopt programs that are supported by research evidence if those programs are funded by specific federal streams. Although summer programs can benefit children and youth who attend, not all programs result in improved outcomes. RAND researchers identified 43 summer programs with positive outcomes that met the top three tiers of ESSA's evidence standards. These programs were identified through an initial literature search of 3,671 citations and a full-text review of 1,360 documents and address academic learning, learning at home, social and emotional well-being, and employment and career outcomes. The authors summarize the evidence and provide detailed information on each of the 43 programs, focusing on the evidence linking summer programs with outcomes and classifying the programs according to the top three evidence tiers (strong, moderate, or promising evidence) consistent with ESSA and subsequent federal regulatory guidance.
Literature cited in AGRICOLA, Dissertations abstracts international, ERIC, ABI/INFORM, MEDLARS, NTIS, Psychological abstracts, and Sociological abstracts. Selection focuses on education, legal aspects, career aspects, sex differences, lifestyle, and health. Common format (bibliographical information, descriptors, and abstracts) and ERIC subject terms used throughout. Contains order information. Subject, author indexes.