Defining out of school time:

What are out-of-school time programs?

Out-of-school time initiatives include before, afterschool and weekend programs; summer learning opportunities; service learning; mentoring and internships. They are formal and structured opportunities for school-aged youth that can complement the regular school day. They are most often provided by schools, community and faith-based groups, youth-serving organizations, cultural institutions, and city/state agencies.

What are the goals of out-of-school time programs?

Out-of-school time program goals and content can vary considerably, but generally most programs seek to engage youth and provide learning, enrichment, and leadership opportunities designed to support their academic success and overall development.

ABOUT THIS TOOLKIT

United Way believes that an educated citizenry that has the skills needed for the evolving workforce is the foundation of a strong, globally competitive economy. Yet, too many students still fail to graduate high school on time. To address this challenge, United Way has set an ambitious national education goal of cutting the dropout rate in half by the year 2018 and is mobilizing individuals, communities, and organizations across America to work collectively so that more students graduate high school prepared for college and career.

Out-of-School Time and Student Success

United Way views high-quality out-of-school programs as one important support — as part of a broad array of wrap-around supports— to achieve our national goal of cutting the high school drop-out rate in half and preparing every young person for success in life. Participation in high-quality out-of-school time programs helps to improve student work-study habits, homework completion rates, and course grades. Participation in quality programs also helps to increase student engagement and school connectedness, increases in self-esteem, improved relationships with peers and adults, and declines in negative, risk-taking behavior. Increased student engagement and performance in school can help to improve overall educational attainment. United Way believes that increasing access to engaging, relevant, and high-quality out-of-school time activities, especially for at-risk middle and high school students, will ultimately help to increase high school graduation rates.

Strengthening Out-of-School Time

The potential of out-of-school can only be realized when children and youth who need them have access to quality programs that reflect their needs and interests. United Ways and their partners can strengthen the out-of-school time field by adopting a systemic approach to improving out-of-school time quality, access, sustainability, data collection and evaluation, and alignment and coordination rather than piecemeal approaches focused on individual programs or funding streams. The toolkit and learning modules build on and leverage the work of previous United Way out-of-school time grantees - particularly their lessons learned, tools, and resources developed as part of the work in their communities:

Use the learning modules to assess your United Way and community’s progress in developing an out-of-school system, and to learn how to develop and deepen your work in key areas like engaging stakeholders, strengthening quality, using data, etc.

Use the basic toolkit to connect with general guidance, tools, templates, and additional resources related to developing and deepening an out-of-school time system. Click here for a description of toolkit contents.

This toolkit was developed with the generous support of jcpenney.