Supporting Student Success

Introduction

Teams of education leaders in Maine, Minnesota, New York, Oregon and Wisconsin each received $50,000 competitive grants to improve afterschool and summer learning opportunities for students through the joint Supporting Student Success: The Promise of Expanded Learning Opportunities initiative.

The Supporting Student Success initiative is made possible with support from the C.S. Mott Foundation. CCSSO, NCSL and the NGA Center will provide technical assistance to state leadership teams throughout the period of June 2009 – December 2010. The leadership teams include state legislators, state education officials, governors' policy advisors, statewide afterschool network directors, and other key stakeholders.

In addition to the funding, grant recipients will receive in-depth consulting services from the three organizations involved in the initiative: the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO), the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL), and the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices (NGA Center).

Read the full press release here.

New York State Project Summary and Goals

The New York State Leadership Team recognizes that expanded learning opportunities (ELOs) – including before- and after-school programs, early childhood education, and weekend and summer learning opportunities – can play a significant role in increasing student achievement and engagement, and in improving high school graduation rates. This is because they typically focus on relevance, participation, choice, and relationships between adults and youth, and support the development of 21st century skills that relate to what students can do rather than the particular knowledge and skills that students possess.

ELOs can complement and/or supplement what happens during the school day, but in order to do so they must link and integrate into the practice of the education system. ELOs can support K-12 education as natural partners to creating pathways for student success and high school graduation by:

• Promoting leadership development through student engagement, service, and/or employment
• Providing safety and supervision for kids, decreasing their risk of being victims or victimizing others, and reducing the incidence of risky behaviors
• Building caring relationships with adults and expanding the network of role models in the lives of youth
• Sustaining and supporting the efforts of effective early childhood and K-12 practice, ranging from reinforcing content to enriching students’ social and emotional development
• Offering high school-aged students opportunities to earn credits and stipends for work in their communities, providing incentives to stay in school

The Supporting Student Success initiative seeks to purposefully link the public education system to ELOs in order to promote multiple pathways to graduation, increase the quality of student experiences, and raise levels of student engagement and graduation rates through:

(1) Coordination: Identify regulatory, funding, and/or legislative opportunities to embed, integrate, and/or coordinate the relationship between ELOs and the K-12 education system

(2) Communication: Explore how to link new notions of time (and how it is used) and learning for students and adults between the school-day and non-school hours by identifying and promoting best practices that focus on dropout prevention and increasing high school graduation rates

(3) Collaboration: Develop new strategies for schools and ELOs to support each others’ efforts to keep students engaged in school and on track to earning a rigorous, standards-based diploma

New York State Supporting Student Success Leadership Team Members

For more information about the Supporting Student Success initiative, the current landscape of ELOs in New York State, and existing initiatives in New York State focused on improving high school graduation rates, or if you’d like to share ideas and/or your work with ELOs, please contact NYSAN’s Director, Sanjiv Rao at srao [at] nysan.org.