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The Harvard Family Research Project separated from the Harvard Graduate School of Education to become the Global Family Research Project as of January 1, 2017. It is no longer affiliated with Harvard University.
This course will survey various models of community-based services that support students in schools. It will also cover implementation and evaluation of services.
Free. Available online only.
Jane Werner and Lisa Brahms, from the Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh, discuss the Museum’s innovative MAKESHOP studio space, which invites children and families to co-create projects and transforms the traditional museum visit experience.
Abby Weiss and Helen Westmoreland look at the lessons learned from the evolution of Boston Public Schools’ family and community engagement strategy.
How to Develop a Logic Model for Districtwide Family Engagement Strategies, a tool from Harvard Family Research Project, guides school districts to create a logic model that can aid in planning, implementing, assessing, and communicating about their systemic family engagement efforts.
Free. Available online only.
As evidence mounts that family involvement can support children's learning, there is an increasing call in the field for common data collection instruments to measure home–school communication and other aspects of family involvement. This resource from Harvard Family Research Project compiles instruments developed for rigorous program impact evaluations and tested for reliability.
Helen Westmoreland from HFRP discusses how OST programs are using quality assessment tools to evaluate and promote linkages with families, schools, and communities.
Helen Westmoreland, Director of Program Quality for the Flamboyan Foundation—a private family foundation focused on improving educational outcomes for children in Washington, D.C. and Puerto Rico—discusses how foundations and funders can support the development of effective family engagement practices in all schools.
Helen Westmoreland and Suzanne Bouffard describe the evolving evaluation strategy for the national Parental Information and Resource Centers program, the program’s potential to build the family involvement field, and the role of the National PIRC Coordination Center.
We teamed up with the National PTA to bring you this ground-breaking policy brief that examines the role of school districts in promoting family engagement. The brief spotlights how six school districts have used innovative strategies to create and sustain family engagement “systems at work.”
Free. Available online only.
This summit, made possible through a grant from the Nellie Mae Education Foundation, brought together after school staff, administrators, researchers, and funders to discuss how quality assessment looks and feels different for after school programs that serve middle school youth.
Free. Available online only.
Families play important roles in supporting children’s learning not just in school but also in the many out-of-school contexts in which they learn. Harvard Family Research Project’s Helen Westmoreland talks about how families and nonschool learning settings, such as out-of-school time programs, museums, and libraries, can work together to promote student achievement.
Helen Westmoreland of HFRP reviews Only Connect: The Way to Save Our Schools by Rudy Crew.
Professor of Public Administration, Joseph Wholey, explains that contrary to popular thought, it is possible to increase program equity without compromising program efficiency-through performance measurement and management systems.
Caroline Wilkinson and Shelley Billig from RMC Research Corporation describe their evaluation of the New England Professional Development Initiative's cascade approach to professional development in early childhood education.
Interviews with African American mothers of successful high school daughters show that mothers maintain intense interest and direct involvement in multiple aspects of their daughters' educational lives but keep little contact with school officials.
Free. Available online only.
Bruce Wilson and Dick Corbett describe an evaluation of Kentucky’s Commonwealth Institute for Parent Leadership.
With the implementation of welfare reform, government's increasing reliance on block grants rather than categorical funding, increasing devolution of responsibility for service delivery to the state and local level, increasing use of contracted services, and growing budget shortfalls at all levels of government, the social safety net in the United States is undergoing rapid transformation. How well the emerging “system” will protect children and support families is unknown. This course is designed to examine current and proposed child and family policies.
Free. Available online only.
Christopher Wimer reflects on the role youth can play in evaluation.
This Research Update addresses the benefits, challenges, and successful strategies of OST programs for older youth, based on data from eight recent evaluations and research studies profiled in our OST Research and Evaluation Database.
Free. Available online only.
Christopher Wimer from HFRP describes three promising methodological approaches to studying program quality in the OST arena.
This poster examined disadvantage at the family and neighborhood level and their associations with participation in out-of-school time activities. Specifically, the authors demonstrate that neighborhood socioeconomic status (SES) characteristics (i.e., income, education, and employment) mediate the association between family income, parent education, and ethnicity and children's participation in a variety of activities outside of school. Family income and parent education, for example, are positively associated with an increased probability of youth participating in before- and after-school programs, community programs, and community center activities, but this increased probability is explained entirely by the fact that children in higher income and more educated families live in higher SES neighborhoods. Poster session submitted to Society for Research on Adolescence 2006 Bienniel Meeting, San Francisco, CA.
This paper examines whether youth who are at risk, according to child-, family-, school-, and neighborhood-level factors, are less likely to participate in out-of-school time activities, and whether the predictors depend on youth's age or socioeconomic status. Findings reveal that child- and family-level risks are most consistently related to youth's OST participation. However, these relationships emerge only in early and late adolescence, when youth have more autonomy in their decisions about non-school time use. For certain types of activities, namely those that require fees and financial commitments, contextual risks are more strongly associated with OST participation for higher SES families than for lower SES families.
This Snapshot describes instruments used by current out-of-school time programs to evaluate their implementation and outcomes.
Free. Available online only.
This Snapshot reviews the role of technology in OST programs, highlighting the evaluation methods and findings about implementation and youth outcomes.
Free. 8 Pages.
The latest issue in our Research Update series reviews evaluations and research studies that showcase innovations in afterschool programs supported by 21st CCLC funding.