The Impact of Afterschool Programs on Personal and Social Skills: Recent Findings from a Scientific Review
A Forum — November 9, 2006
This forum on Capitol Hill discussed the significance for policymakers and practitioners of a new, nationwide review of evaluations of afterschool programs, which concluded that programs using evidence-based skill training had improved not just the school performance of youth, but their personal and social skills as well. Afterschool programs that tried to build personal and social skills without using those approaches failed to do so. Ways to increase the proportion of programs that are successful were suggested by the lead researcher and by the founder of a highly effective afterschool program for older youth in San Francisco.
Joseph A. Durlak, Professor of Psychology at Loyola University Chicago, summarized the methods, findings, and policy implications of the review directed by him and Roger P. Weissberg, Professor of Psychology and Education at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and president of the Collaborative for Academic, Social and Emotional Learning. Their work was funded by the William T. Grant Foundation. The full study will be made available at www.casel.org.
Durlak and Weissberg looked at afterschool programs that (1) include promotion of personal and social skills in their goals or mission statements, (2) serve children between the ages of 5 and 18, (3) operate during at least part of the September-June school year, and (4) take place outside normal school hours. Their national search uncovered more than five dozen published or unpublished evaluations of programs that met those criteria and also used a control group, presented sufficient information for analysis, and measured how the youth changed over time. Sixty percent of the studies appeared between Jan. 1, 2000 and Dec. 31, 2005; most served children in the elementary or middle grades.
“When we looked at all the programs collectively, we saw positive results: The kids in those programs were changing more than kids in the control groups,” Durlak said. The researchers looked at behavioral adjustment, feeling and attitudes, and school performance. Of the eight specific outcomes they examined in those areas, the participants did better than the control group in seven.
Participants outperformed their peers in three measures of behavioral adjustment: more positive social behaviors, less drug use, and fewer other problem behaviors such as non-compliance, stubbornness, regression, delinquency, school expulsions, and suspensions.
Participants’ feelings and attitudes showed more improvement in two specific indicators: self perceptions, such as changes in self-esteem and self confidence, and school bonding, as shown by their attitudes toward school.
They also led in two measures of school performance: school grades and scores on academic achievement tests. But there was no significant difference in the school attendance trends of the two groups.
“The next question is, what kind of programs do a better job – which benefit kids more?” Durlak said. Examining the literature on youth intervention, and comparing it to the information available in the evaluations, Durlak and Weissberg identified four skill-building approaches that the successful programs had in common. Using an acronym to identify the four approaches, Durlak said, “Effective programs are SAFE.” That is, they emphasize “Sequential” activities linked over several days, rather than offering unstructured drop-in opportunities; rely on “Active’’ involvement of youth, rather than passive reception of messages from adults; “Focus” on personal or social skills by setting aside time and elements of the program to work on those skills, and are “Explicit’’ in identifying which skills they expect to develop.
In every program studied that had all four SAFE elements, participants showed more progress than their control group in all or many of the seven areas in which the researchers found positive outcomes. However, Durlak said, “Those programs that used fewer than four of the procedures were not successful in any outcome area.”
“On balance, the findings should reassure those questioning the value of afterschool programs. Programs can benefit kids, and most do,” Durlak said. He and Weissberg recommend that, because their review showed that success depends on strong content, processes and outcomes, afterschool programs “should be accountable for ongoing assessment and continual improvement.”
He concluded, “If there are programs that are not as successful, they need to reassess what they’re doing and strive to do better. Programs that are doing well need to collect better information and share it with the rest of the field.”
Lena Miller, Development Director of Hunters Point Family, said the community-based agency in San Francisco, which she founded, took over Bayview Safe Haven in 2000 and transformed it from a drop-in program for juveniles on probation into a “holistic afterschool program that provides educational, recreational, health, and social services.” It serves youth aged 12 to 21 who have been idling on street corners and “involved in all the things that go on in that kind of area – drug dealing, smoking weed, playing dice, carrying guns.”
Bayview Safe Haven is one of four youth development programs operated by Hunters Point Family in Bayview Hunters Point, an isolated set of neighborhoods in southeastern San Francisco. Bayview Hunters Point is a mix of homes costing more than $500,000 apiece, densely packed public housing developments, small businesses, and churches sitting cheek by jowl with aging industrial facilities. Crisscrossed with truck routes and surrounded by polluted water, the area has two federal Superfund sites and 300 other toxic sites, a power plant, an abandoned Naval ship yard that is being redeveloped for civilian use, and a sewage treatment plant that is nestled between a residential neighborhood and its only community college campus and high school. It is home to 85 percent of the city’s dwindling African-American population; 72 percent of its African-American residents have incomes below the federal poverty level. Unemployment rates in 2005 exceeded 30 percent.
Over half of the youth served by Bayview Safe Haven – including 85 percent of the boys – were either detained in the city’s Youth Guidance Center or on probation in 2003. In 2004, according to youth surveys, 89 percent of the youth said they knew someone who had been shot; 83 percent knew someone who had been killed; 68 percent had beat up, jumped or robbed someone; 53 percent had seen someone get shot; 43 percent had been shot or shot at, and 38 percent had seen someone get killed.
“It’s changed over the years. At one point, 100 percent knew someone who had been killed,” Miller said dryly. However, Miller, who was born, raised, and is still living in Bayview Hunters Point, reported that three weeks previously she had been called by one of the program’s young people, who was “standing over the body of one of our kids, waiting for the police.”
The basic services at Bayview Safe Haven, which serves 50 youth at a time, are case management, educational tutoring, life skills training (which includes not just vocational exploration and team-building, but also practice in non-violent resolution of personal disputes), advocacy for participants in their schools and the juvenile justice system, and outings, which range from Friday night pizza parties to forays to movie theaters in other San Francisco neighborhoods or to Lake Tahoe. In a recent survey commissioned by the agency, 100 percent of the participating youth said they “strongly agree” that they feel like they belong in the program, trust the staff to help in resolving arguments, like the program, get help with school work and get support and encouragement from the staff.
At the time of Miller’s takeover in 2000, Bayview Safe Haven consisted of a bare-walled gymnasium, some cubicle dividers, a few chairs, and one telephone. Innovations since then include a computer lab, a well-decorated lounge, a private conference room, recording and video facilities, gender-specific programs for boys and girls, the ruthless elimination of any skill-building activity in which either the subject or the instructor were failing to keep the youth involved, and giving young people the responsibility for maintaining and updating the agency’s Web site. Two organic farms and a food pantry, as well as community surveys to determine local needs, are also run by youth from the agency’s four programs.
Miller said that until the funding ran out, Bayview Safe Haven also had a therapist to deal with post-traumatic stress disorder and home problems, which are often severe for children who hang out on the streets. She said other policies, such as involving families, and recruiting most of the staff from within the community, partly compensate. “Staff do not correct behavior on behalf of society; they support families under extreme stress to raise their children,” she said.
Bayview Safe Haven has documented many positive outcomes since 2000. Of its 50 original participants, 90 percent graduated from high school. Six are in college; six manage the Bayview Hunters Point Farmers Market, where the produce includes vegetables grown on the agency’s two organic farms; three girls took business development classes and started their own fruit delivery service; six boys have produced two rap albums on their own record label; one youth owns a business providing therapeutic massage; another sits on the city’s youth commission; and the only one who is a mother is fully employed. “Of course, we don’t solve everything,” Miller said, noting that two are in prison after convictions of felonies involving firearms and three are dead.
The afterschool program survives on private and city funds, which have been shrinking. Its full-time employees are a program director, two case managers, and a tutor. Miller said that after applying for, justifying and reporting on one federal grant, which supported creation of the farmer’s market, she decided that state and federal grants consume more time and energy than they are worth for a small, community-based organization. Another problem, she said, is funders who earmark funds for use only with children who have already become entangled in the juvenile justice system. “It’s important to work not just with kids who have been caught, but also with kids who have not been caught or are doing well,’’ Miller said. “If you take away that safety net, you may end up with a lot more kids in jail or doing other destructive things.”
Miller said essential elements of the program include extending hours well into the evening, and locating its four youth programs in four different neighborhoods but having one fully staffed, centrally located administrative hub. She said the links to different neighborhoods help the staff gain the knowledge and trust needed to help resolve arguments that could lead to clashes between young people from rival territories.
Answering questions after the presentation, Durlak and Miller agreed that the demand for high quality afterschool programs, particularly for older youth, far exceeds the supply. Moreover, Miller added, funding can be erratic. “Right now, today, I don’t even know if we’re going to make payroll,” she said. “Nonprofits that work with youth in Hunters Point have been reduced by 50 percent over the last five years. It is hard. It is very hard.”
Resources
Durlak, Joseph A., & Weissberg, Roger P. (2006) The impact of after-school programs that seek to promote personal and social skills. Chicago, IL: The Collaborative for Academic, Social and Emotional Learning (CASEL). To be available at www.casel.org.
Presenter Bios
Joseph A. Durlak, Ph.D., is Professor of Psychology at Loyola University Chicago, where he has previously served as Director of the Doctoral Program in Clinical Psychology. He is an expert on prevention programs for children and adolescents and has written two texts and co-edited a third on the success of prevention programs for young people. He recently collaborated with Dr. Roger P. Weissberg from the University of Illinois on a grant to review the impact of positive youth development programs. A portion of that grant work focused on the impact of afterschool programs.
Lena Miller is Development Director of Hunters Point Family, a community-based organization in San Francisco that operates Bayview Safe Haven and three other youth development programs. Hunters Point Family grew out of GIRLS 2000, a comprehensive afterschool program she founded in 1997 specifically for girls living in Bayview Hunters Point, the neighborhood in San Francisco where she was born and raised. Ms. Miller was the first Executive Director of GIRLS 2000 and Hunters Point Family and the first Program Director for Bayview Safe Haven, a pre-existing afterschool program that the organization took responsibility for in 2000. Since then, Hunters Point Family has also become the umbrella agency for two other youth development programs for low-income African American youth living in Bayview Hunters Point – Peacekeepers and Gilman Clubhouse Rec-Connect. Ms. Miller supported herself through college by working with organizations serving severely emotionally disturbed children, children in special education, and youth involved with the juvenile justice system. She received a bachelor’s degree from the University of California at Berkeley and a master’s in Social Work from San Francisco State University. She was working in the Mayor’s Office of Equity when she started GIRLS 2000 program on her own time.
This brief summarizes an American Youth Policy Forum that took place on November 9, 2006 on Capitol Hill, reported by Andrew Mollison.
The American Youth Policy Forum (AYPF), a nonprofit, nonpartisan professional development organization based in Washington, DC, provides learning opportunities for policy leaders, practitioners, and researchers working on youth and education issues at the national, state, and local levels.
AYPF’s events and policy reports are made possible by the support of a consortium of philanthropic foundations: Carnegie Corporation of New York, GE Foundation, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, WT Grant Foundation, James Irvine Foundation, Lumina Foundation for Education, and others.