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Voices in Urban Education
Extending Learning
VUE Number 16, Summer 2007
| Order Print Copy | Table of Contents | Author's Bio |
The Providence After School Alliance
By David N. Cicilline
David N. Cicilline is mayor of Providence, Rhode Island.
> Author's biography
By coordinating and expanding after-school programs, Providence, Rhode Island, is extending the time the community is responsible for the healthy upbringing of its youth.
In his first campaign for mayor of Providence, Rhode Island, in 2002, David N. Cicilline promised to strengthen opportunities for youths to participate in high-quality after-school learning activities. He made good on that promise shortly after he was elected. With funding from the Wallace Foundation and Bank of America, Mayor Cicilline created the Providence After School Alliance (PASA) to establish quality standards, build the capacity of recreation centers, and create neighborhood hubs that would enable young people to gain access to affordable, high-quality services.
Currently, PASA serves 1,000 middle school students in five “after zones” around the city. The organization has plans to expand participation by middle school students and create similar opportunities for older and younger children. Mayor Cicilline spoke with VUE editor Robert Rothman about enhancing out-of-school-time opportunities for young people.
Q: Why did you decide to focus on after school?
Listen to audio clip 1 with transcript
CICILLINE: When I first ran for mayor four and a half years ago, during the course of the campaign I heard from many parents and many young people about the lack of opportunities in out-of-school time, particularly in after-school time. And I really heard from people about how they were concerned that there were not worthwhile, enriching things for young people to do after school.
Just as I got elected and, actually, during the transition before I took office, the Wallace Foundation announced an initiative called Learning in Communities, which was intended to help a city design a system of high-quality out-ofschool- time programming — not to fund a particular existing program, but to really organize and implement a systemwide, citywide set of programs and to really lead a systems change, versus just an investment in existing programs. They were originally looking at three cities — the Bronx, Pittsburgh, and Providence — and, after a long deliberation and an appearance before their board in New York City, they ultimately decided to start this work in one city, and they picked Providence.
A child who goes to school every single day, who has perfect attendance, still spends most of his time out of school, and to not make maximum use of that resource was a big mistake.
And there was very little quality programming, particularly for middle school youth, available in the city at that time.
So I saw this as an opportunity to create a sense of community responsibility for the healthy development of our kids, a way to extend learning opportunities, a way to improve the safety of young people in the city, and a way to support the rapid acceleration of student achievement by leveraging out-ofschool time to support the work that was being done in school. So that’s what brought my attention to the issue.
Top
Extending Collective Responsibility — Not Just the School Day
Q: There’s a lot of interest now in extending the school day, particularly for low-performing students. Is after school a way to extend the school day by other means?
Listen to audio clip 2 with transcript
CICILLINE: I’ve avoided using the term “extending the school day” because I think it’s more than that. I think there is no question we have to develop ways to extend instruction time and time on task, in the classroom, with a teacher. There is no question about that.
But we also have to extend the day for which the community is responsible for the healthy development of our kids, from earlier in the morning before they begin school to five or six o’clock at night when they go home for dinner. And that is in additional academic programs, it’s in additional recreational activities, and it’s in different highquality out-of-school-time programs.
I think this is a very powerful way
to begin to change the culture in which
we think about our responsibility to
kids. Right now, in American public
education, the way we think about our
responsibility as educators or as school
systems is from eight in the morning to
two or three in the afternoon, whatever
the school day is. But I really believe
that it is about extending the day or the
time period for which we are collectively
responsible for kids, and out-of-school
time is one important piece.
The particular value in Providence has been that we have been successful in bringing substantial resources to this work — obviously, from the Wallace Foundation, from Bank of America, from many partners — so that it is not relying on the school district and the traditional sources of educational funding to support this additional time for kids.
But I think it is about changing the whole way we think about our community and our city and our local government and about state and federal government’s responsibility for the healthy development of our kids. And it is certainly a way to begin to change attitudes about out-of-school time. Unfortunately, people still think of after-school programs as a nice luxury — it would be great to have if you could do it, but it’s not a core responsibility of a community or of a city government — but I think it is.
Q: How would you characterize the state of after school in Providence now, and how does that compare with where you’d like it to be?
Listen to audio clip 3 with transcript
CICILLINE: We have a system in place that’s fully operational as it relates to middle schools.We have five “after zones” that are up and running, that are ensuring that children have access to very highquality after-school programs, free of charge, in every single area of the city. We’ve divided the city into five after zones, which are really campuses, and we’ve connected a middle school and a public library and a rec center and several other facilities so that kids in that neighborhood belong to a whole network of activities. And there’s a transportation system designed to accommodate their ability to move from the library to the rec center to their school or whatever.
So, if you go to an after zone on
any given day, there’s dance and music
and poetry and boxing and a homework
club and everything else in
between. It’s really exciting to see the
kids involved in so many different kinds
of activities and to see what a difference
it’s making in their lives.We have
more than a thousand kids participating.
So we’re in the early stages of a
full program.
It’s my hope that it will eventually reach as many middle school kids as are interested in participating, and then we’ll begin to look at how we create the same kind of opportunities for our high school students and our elementary school students.
Top
Partnerships: Sustaining a Model After-School System
We have a really strong system, with very good quality standards and with lots of partners — hundreds of partners — that are doing the work. So I think it’s among the best in the nation. The challenge we face, of course, is how we sustain it. Because, having built this great model that’s being recognized around the country as a really excellent model, we have to now develop, and we have begun to develop, a system to sustain it over the long term.
Q: What sort of partnerships do you need to realize this vision?
Listen to audio clip 4 with transcript
CICILLINE: In the city of Providence, where the mayor has the ability to appoint the superintendent and the police chief and the director of recreation, we began the development of this model with a certain amount of advantage that many communities that don’t have that strong-mayor form of government don’t have. So the steering committee for PASA [the Providence After School Alliance] has on it the superintendent of schools, the director of the department of recreation, the police chief, and other important leaders in the city, so that everyone is a partner in terms of the organization of city government, and everyone understands the connection between reducing crime and healthy recreational activities and school and PASA.
It’s really about the entire community coming together in a collaborative way to promote the healthy development of our kids.
But we have wonderful local partners who provide after-school programming here — the Boys & Girls Clubs, the YMCA, the Providence Public Library, City Arts, City Year, New Urban Arts, karate organizations, football, Little Leagues.We have lots of great local partners.
We also now are developing national partnerships. The United States Tennis Association just formed a partnership with PASA. They’ll be providing coaches and equipment and sets of programs in each of the after zones, which are the campuses where all of this is occurring, to introduce kids in urban areas to tennis. So we are always looking for new partners.
We have great partnerships with our universities — with Brown, with Johnson & Wales, with Rhode Island School of Design, with Providence College — that are really actively supporting the work of their after zones in a variety of ways.We’ll be expanding that to our hospitals, to other nonprofits, to the business community.
The partnership possibilities in this PASA model are limitless. It’s really about the entire community coming together — to work together in a collaborative way to promote the healthy development of our kids.
Top
The Goal: Healthy Development along with Academic Achievement
Q: If you’re successful, what kinds of outcomes do you expect to see for youth?
Listen to audio clip 5 with transcript
CICILLINE: I think there are two categories. One is, of course, some measurable improvement in attendance, graduation rates, and student achievement. There are lots of opportunities to align some part of the after-school programming to the academic needs of students, so we’ll be looking at outcomes that demonstrate improvements in those areas.
But equally important, and one area that’s not always underscored, is to also ignite the passion and interest of young people in civics and art and music and dance and good, healthy physical exercise — all of the things that contribute to the healthy development of young people into productive, contributing, engaged citizens of our democracy.
It’s very important, I believe, when you talk about extending or changing the way we think about our responsibility to young people in our city, that it not be viewed too narrowly. There’s such an emphasis on scores and academic achievement, which is incredibly important as our kids compete in the global economy, and we want them to be competitive and be prepared to enter the workforce or go to college. There’s no question that’s very, very important. But equally important is that we’re raising young people to be good citizens and artists and to appreciate art and to be good musicians and to appreciate the beauty of music and to be physically healthy and appreciate the value of good exercise.
So, after-school programs or outof- school time are particularly important, I think, in this post–No Child Left Behind era, when so many districts have been required to squeeze out of their school day — in the light of declining resources and increasing accountability and standards in academics — to shift their focus so much on the core academics and raising achievement there that some of the other art and music and recreation is being squeezed out of the day for kids. I think the role of out-of-school time is not to replace — because that should continue to be the responsibility in the public schools — but to supplement those areas so that they can continue to be important and even become more important in the education of our kids.
So, I think it’s very important that the outcomes focus on both of those sets of priorities.
Extending Learning
VUE Number 16, Summer 2007
| Order Print Copy | Table of Contents | Author's Bio |
The Providence After School Alliance
By David N. Cicilline
David N. Cicilline is mayor of Providence, Rhode Island.
> Author's biography
By coordinating and expanding after-school programs, Providence, Rhode Island, is extending the time the community is responsible for the healthy upbringing of its youth.
In his first campaign for mayor of Providence, Rhode Island, in 2002, David N. Cicilline promised to strengthen opportunities for youths to participate in high-quality after-school learning activities. He made good on that promise shortly after he was elected. With funding from the Wallace Foundation and Bank of America, Mayor Cicilline created the Providence After School Alliance (PASA) to establish quality standards, build the capacity of recreation centers, and create neighborhood hubs that would enable young people to gain access to affordable, high-quality services.
Currently, PASA serves 1,000 middle school students in five “after zones” around the city. The organization has plans to expand participation by middle school students and create similar opportunities for older and younger children. Mayor Cicilline spoke with VUE editor Robert Rothman about enhancing out-of-school-time opportunities for young people.
Q: Why did you decide to focus on after school?
Listen to audio clip 1 with transcript
CICILLINE: When I first ran for mayor four and a half years ago, during the course of the campaign I heard from many parents and many young people about the lack of opportunities in out-of-school time, particularly in after-school time. And I really heard from people about how they were concerned that there were not worthwhile, enriching things for young people to do after school.
Just as I got elected and, actually, during the transition before I took office, the Wallace Foundation announced an initiative called Learning in Communities, which was intended to help a city design a system of high-quality out-ofschool- time programming — not to fund a particular existing program, but to really organize and implement a systemwide, citywide set of programs and to really lead a systems change, versus just an investment in existing programs. They were originally looking at three cities — the Bronx, Pittsburgh, and Providence — and, after a long deliberation and an appearance before their board in New York City, they ultimately decided to start this work in one city, and they picked Providence.
A child who goes to school every single day, who has perfect attendance, still spends most of his time out of school, and to not make maximum use of that resource was a big mistake.
And there was very little quality programming, particularly for middle school youth, available in the city at that time.
So I saw this as an opportunity to create a sense of community responsibility for the healthy development of our kids, a way to extend learning opportunities, a way to improve the safety of young people in the city, and a way to support the rapid acceleration of student achievement by leveraging out-ofschool time to support the work that was being done in school. So that’s what brought my attention to the issue.
Extending Collective Responsibility — Not Just the School Day
Q: There’s a lot of interest now in extending the school day, particularly for low-performing students. Is after school a way to extend the school day by other means?
Listen to audio clip 2 with transcript
CICILLINE: I’ve avoided using the term “extending the school day” because I think it’s more than that. I think there is no question we have to develop ways to extend instruction time and time on task, in the classroom, with a teacher. There is no question about that.
But we also have to extend the day for which the community is responsible for the healthy development of our kids, from earlier in the morning before they begin school to five or six o’clock at night when they go home for dinner. And that is in additional academic programs, it’s in additional recreational activities, and it’s in different highquality out-of-school-time programs.
I think this is a very powerful way
to begin to change the culture in which
we think about our responsibility to
kids. Right now, in American public
education, the way we think about our
responsibility as educators or as school
systems is from eight in the morning to
two or three in the afternoon, whatever
the school day is. But I really believe
that it is about extending the day or the
time period for which we are collectively
responsible for kids, and out-of-school
time is one important piece.
The particular value in Providence has been that we have been successful in bringing substantial resources to this work — obviously, from the Wallace Foundation, from Bank of America, from many partners — so that it is not relying on the school district and the traditional sources of educational funding to support this additional time for kids.
But I think it is about changing the whole way we think about our community and our city and our local government and about state and federal government’s responsibility for the healthy development of our kids. And it is certainly a way to begin to change attitudes about out-of-school time. Unfortunately, people still think of after-school programs as a nice luxury — it would be great to have if you could do it, but it’s not a core responsibility of a community or of a city government — but I think it is.
Q: How would you characterize the state of after school in Providence now, and how does that compare with where you’d like it to be?
Listen to audio clip 3 with transcript
CICILLINE: We have a system in place that’s fully operational as it relates to middle schools.We have five “after zones” that are up and running, that are ensuring that children have access to very highquality after-school programs, free of charge, in every single area of the city. We’ve divided the city into five after zones, which are really campuses, and we’ve connected a middle school and a public library and a rec center and several other facilities so that kids in that neighborhood belong to a whole network of activities. And there’s a transportation system designed to accommodate their ability to move from the library to the rec center to their school or whatever.
So, if you go to an after zone on
any given day, there’s dance and music
and poetry and boxing and a homework
club and everything else in
between. It’s really exciting to see the
kids involved in so many different kinds
of activities and to see what a difference
it’s making in their lives.We have
more than a thousand kids participating.
So we’re in the early stages of a
full program.
It’s my hope that it will eventually reach as many middle school kids as are interested in participating, and then we’ll begin to look at how we create the same kind of opportunities for our high school students and our elementary school students.
Partnerships: Sustaining a Model After-School System
We have a really strong system, with very good quality standards and with lots of partners — hundreds of partners — that are doing the work. So I think it’s among the best in the nation. The challenge we face, of course, is how we sustain it. Because, having built this great model that’s being recognized around the country as a really excellent model, we have to now develop, and we have begun to develop, a system to sustain it over the long term.
Q: What sort of partnerships do you need to realize this vision?
Listen to audio clip 4 with transcript
CICILLINE: In the city of Providence, where the mayor has the ability to appoint the superintendent and the police chief and the director of recreation, we began the development of this model with a certain amount of advantage that many communities that don’t have that strong-mayor form of government don’t have. So the steering committee for PASA [the Providence After School Alliance] has on it the superintendent of schools, the director of the department of recreation, the police chief, and other important leaders in the city, so that everyone is a partner in terms of the organization of city government, and everyone understands the connection between reducing crime and healthy recreational activities and school and PASA.
It’s really about the entire community coming together in a collaborative way to promote the healthy development of our kids.
But we have wonderful local partners who provide after-school programming here — the Boys & Girls Clubs, the YMCA, the Providence Public Library, City Arts, City Year, New Urban Arts, karate organizations, football, Little Leagues.We have lots of great local partners.
We also now are developing national partnerships. The United States Tennis Association just formed a partnership with PASA. They’ll be providing coaches and equipment and sets of programs in each of the after zones, which are the campuses where all of this is occurring, to introduce kids in urban areas to tennis. So we are always looking for new partners.
We have great partnerships with our universities — with Brown, with Johnson & Wales, with Rhode Island School of Design, with Providence College — that are really actively supporting the work of their after zones in a variety of ways.We’ll be expanding that to our hospitals, to other nonprofits, to the business community.
The partnership possibilities in this PASA model are limitless. It’s really about the entire community coming together — to work together in a collaborative way to promote the healthy development of our kids.
The Goal: Healthy Development along with Academic Achievement
Q: If you’re successful, what kinds of outcomes do you expect to see for youth?
Listen to audio clip 5 with transcript
CICILLINE: I think there are two categories. One is, of course, some measurable improvement in attendance, graduation rates, and student achievement. There are lots of opportunities to align some part of the after-school programming to the academic needs of students, so we’ll be looking at outcomes that demonstrate improvements in those areas.
But equally important, and one area that’s not always underscored, is to also ignite the passion and interest of young people in civics and art and music and dance and good, healthy physical exercise — all of the things that contribute to the healthy development of young people into productive, contributing, engaged citizens of our democracy.
It’s very important, I believe, when you talk about extending or changing the way we think about our responsibility to young people in our city, that it not be viewed too narrowly. There’s such an emphasis on scores and academic achievement, which is incredibly important as our kids compete in the global economy, and we want them to be competitive and be prepared to enter the workforce or go to college. There’s no question that’s very, very important. But equally important is that we’re raising young people to be good citizens and artists and to appreciate art and to be good musicians and to appreciate the beauty of music and to be physically healthy and appreciate the value of good exercise.
So, after-school programs or outof- school time are particularly important, I think, in this post–No Child Left Behind era, when so many districts have been required to squeeze out of their school day — in the light of declining resources and increasing accountability and standards in academics — to shift their focus so much on the core academics and raising achievement there that some of the other art and music and recreation is being squeezed out of the day for kids. I think the role of out-of-school time is not to replace — because that should continue to be the responsibility in the public schools — but to supplement those areas so that they can continue to be important and even become more important in the education of our kids.
So, I think it’s very important that the outcomes focus on both of those sets of priorities.
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