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Voices in Urban Education
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Extending Learning
VUE Number 16, Summer 2007
| VUE Home | Archives | Order Print Copy |
Leveling the Playing Field: The Promise of Extended Learning Opportunities and Supports for Youth
By Heidi Harris Lemmel and Robert Rothman
Heidi Harris Lemmel is a senior associate at the Annenberg Institute for School Reform.
> Author's biography
Robert Rothman is a Principal Associate & Editor of VUE at the Annenberg Institute for School Reform.
> Author's biography
There is a growing realization that reaching our goal of ensuring that all young people can graduate from any public high school with competitive, marketable skills will require high-quality educational opportunities both during and beyond the school day. The inequities in educational opportunities in schools have been well documented. But the significant gaps within school-day learning opportunities tell only part of the story. There are larger gaps outside the proverbial schoolhouse in the kinds of supplemental services that are essential for young people to develop the “capital” needed to succeed.
We at the Annenberg Institute for School Reform refer to out-of-school-time and supplemental learning activities as extended learning opportunities and supports (ELOS). This definition speaks to the extensive range of activities and learning experiences in a young person’s life beyond the requirements of the school day and core curriculum. Services and activities range from participating in a book club during school hours to partaking in federally funded after-school programs or a community-operated homework help center. Experiential and other non-academic activities, like urban sailing programs, are also included within the ELOS definition. These opportunities occur in school, during the academic day through events such as internships, or outside of the building after school and during weekend academies, school vacation breaks, and summer recess periods.
High-functioning extended learning activities should promote socially and academically nurturing environments while maintaining the interest and norms of students from diverse cultures. Access to high-quality enrichment activities can narrow the opportunity and achievement gaps by helping students develop a variety of necessary competencies to transition into adulthood and awareness of the larger world around them.
These competencies include not only academic abilities; they also include social competencies that enable young people to succeed in the workforce and society. As the cultural anthropologist Annette Lareau has suggested, concerted strategies employed by middle-income families both at home and during out-of-school activities encourage students to ask questions, negotiate rules, and challenge assumptions. These skills lead students to become active participants in their overall education process.
By contrast, extended learning opportunities available to youths from low-income homes often stem from a deficit model and seek to prevent bad outcomes, rather than develop the social competencies that would enable young people to achieve good outcomes on their own.
Consider the ways that differentiated access to extended learning opportunities play out in two important sectors: college preparation and youth employment. To help in college preparation, the federal government and many private agencies have created programs for low-income youths that provide guidance and other services. However, such programs do not offer the social networks that students from middle-income families are more likely to be part of, which help prepare youths for the transition to higher education.
Similarly, internships offer students learning opportunities and a glimpse into career worlds that after-school jobs available to high school students do not.
What would a high-functioning system look like that provided equitable opportunities and that integrated in-school and extended learning? This issue of Voices in Urban Education suggests some possibilities.
Shirley Brice Heath discusses ways that extended learning opportunities use language as a vehicle to offer students the chance to “focus” their learning.
> Excert
Eileen Landay describes an effort to create a “third space” between children”s worlds in and out of school that links the two in an educative and engaging way.
> Excerpt
Sophia Cohen and Dennie Palmer Wolf show how a documentation of students’ “learning lives” reveals an untapped opportunity to connect mathematical learning in and out of school.
> Excerpt
David Lemmel and Samuel Steinberg Seidel describe an initiative to create alternative high schools that erase the line between in-school and out-ofschool learning.
> Excerpt
Heather Harding, Ned Rimer, and Camrin Fredrick describe an effort to engage a broad set of community volunteers to provide learning opportunities to youths.
> Excerpt
Mayor David N. Cicilline of Providence, Rhode Island, discusses that city’s effort to develop a system to support after-school opportunities for middle school students.
> Full text
These essays show that extending learning helps develop not just academic knowledge and skills, but a broader set of outcomes as well. And they show that creating meaningful opportunities involves a deliberate effort to link schools with community organizations and agencies. Such partnerships are new in many cities.
Fortunately, municipal leaders, educators, and community groups appear eager to develop such partnerships and work together to build systems that support student learning in and out of school. Such efforts are essential if young people are to grow and develop to become engaged citizens and productive adults. But the efforts also recognize, as Mayor Cicilline puts it, that communities have a responsibility for the healthy development of young people. It's time we all took that responsibility seriously.
Archives
Extending Learning
VUE Number 16, Summer 2007
| VUE Home | Archives | Order Print Copy |
Leveling the Playing Field: The Promise of Extended Learning Opportunities and Supports for Youth
By Heidi Harris Lemmel and Robert RothmanHeidi Harris Lemmel is a senior associate at the Annenberg Institute for School Reform.
> Author's biography
Robert Rothman is a Principal Associate & Editor of VUE at the Annenberg Institute for School Reform.
> Author's biography
There is a growing realization that reaching our goal of ensuring that all young people can graduate from any public high school with competitive, marketable skills will require high-quality educational opportunities both during and beyond the school day. The inequities in educational opportunities in schools have been well documented. But the significant gaps within school-day learning opportunities tell only part of the story. There are larger gaps outside the proverbial schoolhouse in the kinds of supplemental services that are essential for young people to develop the “capital” needed to succeed.
We at the Annenberg Institute for School Reform refer to out-of-school-time and supplemental learning activities as extended learning opportunities and supports (ELOS). This definition speaks to the extensive range of activities and learning experiences in a young person’s life beyond the requirements of the school day and core curriculum. Services and activities range from participating in a book club during school hours to partaking in federally funded after-school programs or a community-operated homework help center. Experiential and other non-academic activities, like urban sailing programs, are also included within the ELOS definition. These opportunities occur in school, during the academic day through events such as internships, or outside of the building after school and during weekend academies, school vacation breaks, and summer recess periods.
High-functioning extended learning activities should promote socially and academically nurturing environments while maintaining the interest and norms of students from diverse cultures. Access to high-quality enrichment activities can narrow the opportunity and achievement gaps by helping students develop a variety of necessary competencies to transition into adulthood and awareness of the larger world around them.
These competencies include not only academic abilities; they also include social competencies that enable young people to succeed in the workforce and society. As the cultural anthropologist Annette Lareau has suggested, concerted strategies employed by middle-income families both at home and during out-of-school activities encourage students to ask questions, negotiate rules, and challenge assumptions. These skills lead students to become active participants in their overall education process.
By contrast, extended learning opportunities available to youths from low-income homes often stem from a deficit model and seek to prevent bad outcomes, rather than develop the social competencies that would enable young people to achieve good outcomes on their own.
Consider the ways that differentiated access to extended learning opportunities play out in two important sectors: college preparation and youth employment. To help in college preparation, the federal government and many private agencies have created programs for low-income youths that provide guidance and other services. However, such programs do not offer the social networks that students from middle-income families are more likely to be part of, which help prepare youths for the transition to higher education.
Similarly, internships offer students learning opportunities and a glimpse into career worlds that after-school jobs available to high school students do not.
What would a high-functioning system look like that provided equitable opportunities and that integrated in-school and extended learning? This issue of Voices in Urban Education suggests some possibilities.
Shirley Brice Heath discusses ways that extended learning opportunities use language as a vehicle to offer students the chance to “focus” their learning.
> Excert
Eileen Landay describes an effort to create a “third space” between children”s worlds in and out of school that links the two in an educative and engaging way.
> Excerpt
Sophia Cohen and Dennie Palmer Wolf show how a documentation of students’ “learning lives” reveals an untapped opportunity to connect mathematical learning in and out of school.
> Excerpt
David Lemmel and Samuel Steinberg Seidel describe an initiative to create alternative high schools that erase the line between in-school and out-ofschool learning.
> Excerpt
Heather Harding, Ned Rimer, and Camrin Fredrick describe an effort to engage a broad set of community volunteers to provide learning opportunities to youths.
> Excerpt
Mayor David N. Cicilline of Providence, Rhode Island, discusses that city’s effort to develop a system to support after-school opportunities for middle school students.
> Full text
These essays show that extending learning helps develop not just academic knowledge and skills, but a broader set of outcomes as well. And they show that creating meaningful opportunities involves a deliberate effort to link schools with community organizations and agencies. Such partnerships are new in many cities.
Fortunately, municipal leaders, educators, and community groups appear eager to develop such partnerships and work together to build systems that support student learning in and out of school. Such efforts are essential if young people are to grow and develop to become engaged citizens and productive adults. But the efforts also recognize, as Mayor Cicilline puts it, that communities have a responsibility for the healthy development of young people. It's time we all took that responsibility seriously.
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