Expanded Learning Time and Opportunities

Expanding the learning day is gaining national momentum as an important school-improvement and whole-child development strategy. This issue focuses on school-community partnerships that provide a seamless, longer learning day that best meets the academic (Expanded Learning Time or ELT) and developmental (Expanded Learning Opportunities or ELO) needs of high-poverty students in resource-poor communities.

First it draws attention to the importance of ELOs and offers contours of the ELT-ELO partnerships through research evidence and policy analysis. It then covers both in practice and features a spectrum of ELT-ELO partnerships, from less to more integrated models. The issue pays close attention to:

• The central role ELOs play in ELT schools
• The changing safeguards for community-based organizations
• Ways in which current education policy is shaping the approach of schools and community partners to learning and development.

This is the 131st volume of New Directions for Youth Development, the Jossey-Bass quarterly report series dedicated to bringing together everyone concerned with helping young people, including scholars, practitioners, and people from different disciplines and professions.