Expanded Learning Time and Opportunities. New Directions for Youth Development, Number 131

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…