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New Mexico 21st Century Community Learning Centers Statewide Evaluation Mid - Year Report
Year Published: 2022
21st Century Community Learning Centers across the state served almost 7,000 students who participated in 396,739 hours of activities during the fall 2021 semester. Almost half (49 percent) of all participants earned a B or better during the first grading period in both math and English/reading. In evaluators’ preliminary findings, they noted that there were, “substantial gains in students’ English/Reading scores” comparing the first two grading periods during the 2021-22 school year.
Program Name: New Mexico 21st Century Community Learning Centers
Program Description:
New Mexico’s 21st Century Community Learning Centers (21st CCLC) program, which receives federal funding through the 21st CCLC initiative, provides afterschool and summer academic enrichment opportunities for children at high-poverty and low-performing schools throughout the state. During the fall 2021 semester, nine grantees operated 118 program sites, serving 6,986 students.
Scope of the Evaluation: Statewide
Program Type: Afterschool
Community Type: Rural, Urban, Suburban
Grade level: Elementary School, Middle School, High School
Program Demographics:
Participants in New Mexico’s 21st CCLC programs are 52 percent female and 47 percent male, and 93 percent qualify for free or reduced-price lunches. When asked to select their ethnicity, 83 percent of students selected Hispanic or Latino. Sixty-five percent of students are White, 4 percent are Native Hawaiian or Pacific, 3 percent are Black or African American, 3 percent are American Indian or Native Alaskan, 1 percent are Asian, 2 percent are more than one race, 18 percent are another race, and 4 percent are unknown.
Program Website: https://webnew.ped.state.nm.us/bureaus/community-schools/21st-century-learning-communities/
Evaluator: New Mexico State University: SOAR Evaluation and Policy Center
Evaluation Methods:
Evaluators partnered with the New Mexico Public Education Department, the entity that oversees and distributes funding to the state’s 21st CCLC programs. Each 21st CCLC site works with a Quality Management Consultant team that ensures they are entering required data, including attendance patterns and grades from the school year which evaluators then analyzed to show progress and impacts of the program for the fall 2021 semester.
Evaluation Type: Non-experimental
Summary of Outcomes:
Evaluators found that throughout the fall semester, almost 7,000 participants were a part of nearly 400,000 hours of various activities in 21st Community Learning Center (21st CCLC) programming throughout the state of New Mexico. Most participants were in pre-kindergarten through 6th grade (83 percent) with the remaining 17 percent in grades 7-12 among the 118 program sites.
When analyzing what activities students participated in the fall semester, evaluators found that the majority of hours were spent participating in academic enrichment (127,334 hours), followed by science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) (100,190 hours), healthy and active lifestyle (56,071 hours), and literacy education (31,186 hours). The activities with the fewest hours were: parenting skills and family literacy (5,521 hours), career competencies and career readiness (3,650 hours), and drug and violence prevention and counseling (3,072).
Another key part of this evaluation was determining participant grades in English/Reading and Math from the first grading period of the fall 2021 semester. Evaluators found that almost half of all participants (49 percent) earned a B or better throughout the first grading period of the semester in both subjects. For English/Reading scores 49 percent earned a B or better in the first grading period. When broken down by gender, the same is true with both male and female participants earning a B or better. The majority of students (50 percent) who qualify for free or reduced-price lunch also earned a B or better. Evaluators analyzed grades from the first and second marking periods, where available, to see improvement in English and Reading scores. Twenty-one percent of fourth graders, 23 percent of 5th graders, 19 percent of 6th graders, 25 percent of 7th graders, and 27 percent of 8th graders improved their scores.
For Math scores, 78 percent earned a B or better. Forty-six percent of male participants earned a B or better, and half of all female students. In terms of ethnicity, 48 percent of Hispanic or Latino students earned a B or better, and 49 percent of students who did not identify as Hispanic or Latino earned a B or better.
