Many people figure that teen programs cannot, or should not, involve parents, but this review of evaluation research by the American Youth Policy Form finds that involving adolescents' families can boost success of youth programs. Learn more about effective parent involvement approaches like Beacons New York and Chicago's Child-Parent Center program.

While Head Start primarily serves low-income preschool children ages 3-5, the Early Head Start program serves low-income infants and toddlers (birth to age three) and pregnant women. This brief describes the unique features of the Early Head Start program.

State teams are already trying out different strategies to improve the potential of kinship care for kids who are removed from parents' care--including interviewing children in shelter placements to identify possible relative caregivers in Oklahoma, using a specific form to ask biological parents for information about possible kinship placements at the time of removal in Washington, and having Child Protective Services investigation workers ask parents, "Whom do you call when you need help with your children?" in Utah. (See the document, Kinship Care and the Breakthrough Series Collaborative.)

Analyzing 2000 Census data on poverty, race and class gaps, Harold Hodgkinson warns that too many students are disadvantaged from the start. Poverty puts many young children behind during their earliest years. Hodgkinson argues that kids' invisibility in the lives of adults and in the political process explains why we've cut the elderly poverty in half since the 1970s, while the percentage of children in poverty has grown. Low-income children who need preschool the most are the least likely to be enrolled. In addition to calling for a Governors' Summit, this report calls for full funding for Head Start, quality universal child care, competitive wages for child care providers, and health care resources for all children.

When people who concentrate on the bottom line call for more public investment in early childhood development programs because they offer the greatest economic return for the money, child advocates should pay close attention. This Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis analysis argues that most of the projects and initiatives that state and local governments fund in the name of creating new jobs result in few public benefits, but dollars invested in early childhood yield extraordinary public returns.

Summer programs that provide students with extra instructional time and remedial support can improve their performance, even those with the most to gain, according to this evaluation of Chicago's Summer Bridge program.

State and local budget crunches and an unemployment rate that has many adults taking jobs usually reserved for out-of-school teens have led to the slimmest summer job prospects for teens in decades.

LDOnline has articles and a directory for parents looking for summer opportunities for children with learning disabilities or ADHD.

Testifying before the Senate committee considering funding for the 21st Century Community Learning Centers -- the major federal program for funding after-school programs -- Arnold Schwartzenegger said he used to feel that, "Everybody should pull themselves up by their bootstraps just like I did" but when he toured schools across the country he learned that "not everybody has boots. Many of our children are not getting the same foundation I did as a child."

The National Collaboration for Youth is collecting organizational sign-ons for a letter to urge the Senate to fully fund the 21st Century Community Learning Center after school programs, at the level authorized in the No Child Left Behind act.