2024-2025 Out-of-School Time Recognition Program Eligibility Requirements

Out-of-School Time Recognition Program

Out-of-school time programs, which take place after the school day or outside of the regular school year, include a wide range of activities, including comprehensive afterschool or summer-learning and enrichment programs, vacation academies, work-based learning programs, youth development programs, and experiential or service-learning programs.

In the Fall of 2023, the U.S. Department of Education designed a Recognition Program for Out-of-School Time Learning, which aims to recognize (1) non-profit organizations working in collaboration with school district/local education agencies (LEAs), (2) city municipalities or local government entities working in collaboration with school district/LEAs or (3) LEAs working in collaboration with non-profit organization or city municipalities that engage K-12 students in high-quality afterschool or summer learning programming. High-quality is defined as meeting students’ social, emotional, mental, and physical health, and academic needs and addressing the impact of COVID-19 on students’ opportunity to learn.

2024-2025 Eligibility Certification

1. All nominated organizations, local education agencies, or municipalities must provide an afterschool and/or summer learning program that has increased its total enrollment by 20%. Afterschool programs should demonstrate a 20% increase of their total enrollment number of K-12 students from SY23-24 to the 2024-2025 school year. Summer learning programs should demonstrate a 20% increase of their total enrollment number of K-12 students from Summer 2023 to Summer 2024.

2. All nominated organizations, local education agencies, or municipalities must serve a group of students that attend elementary, middle, or high schools, which must include at least a portion of students that attend schools with 40% or more students who qualify for the free and reduced lunch program at the beginning of the 2024-2025 academic school year.

3. All nominated organizations, local education agencies, or municipalities must provide high-quality afterschool or summer learning programming with a physical location in one of the 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, American Samoa, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands, the Department of Defense Education Activity, or Tribal Nations Schools.

4. All nominated organizations, local education agencies, or municipalities must leverage a combination of federal, state and/or local funds to expand access to afterschool and summer learning programs for students.

5. To best accelerate learning, afterschool and/or summer learning programs should include evidence-based approaches. Nominated organizations, local education agencies, or municipalities ideally:

   1. target students needing additional support (including using information provided by diagnostic assessments);

   2. have certified teachers delivering the academic instruction and tutoring;

   3. engage students in using experiential learning that could include project-based learning, enrichment, career pathways, and field trips;

   4. implement high-quality tutoring programs; and

   5. implement strategies to support the decrease of chronic absenteeism.