About 21st Century Community Learning Centers

Mission

The 21st Century Community Learning Centers (21st CCLC) programs provide safe and engaging learning environments for students in out-of-school hours. They offer academic enrichment activities, such as tutoring in reading and math, and services that enhance the regular academic program, such as recreation, technology education, counseling and character education. Grantees partner with community groups and schools to support students who attend high-poverty, low-performing schools, through more than 4,800 active grants that fund over 10,000 centers and serve 1.6 million students in 54 states and territories.

History

The 21st CCLC program was established by Congress to award grants to rural and inner-city public schools, or consortia of such schools, to enable them to plan, implement or expand projects that benefit the educational, health, social services, cultural and recreational needs of the community. This U.S. Department of Education program has grown from $40 million in 1998 to almost $1.15 billion in 2014, and it has contributed greatly to the expansion of formal afterschool programming in the United States.

Partners

Policy makers at the U.S. Department of Education rely on information from practitioners and evaluators to plan their next steps in the 21st CCLC program improvement process. State coordinators and key stakeholders suggest a dire need for high-quality, low-cost professional development opportunities. You for Youth, an online professional learning community of interactive, multimedia learning modules with a focus on areas that will most enhance and improve high quality programming, was developed in response to this need.