Elaine Clanton Harpine: After-School Prevention Programs for At-Risk Students: Promoting Engagement and Academic Success

After-School Prevention Programs for At-Risk Students aims to give a step-by-step framework for creating the most effective after-school program. An after-school program is most successful when it focuses on the individuals’ full beings rather than solely on students’ academic needs. Unfortunately, many programs are not successfully meeting these needs. The goal of the book is not only to raise awareness about this problem but also to convince programmers of after-school programs to recreate their program more successfully. Harpine easily convinces readers about the need for change in after-school programs and why a group-centered interactive approach is best. However, she is less successful in providing readers with the tools needed to implement these ideas. Many of the ideas are excellent in theory and would likely be successful in a program with enough manpower, proper budget, and resources. Unfortunately, many programs will not have what is needed to create and implement her desired model. Still, by detailing what could be effective, the author provides an important and useful resource. Chapter one begins by statistically expressing the problem with existing after-school programs. Nearly 8 million children attend some form of after-school program. The government spends one billion dollars each year to support these programs. Though this seems like a very high number, an estimated 1.4 billion dollars could be saved if 1 % of the male school dropouts graduated. This exemplifies the role that after-school programs could have in lowering criminal justice expenses if created effectively. Unfortunately, research consistently shows that current academic-based after-school programs have not been able to effectively help students achieve academic success or reduce the high school dropout rate. Such statistics easily express the problem with after-school programs. After presenting statistics, the book focuses on how many current after-school programs are run. Presently, many after-school programs measure success through numbers. In essence, if children continue to attend the program, then programs assume that they are successful. Truthfully, many parents use these programs as safe-havens for their children and have no alternative care; so parents are likely to continue to send their children to an ineffective program. Harpine believes that programs should measure success through academic improvement, mental and psychological wellness, and overall wellbeing. In theory, this seems like an excellent idea; however, how feasible is it to accurately measure such specific success on each child? Without explaining how this is done, she offers a specific example about a child who consistently fell behind in a traditional after-school program offering academic help; however, once enrolled in Reading Orienteering Club (a program she designed), the child’s behavior improved and he caught up to his peers academically. The book promises to teach its readers how to design a similar group-centered approach for an after-school program. The book defines several types of approaches and warns users why certain approaches may be ineffective. Emphasizing the ineffectiveness of other approaches is a way to promote the group approach. Group approach is effective for after-school prevention programs because it is good for managing many people, it allows transferrable skills to be taught, and gives children the opportunity to learn from each other. There are many different group formats and they are not all equally effective. For instance, a remedial program focuses on improving a child’s test scores but fails to consider their & Victoria Sauer vjsauer@indiana.edu