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6.1.E. - Page 27 development in the long-term. The findings are aligned with the community school logic�.��u��. «.�� participation influences students' short-term beliefs,which in turn affect their achievement. One important finding is that school context accounts for substantial variation in student outcomes. As the school profiles showed, program offerings and participation patterns vary substantially across schools. This makes it important to engage practitioners familiar with the individual community schools in discussions of these data to make the findings most useful on the ground. In addition, there are underlying school contextual factors in the ways that the community school strategies are implemented, such as programs' recruitment strategies and coordination between service providers, which are difficult to capture in administrative data. These contextual factors, coupled with other school attributes, such as principal turnover or changes in instructional practice at schools, are important to understand the findings presented in this report. Additionally, our data show that engagement in programs in elementary school can help students establish feelings of connectedness and motivation at school and that program engagement in middle school helps to maintain and deepen these feelings. These findings point to the potential for community schools to facilitate successful transitions from elementary to middle school. There is promising research describing how both school structures—such as implementing inter-disciplinary team teaching, flexible scheduling, and advisory periods for studentss—as well as specific adult practices that foster care and motivation�can buffer against the decline in engagement, motivation, and achievement that is typical with the transition to middle school, particularly for at-risk youth. The community schools provide opportunities for positive youth development practices, and the data suggest increasing students' exposure to them will translate into positive outcomes. Therefore, the findings in this report that program participants who are already more strongly motivated and connected at school stress the importance of targeting students who have not developed these positive attitudes. The data show that students' attitudes in after school settings are connected to their attitudes about their school,but also that extended learning and family engagement participants often include students who are already motivated and connected to school. Given this, schools and programs may want to directly reach out to youth who are less connected or motivated at school. For example, research has shown that direct outreach and adapting programs to meet students'needs and schedules becomes increasingly important in middle school.� It will be important to develop ways of identifying the youth who need outreach as traditional demographic factors do not seem to fully describe the profile of students who are disconnected from their schools. Finally, we find that positive youth development practices at community schools are associated with improved academic outcomes. In a pattern consistent with the past two years of analysis, the data show that family engagement plays an important role in student outcomes, particularly in English language development scores for English learners,by increasing students' sense of care, motivation, and confidence 5 Juvonen,J.,Le,V.-N.,Augustine, C., &Constant, L. (2004).Focus on the wonder years: Challenges facing the American middle school.RAND Education. htt�://www.rand.org�ubs/monogra�hs/2004/RAND MG139.�df 6 Strobel,K. (2010).Practices that promote middle school students'motivation and achievement. Stanford,CA:The John W. Gardner Center for Youth and Their Communities at Stanford University. �Lauver,S. (2004).Attracting and sustaining youth participation in after school programs The Evaluation Exchange: Harvard Family Research Project.http://www.hfrp.or�/evaluation/the-evaluation-exchan�e/issue- archive/evalu ating-out-of-school-time-�ro gram-c�ualitv/attracting-and-sustainin�,youth-�artici�ation-in-after- school-�ro r� ams Redwood City Community Schools Evaluation:2010-11 Evaluation Report Page 15