As part of its five-year evaluation of the TASC program, PSA is tracing the implementation of TASC projects to help TASC improve the quality of its program and to document the lessons learned. Some significant Year 2 findings were that:

• Students reported feeling safe, relaxed, happy, and connected to their after-school program. When asked what they especially liked, they mentioned being with their friends, completing their homework before going home, and participating in activities that differed from those of the regular school day.
  
  
• Staff, students, and parents noted a number of improvements in students' social skills, including the ability to maintain self-control, make constructive choices about their behavior, and avoid fights.
  
  
• Parents and teachers said that students who participated in the TASC program had become more positive about school and more confident, especially about their academic ability, and had improved their school attendance.
  
  
• The clear priority of site coordinators and principals was to use after-school time and resources to extend high-quality academic enrichment. The second most popular objective among principals was to offer students sports and recreation and, for site coordinators, to enhance students' social or civic development. According to site coordinators, however, parents' main objective in enrolling children in after-school programs was to help students complete their homework.
  
  
• Among the after-school activities offered, homework help was offered most often and at the highest intensity. According to the evaluation, however, some sites suffered from inadequate homework help because of the limited skills and knowledge of young after-school staff. In Year 2, some coordinators addressed this problem by replacing high school students with more qualified staff, such as additional teachers, adult employees, and volunteers.
  
  
• Site coordinators reported favorably about training and technical resources, with two-thirds describing them as "a good start," and the percentage saying that they had implemented what they had learned in training lessons doubling from the previous year to two-fifths at the time of the study. Most site coordinators reported participating in training outside their projects.
  
  
• The evaluation detected a lack of consensus on how much integration and coordination between the after-school program and the regular school day were desirable and possible. Principals who supported their schools' after-school project offered programming suggestions, made resources available, and generally helped smooth operations. Staff support varied. Some school staff advocated for the program, recommended it to parents, and shared their classrooms, equipment, and expertise with after-school instructors and students; others refused to share classrooms, books, or computers, or rebuffed after-school instructors who tried to build on lessons from the regular school day.
  
  

Executive summary: http://tascorp.org/pages/promising_es2.pdf