ED-2025-SCC-0008-0001 30 Day Comment Responses 7-15-25

Response to comments received for 21^st Century Community Learning Centers Annual Performance Report, Docket ID ED-2025-SCC-0008-0001 during the 60-day public comment period

21^st Century Community Learning Centers: Comment Received on 21APR Form (July 2025)

Comment from Bonnie Houk:

Recommends the program office (a) allows all data (Activities, Staffing, Participation, and Outcomes) to be submitted at the same time so that it may be timelier and more accurate, and (b) considers extending the data collection window.

Response:

While this proposal does not impact the data collection instrument, the U.S. Department of Education will consider this proposal as we plan our implementation of the survey, once we finalize the survey through this current process. We are open to discussing with our grantees, the State educational agencies, the feasibility of extending the data submission window and collecting all grantee and subgrantee data at the same time. This could potentially affect the timing of publication of the Department’s annual report, as more review of the data would occur at the end of the data collection rather than throughout the year.

Comment from Bonnie Houk:

Recommends the program office (a) remove hourly requirements from elementary programs and only have them for HS students, (b) reconsider the use of GPA, and (c) school-day attendance.

Response:

Regarding the first point, the U.S. Department of Education believes that it is important to collect data by the amount of time spent in the program (for both elementary and secondary students) to help evaluate the impact of the programs (which may be impacted by the amount of time the student spends in the program). By using the hourly bands, we capture data for all students attending programs. Since the majority of the programs are provided to elementary students, not collecting the level of participation would undermine the evaluation for the majority of 21^st Century Community Learning Centers subgrantees.

With respect to the second and third points raised, the U.S. Department of Education uses GPA and school-day attendance to provide a more complete picture of the impact of the 21^st Century Community Learning Centers program. If GPA were not included, the primary outcome measure would be improvement on State reading/language arts and mathematics assessments. While State assessment data is an important data point, the data are only available for students with two years of data in grades 4 through 8, which is a small subset of the total population served by this program. GPA is a second valuable, objective data point to evaluate the impact of the 21^st Century Community Learning Centers program. In addition, improvements in school-day attendance is a valuable data element to help the Department, States, subgrantees, and the public evaluation another important goal of the program, improvement in school engagement. In addition, these measures were developed in 2019 after considerable stakeholder discussions with grantees and subgrantees to identify objective measures to evaluate the programs’ impact.

Comment from Bonnie Houk:

Requests a PDF version of subgrantee reported data that is downloadable and captures all of the sections of the 21APR report.

Response:

This option already exists for each State educational agency (SEA). There is a function in the 21APR data collection system in which SEAs can print and save reports and spreadsheets based on data submitted at the center and site-levels. In order to protect the State’s data, access to this functionality is limited to the State-identified “Super User.” This person can download PDF and Excel versions and share with their subgrantees and any other stakeholders as they determine.

Comment from Afterschool Alliance:

Requests (a) timelier release of the 21st CCLC annual performance report, and (b) greater detail of data be included in the 21st CCLC annual performance report.

Response:

The U.S. Department of Education appreciates this comment. We continue to strive to improve the quality, utility, and timeliness of our data. While we appreciate the suggestions to collect and report data on items such as the average number of hours per week, days per week, and weeks per year 21^st CCLC programs were open (hours of operation), the Department has made trade-offs to collect the data necessary to evaluate the impact of the program while not unduly overburdening grantees and subgrantees. For that reason, for example, we do not currently collect information on programmatic expenditures.