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After-School Programs

After-school programs provide organized and supervised activities for school-age children. The need for after-school programs in the United States emerged because of historical changes in American education and the workforce. Evaluations of programs show that high-quality programs foster positive outcomes in participating students. Current issues with implications for the future include: funding, staff professionalism, and advocacy. After-school programs are commonly defined as structured or unstructured, supervised programs for school-age children conducted before or after school hours. Programs may extend services to other out-of-school times such as evenings, weekends, days when school is closed, school vacations, summer break, teacher institute days, or parent-teacher conference days. Programs may be located in school buildings or in other community facilities that lend themselves to the space requirements necessary for after-school programming.

Program content varies widely and may include: academic support, educational experiences, recreation and sports, life-skills development, and visual and performing arts and crafts. By federal and state statute in the United States, enrollment in after-school programs has to include all children and youth who are eligible to attend public or private schools. Reasonable accommodation must be provided for children and youth in need of special developmental and linguistic services. In other countries, after-school care might be provided through extracurricular activities, test-preparation “cram” schools, or other less-structured activities. After-school programs offer a third space to students, in addition to public spaces of schools and private spaces of homes. These programs take place in a shared social domain between families and schools and could provide different types of care, such as instruction, protection, and containment. While some programs focus on academic enrichment outcomes, others are designed to protect children and youth from harm or to contain their delinquent behaviors.

History

The emergence and growth of after-school programs in the United States was influenced by changes in the American workforce, education, and family structure. Decreasing rates of children's participation in labor, along with increasing educational expectations in the form of compulsory education reform in the late 19th century, shifted children from factories to schools. Rising rates of maternal employment in the 20th century created the need for children to be supervised during after-school hours. Risks associated with children caring for themselves, as in the “latchkey children” who wore their house keys around their necks, and unsafe environments of urban neighborhoods, fueled the demand for supervised and structured after-school programs. Research also pointed out the need for after-school programs in comparison to self-care, which was found to lead to less desirable outcomes in children's academic and social competence.

Federal policies on after-school care facilitated quality program development and implementation throughout the United States. President Nixon vetoed the Comprehensive Child Development Act of 1971, but the Child Care and Development Block Grant, now called the Child Care Development Fund (CCDF), was passed by Congress in 1990. States may choose to use funding from CCDF and Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) Title I funding for after-school care. During the Clinton administration, 21st-Century Community Learning Centers (21CCLCs) legislation was passed to support the development of after-school programs for students from high-poverty and low-performing schools. Even though funding for 21CCLCs was reduced between 2002 and 2007, the annual funding has remained around $1 billion since 2008. The overall annual funding that can be used for after-school programs, including CCDF, ESEA, and 21CCLCs, reaches over $13 billion. Furthermore, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 provided $4.35 billion for the Race to the Top grant over the four years for states to implement educational improvement strategies, including after-school programming.

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