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December 1, 2002
Vol. 60
No. 4

Promoting Opportunity After School

Partnerships among the public sector, foundations, and community-based organizations can provide enrichment activities for all students.

Promoting Opportunity After School - Thumbnail
Desolate. There's no other way to describe the area around P.S. 130 in the South Bronx. The block across the street presents a depressing checkerboard of occupied houses and boarded-up shells of buildings, burned out long ago. During the day, little activity, commerce, or noise takes place outside—just the occasional rumbling of the subway from the rusty, elevated station nearby. “When Jonathan Kozol writes a book, he comes to our neighborhood,” says principal Daniel Garcia.
Yet on any given afternoon, P.S. 130 and its students are bursting with life. Students fresh from a visit to the Metropolitan Museum of Art diligently create drawings based on what they have seen. In the auditorium, parents look on while their children rehearse choreographed routines taught by a group of dancers sponsored by the New York Knicks basketball team, who visit the school periodically. In the upstairs classrooms, 1st through 5th graders discuss and write essays about the semester's schoolwide theme, “Random Acts of Kindness.”
These activities and many others take place during the school's “Express to Success” after-school program. A local community-based organization called the Citizens' Advice Bureau operates the program with funding from The After-School Corporation (TASC). In the past five years, TASC has funded similar programs in more than 200 public schools in New York City and New York State. After-school programs such as these provide a fundamental means of promoting opportunity and equity for urban students.

The After-School Corporation Model

TASC was established in 1998 through a seven-year, $125 million challenge grant from philanthropist George Soros's Open Society Institute. For every dollar that the institute contributes, TASC must raise three dollars from the public sector, foundations, and other private donors. TASC then grants the money to community-based organizations to run after-school programs in schools. On average, the programs cost $1,500 per child per school year.
  • Programs operate five days a week, from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m.
  • Enrollment is open to all students in all grades in a school.
  • Programs are operated by community-based organizations with roots in the neighborhoods and schools they serve, and they are run year-round by full-time site coordinators.
  • Programs provide students with a nutritious snack, and in many cases a full supper.
  • Each program provides homework help and a variety of enrichment activities, including literacy, math, science, arts, sports, community service, and field trips.
  • Classes have a student-staff ratio of 10 to 1.

An Enriched After-School Environment

When TASC began operation in 1998, the New York City public schools were in the process of implementing higher education standards, placing new emphasis on standardized testing. Principals faced a blunt reality: Many no longer had enough time or resources during the regular school day to promote arts, sports, and other enrichment activities and simultaneously meet the new academic demands placed on their schools. In the quest to achieve one kind of equity, another kind was being lost.
Schools should not have to play this zero-sum game. We should not view well-run after-school programs as nonessential frills, but rather as opportunities to support the academic achievement and social growth of students. Studies around the country have found that time spent in after-school programs can increase test scores, improve student behavior and attitudes toward school, improve rates of student attendance and graduation, enhance family relationships, and reduce such high-risk behavior as drug and alcohol abuse (National Center for Schools and Communities, 1999).
By providing new opportunities, after-school programs can also have a positive impact on student behavior. As P.S. 130 site coordinator Kenn Green says,Every year, I ask the teachers, “Which of the students in our after-school program are the ones who cause problems during the regular day?” Those kids are never a problem in the program. If they fight, they're fighting to take part in the activities.
Finding the resources and funding for such programs does present a challenge. The model developed by TASC, which is replicable in other communities, addresses that challenge by enabling the public sector, foundations, and other donors to partner with community-based organizations to formulate after-school programs that promote the schools' instructional, enrichment, and social goals. This relationship plays out in various ways.

P.S. 106: Focus on Academic Achievement

Although P.S. 106 in Bushwick, Brooklyn, offers students a variety of arts and enrichment activities during the regular school day, the school perennially scored near the bottom on the citywide reading test. During the 1999–2000 school year, it ranked 528th out of 609 elementary schools. So principal Robert Flores and his community partner, Builders of Families and Youth, structured the school's after-school program to emphasize test readiness.
In staff member Haydee Cruz's after-school class, 2nd graders learn phonics, review spelling words, and write in personal journals four out of five days a week. Norma Alicea is a 3rd grade bilingual education teacher during the regular school day. In the after-school program, she works with a subset of students from her class, dividing them into small groups of two and three and assigning them work in the subjects for which they need help.
Most significant, the after-school program employs the school's technology teacher, David Pitre, to conduct computer-based test preparation classes for its 320 students. Each week, students in the program spend 45 to 90 minutes reviewing reading and mathematics using a computer software program. Principal Flores considers the classes a means of promoting equity by narrowing the digital divide: “They're fun for the students. Almost none of them have computers at home.”
The after-school program also offers a traditional variety of arts and recreational activities, but the focus is clearly on academics. The strategy appears to work. After one year, P.S. 106 moved up more than 100 places in the city school district's ranking of elementary school reading performance. In 2001, more than 33 percent of its students met the standard for reading, compared with 26 percent in 2000. The number of students testing far below the standard dropped by a similar —.

The Family Academy: Focus on Enrichment

By contrast, the Family Academy, an alternative K-8 school in East Harlem, uses its after-school program to promote a wide offering of enrichment programs that have little direct connection to standardized testing. One reason is that the school already provides an unusually rigorous literacy and mathematics curriculum during its extended regular school day. But another reason, says school founder David Liben, is that a child's education should serve a broader purpose:What after-school programs should do is increase students' general knowledge of the world. Education is more than just schooling. The more you know, the better a student you'll be.
The 550-student after-school program at the Family Academy focuses on engaging students in enrichment activities that they would not get at school or at home. Students choose “electives” from a diverse menu that includes dozens of classes, such as orchestra, choral music, creative movement, ballet, African dance, Mexican dance, chess, arts and crafts, and language classes in Spanish, Italian, French, and Japanese.
The program also offers a film club, in which students learn how to operate video cameras and use them to interview residents in their neighborhood. The Family Academy also has a partnership with HBO, in which students periodically visit its headquarters to learn about what the company does, to meet with volunteer tutors, and to experience a workplace in action.
Plainly, many of these activities have educational benefits. But the social benefits of the after-school programs are just as important. Mina Fasolo, who coordinates the program at the Family Academy, explains:Because we're so focused on academics during the day, students don't have a real opportunity to socialize and develop ties to one another—to develop a sense of community. Many children have told me that if they just went home, they would be alone, watching TV, being bored. The after-school program provides a venue for the kids to socialize and to have fun in an enriching environment.

Measuring Success, Looking to the Future

Independent research confirms the observations of after-school program site coordinators. In an evaluation of TASC programs during the 2000–2001 school year, more than three-fourths of participating principals said that their programs helped students by improving their motivation, attendance, and attitude toward school; 73 percent said that the programs gave students additional opportunities to develop literacy skills. Students enrolled in the after-school programs also said that they benefited. Across all age groups, high proportions of students said they enjoyed the program, felt academically motivated, and engaged less often in such risky behavior as getting into fights and drinking alcohol (Reisner, Russell, Welsh, Birmingham, & White, 2002).
TASC's efforts so far have attracted significant financial support from the city, state, and federal governments. Over time, we hope to expand this support to make after-school programming a permanent part of our city's educational landscape.
  • Identify community-based organizations that have a long-standing reputation in the community or a history of involvement in the schools. Discuss how an after-school program can address your common goals, such as student literacy and family engagement.
  • Think about how an after-school program will enhance the broad instructional goals of your school. See if your potential partner community-based organization operates any programs that can easily be adapted to meet your school's needs.
  • Consider who can be an ally in securing funding and other resources for your program. In addition to your local and state legislatures, reach out to foundations, the business community, and others who have a stake in seeing your school succeed. Also, reach out to parent groups and other education advocates who can help you lobby for support.
The After-School Corporation regularly sponsors conferences aimed at helping schools and providers develop quality after-school programs. These conferences not only discuss our experiences, but bring together other groups throughout the country, such as LA's Best and Chicago's Gallery 37, that are engaged in similar efforts. Our Web site, www.tascorp.org, also has a section documenting promising practices that we have identified in the after-school programs we support. We encourage you to visit it for ideas on how to develop effective programming in your community.
References

National Center for Schools and Communities. (1999). After-school programs: An analysis of need, current research, and public opinion. New York: Author.

Reisner, E., Russell, C., Welsh, M., Birmingham, J., & White, R. (2002). Supporting quality and scale in after-school services to urban youth (final report). Washington, DC: Policy Studies Associates.

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