OSI Investment in After-School Programs Led to Dramatic Public Spending Increase, Study Finds

In the decade since the Open Society Institute set out to help New York City institutionalize after-school programs and transform the way they are funded and delivered to the kids who need them, public funding for after-school in New York City has dramatically increased at every level of government: city, state, and federal.

Support for after-school programs has increased from about $23 million in public funding in 1998 to nearly $300 million this year. Eight times more city kids, in kindergarten through high school, now attend daily, comprehensive programs that provide them with educational, cultural, and recreational opportunities than did a decade ago.

These are the conclusions published in a policy brief, "Public Funding for Comprehensive After-School Programs, 1998 to 2008," created by a research team at the Institute for Education and Social Policy at New York University. The brief was produced for The After-School Corporation (TASC), a nonprofit organization established in 1998 with funding from OSI.

TASC set out to develop after-school programs that demonstrably benefit children and youth, with the goal of demonstrating that large numbers of children can be served in high quality programs. TASC has since advocated for after-school and summer programs to be institutionalized as an essential service for kids in the city, state, and nation, with public agencies taking primary responsibility to fund these programs.