- Date
- March 2002
After-school programs are educationally valuable, socially responsible and economically sound and sacrificing them for the sake of cost-cutting would harm communities, children and the workforce, said the March 2002 Ideas paper.
“Funding for after-school programming not only should be kept away from budget cutters; it should be increased substantially as an effective strategy for educating children and creating safe communities,” said Lucy Friedman, president of The After-School Corporation, in her feature Ideas article.
“As educational policy, as community building policy, and as the ultimate investment in youth, after-school programs have already passed every test with the highest scores,” she adds.
According to Friedman, study after study has shown that after-school programs can be crucial for improving children’s experience in school—from attendance and attitude to academic performance and graduation rate.
- A 2001 evaluation of California’s after-school initiative found that over a two-year period, students improved in math and reading tests at twice the rate of all students nationwide;
- Statistics from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention show that juvenile violence and crime jump in after-school hours;
- 1995 U.S. Department of Health and Human Services found that youth were 37 percent more likely to become teen parents if they were not involved in extracurricular activities.
- A recent national poll conducted by Peter D. Hart Research Associates for OSI found that 77 percent of the public supported after-school programs as an important crime prevention tactic.
Americans have expressed a willingness to pay for more after-school programs, understanding the benefits in the long term, the Ideas paper says. A 1999 national poll conducted by the Washington, D.C.-based Fight Crime: Invest in Kids found that 74 percent of those surveyed would support higher taxes or forego a tax cut in order to support such programs.
OSI funds the largest after-school program in New York City. The After-School Corporation (TASC), a non-profit organization, was established by OSI in 1998 to enhance the quality, availability and sustainability of after-school programs of New York City and State and, eventually, across the nation.
Among other education programs funded by OSI are a series of youth initiatives, including the Urban Debate Program, which seeks to support the institutionalization of competitive high school debate in inner city school districts in New York City and around the country, and a national youth media program.