What’s Next For After-School?
Expanded Learning Time

Kids spend less than a quarter of their waking hours attending school. A kid who lives on the 20th floor of a Bronx high-rise is still bound by a school schedule created a century ago for families who needed the kids to tend crops.

This coming school year, The After-School Corporation is launching a pilot project in a small group of New York City public schools to expand the learning day or year. Our partners are the New York City Departments of Education and Youth and Community Development, and a group of visionary principals and community partners devoted to bringing more resources to schools and creating new possibilities for kids just beginning to discover their talents and passions.

Time has finally caught up to the outmoded school calendar, and a national movement to expand and re-think the school day has achieved lift-off on a gust of common sense. It’s clear that if we ever hope to close the achievement and opportunity gaps between kids, we’ve got to expand learning beyond 3 PM and, for many kids, into the summer.

Some of our most thoughtful elected leaders and philanthropists are proponents of expanding learning time, including Bill Gates, Eli Broad and Sen. Edward M. Kennedy. Reform-minded educational leaders in states such as Massachusetts and cities such as New Orleans are expanding learning hours in chronically low-performing schools. One-third of charter schools are estimated to extend learning hours beyond the traditional schedule. Here in New York State, the Buffalo and Rochester school districts are looking at new state aid to fund a longer day and year for selected students. In fact, we expect that across New York State this year, about $80 million in new state aid will be directed to expanding kids’ “time on task.”

Beyond common sense, compelling research is driving this movement, much of it generated by the out-of-school-time field. First, the case for summer: evidence suggests that two-thirds of the achievement gap can be explained by the differences in summer learning opportunities between disadvantaged and more affluent kids, according to the Center for Summer Learning at Johns Hopkins University. And after reviewing a decade’s worth of after-school research, The Harvard Family Research Project recently concluded that high-quality, well-implemented programs benefit children in documented ways, including their academic achievement. The common thread among successful programs was “not just that the programs intentionally tried to improve academic performance and therefore offered academic support,” the researchers wrote, “but that they combined it with other enrichment activities to achieve positive academic outcomes.”

It’s essential for the after-school field to be a full partner in the “ELT” movement. It’s not enough for us to react, or simply to point out that we already perform many of the functions ELT initiatives are designed to accomplish, within the same time frame.

This is a game-changing opportunity to expand the universe of kids who have access to high quality activities and enrichments during hours when the alternative for many is to be home alone with a game controller and a bag of chips. For those of us who believe that the best place to operate an after-school program is in school itself, this is an opportunity to achieve our longstanding goal of aligning the after-school program with the school day, so that everyone who works with a kid is working together toward the same goals.

The ELT movement is perceived by some after-school providers as potentially diverting public funds, political support, children and space away from after-school programs operated by community-based organizations. There are some who would prefer to keep intact the separation between school-day activities that are focused on academics and run by principals, and after-school activities run by CBOs.

We say that this is a big field. There is room for many excellent program models. But it would be disastrous to let ELT take shape without community organizations’ full and enthusiastic participation. At TASC, we are concerned that if the after-school field is not an equal partner in using school time more expansively and effectively, then extended hours could be too narrowly conceived to promote academics and test preparation at the expense of the enrichments that help kids learn in multiple ways and stoke their enthusiasm for learning. The worst case scenario is that kids who struggle the most would face a soul-stifling all-remediation-and-no-fun extension of school time, while kids on track to meet state standards would still grow and progress through dance and debate.

As decisions are made on expanding learning time, we must be at the table to help principals and others envision how rich and varied activities can support, not impede their academic goals. That is why organizations including the Collaborative for Building After-School Systems, a partnership of TASC and after-school intermediaries in six other localities including Boston and Chicago, are calling for ELT and after-school proponents to work together. We need to develop policy recommendations that incorporate the best elements of time-on-task and youth development approaches for the benefit of children and families.

And so this fall, in a three-year demonstration project that TASC is managing, about 10 New York City public schools will expand learning time by at least 30 percent for at least half the kids in each participating school (or no fewer than 300 kids, depending on the school’s size). Each school will partner with a community organization to develop and staff the longer day or year.  Enrichment activities could be offered at any time during the day or year, not just between the hours of 3 and 6.

We began this three-year demonstration project last winter, when we invited New York City schools that serve kids in grades K-to-8 to apply. Some 26 principals, each of whom worked with a lead community partner, shared with us their impressively diverse visions for how they would enrich their kids’ learning lives. Together with DOE and DYCD, we selected 13 schools to move to the current phase, an intensive planning process that will last into August. In teams that include the principal, a senior staff member from the community organization and at least one teacher and one parent, each school is creating a unique plan for its students. Some are working to extend the day, others to add both school-year and summer programming.

ELT/NYC programs differ from the norm in that they specifically aim to improve the academic achievement of kids, while also supporting their healthy and well-rounded development. A key departure from traditional TASC-model programs is that all the existing and new resources for expanded-hours programming will be organized under the leadership of the principal. Typically TASC has supported, and continues to support after-school programs that CBOs operate inside schools. TASC estimates the annual cost-per-student will be approximately $1,600, with the cost of summer programs likely to be higher.

The key to the success of this project will be a rigorous multi-year evaluation. We intend this initiative to promote strategic change in school and community culture by broadening the criteria for student and school success in the 21st century beyond core literacy and math skills. As we consider the range of metrics we will use to determine the benefits of providing kids with expanded learning to develop 21st century skills, we are considering outcomes related to students’ problem-solving, team work, perseverance and communication skills and attitudes.

In this way, we hope this demonstration project will help shape the structure and content of reform efforts that seek to close the achievement gap, and the opportunity gap, through a longer school day and year.

Lucy N. Friedman is the President of
The After-School Corporation (TASC).