The ways today's students spend their late afternoon hours are about as varied as the kids themselves. Some go home to the care and supervision of a parent or guardian; others are actively engaged in organized extracurricular activities such as sports and clubs. Many high school students have part-time jobs.

For too many students, however, after-school hours are spent just "hanging out"--participating in the kind of unstructured activities that increase the risk of poor grades, truancy, substance abuse and other destructive behaviors. There are an estimated 15 million "latchkey kids" nationwide--children who are home alone after school while parents or other caregivers are at work.

Schools, community organizations and other advocates for children and families increasingly are stepping in to give students an alternative to isolation and idleness--organized, well-staffed after-school and extended-day programs.

With students being asked to pass high-stakes tests and meet tougher academic standards, educators see after-school programs as another important way to raise the achievement level of students, particularly those who are struggling and need the extra help.

After-school programs also give students a chance to make new friends and feel more connected with the school they attend. Kids who are isolated and idle sometimes exhibit behavior that ranges from inappropriate to dangerous. Giving students more opportunities to bond with classmates and other students may help avert tragedies like those in Littleton, Colo., and Santee, Calif.

Support for after-school programs is on the rise, and it's broad-based-- cutting across political, ethnic and regional lines, says the Afterschool Alliance, a partnership of public, private and nonprofit groups committed to expanding resources for after-school programs. A poll released last year by the alliance shows that nine in 10 registered voters surveyed say there should be some type of daily organized learning activity or place for children to go after school. Sixty-two percent of the respondents say they would be willing to pay more state taxes to allow every child to attend an after-school program.

The three after-school programs profiled here--in New York City, Baltimore and Los Angeles--are not only keeping kids out of harm's way but also raising academic achievement, boosting parent involvement and forging stronger community ties.

The NYC program

Students in the after-school program at P.S. 129 in Harlem, N.Y., are making some hard choices. They have to select their activities from a list of after-school offerings that's as wide as it is long. There are dance and drama classes for budding artists; a co-ed basketball team for aspiring athletes; a newsletter that needs reporters. There are chess and cheerleading and a gospel choir that has become a centerpiece of the program's activities.

"We try to give kids a chance to do something different from what they're doing during the regular school day," explains Beverly Brumell, director of the Harlem elementary school's after-school program. Brumell believes that, regardless of the activity they choose, students will either tap into talents they didn't know they had or acquire new and valuable skills that could lead to other opportunities. Some students, she says, will benefit simply from the chance to interact and work with other children and adults.

"The most important thing to the parents of these kids is that their child is in a safe and productive environment," Brumell says.

Before they can participate in dance, sports or any of the other extracurricular activities the after-school program offers, students are expected to finish their homework and take part in academic exercises designed to strengthen their literacy skills. It's an aspect of the program that appeals to parents, school administrators and faculty alike. "The primary way we support the school is by helping kids--particularly the first- and second-graders--with their reading and writing," Brumell says.

With its sharp focus on honing students' literacy skills, the after-school program is contributing to efforts to improve the academic skills of P.S. 129 students. The after-school program has hired a literacy specialist who meets regularly with teachers to develop plans for individual students. "We consider what we do an extension of what's being stressed during the school day," Brumell says.

In its second year of operation, the program teams P.S. 129 with the Harlem Dowling West Side Center for Children and Family Services. Together, they applied for and secured a grant from The After-School Corporation (TASC) to start the program.

The mix of academics, cultural enrichment and sports available at P.S. 129 are essential ingredients of a quality after-school program, TASC president Lucy Friedman says. She believes the best after-school programs strike a balance among activities. "We need to make sure kids have an opportunity for physical activity and artistic expression as well as academics," Friedman says.

Established in 1998, TASC says its ultimate goal is "to promote sustainable universal after-school programming as a public responsibility throughout the United States." With the support of major funding from George Soros's Open Society Institute, along with the city of New York, the state, the federal 21st Century Community Learning Centers program and the private sector, TASC has provided grants to start after-school programs at 145 New York City public schools.

Friedman fears that, in the absence of such programs, many kids will remain isolated and left to their own devices. "At best, these students would be at home watching TV after school, and at worst, they would be finding trouble or trouble would be finding them," she says.

The level of cooperation and coordination between the school and community organization is one of the things TASC looks at when judging the merits of a grant proposal, Friedman notes. "We take a close look at the relationship between the school and the community organization because we really want this to be a joint program."

The Harlem Dowling West Side Center for Children and Family Services, which runs after-school programs in two other New York City schools, had since 1987 operated an after-school program at P.S. 129 for about 50 students from a nearby homeless center. Thanks to the TASC grant, the community organization and P.S. 129 have been able to expand their after-school program so that today it is regularly attended by nearly half of the school's 680 students--at no charge.

A combination of classroom teachers, paraprofessionals, parents, college students, community artists and employees of the community organization staff most of the city's after-school programs. "One of the things that has made the program popular with many classroom teachers is that they can do something different in the after-school program, like teach drama or chorus," Friedman says.

Schools report that their after-school programs have done wonders to boost parents' involvement. Principals and teachers, Friedman says, have found that the best time to connect with parents is when they pick their kids up at 6 p.m., or attend performances, science fairs, art exhibitions or other events sponsored by the program.

The TASC president says a number of the school/community organization partnerships her organization funds are eager to expand their programs to include the summer months, a period in which many students lose some of the academic gains they've made. "Several of [the partnerships] have already used their after-school program as a bridge to run summer programs funded by the board of education," Friedman says.

A look at LA's BEST

Those looking for evidence on the impact of after-school programs need look no further than a recent study of Los Angeles's after-school enrichment program called LA's BEST (Better Educated Students for Tomorrow). Conducted by the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), the survey tracked second- through fifth-grade students enrolled in the program over a four-year period. Not surprisingly, it found that those students with the highest level of participation in the program had better standardized test scores in mathematics, reading and language arts, and lower absenteeism than their nonparticipating classmates.

"There is now statistical proof that the academic performance of children participating in LA's BEST improves," Los Angeles superintendent of schools Roy Romer notes in LA's BEST 1999-2000 annual report. "They become more interested in school. They thrive in an after-school environment that is fun and engaging and are highly receptive to tutoring and encouragement." The district's goal, Romer says, should be to ensure that in the next five years all elementary and middle schools have programs like LA's BEST.

Established in 1988, LA's BEST serves children ages 5 to 12. Today, more than 13,000 children at 76 sites are enrolled in the after-school program. One of these sites is Esperanza Elementary School, where homework help, field trips, cultural and recreational enrichment activities are enjoyed by the 240 students who have signed on.

Gabriela Sanchez, site coordinator for Esperanza's after-school program, is a teacher assistant during the regular school day. There is a good deal of coordination between the regular school and the after-school program, she says. "Classroom teachers will come to me during the school day and talk about the needs of a particular student in the program," Sanchez says. "We'll try to come up with something we can do with that student after school that will reinforce what's being taught in the classroom."

In addition, the school's principal and teachers often refer students to the program for the extra help it can offer, Sanchez points out. "They've seen the kind of impact we're having with the children because it shows up in their behavior and test scores."

At Esperanza, it's not unusual to see students and their parents attend the after-school program. That's because the program also fills a critical need for adults in the community, most of whom have very limited English-speaking skills. "Whenever parents have to deal with an application or a letter that they can't read, they come to us for help," explains Sanchez.

This relationship has made it easier for the after-school program to reach out and involve parents, she adds. "They recognize that we're providing a service to them and to their children, and they show their appreciation by helping out where they can."

Programs like LA's BEST, which targets students from low-income families, are especially important to these children, who are at greater risk of falling prey to bad influences because they often lack the support systems available to children from more affluent families.

"This [program] is something very special for our community," says Sanchez. Most of the families in the low-income neighborhood that Esperanza students come from couldn't afford to take their kids on some of the field trips that they go on with the after-school program, she says.

The Baltimore experience

Improved reading comprehension, higher standardized test scores and better school attendance and class preparation have administrators and teachers at Baltimore's Collington Square Elementary School convinced that their after-school program is having a positive impact on students. But what better measure of success do they have than the reaction of the children who spend an extra three hours a day at school, three times a week?

With unbridled enthusiasm, fifth-graders Maurice Wright and Ivory Brown declare that the program is "fun." Wright likes the field trips. Brown likes the reading group. For that matter, there is nothing about the program--academic, cultural or recreational--that does not solicit a buoyant response from the two.

The program is part of Collington's formula for ensuring academic success among its student population, which consists of predominantly African-American preK-5 children who are all Title I eligible. Collington administrators and teachers believe that bringing the school into the lives of members of the community--beyond the regular school day--is a crucial link to academic potential in the classroom. To that end, the school teamed up with a number of partners--corporate, nonprofit and individual--and was awarded a grant from the Department of Education's 21st Century Community Learning Centers program. With the three-year grant, the school developed a program geared toward the skills its second- through fifth-graders need to succeed on standardized tests.

"We saw that, with the deficits our youngsters faced, we needed the school day and much more if our youngsters were going to achieve as far as the [standardized tests are] concerned. That was one prong," says Collington principal Harold Eason. "The other was that we knew the children in our community had tremendous social deficits that had an impact on their learning."

As a result, the Collington program focuses on student learning through small-group instruction; through cultural enrichment activities, including field trips and guest speakers; and through parent involvement.

The small-group aspect of the program centers on students from Baltimore's Morgan State University, who tutor six to eight children at a time on performance assessment skills students need to master on standardized tests.

Baltimore Teachers Union (BTU) member Bernarda Kwaw, a third-grade teacher at Collington and the program's cultural enrichment coordinator, says student interaction with the Morgan State tutors serves an invaluable second purpose by giving the children the opportunity to meet African-American college students, which helps the youngsters realize that college is an option for them too.

Collington's after-school program is buttressed by the school's regular day structure--Direct Instruction in the morning, Core Knowledge in the afternoon and a 50-minute extension on the regular school day for all students. The extra work students do in the after-school program has produced results, Eason says. Not only have teachers noticed changes in student readiness and achievement, the Maryland Department of Education reports that the composite increase from 1999 to 2000 for Collington's fifth-graders on the Maryland State Performance Assessment Program (MSPAP) was 5 percent, with marked improvements in social studies, language usage and writing.

Paula Webber, Collington's after-school program coordinator, says the format "complements what has been happening during the day in the classroom," and it "exposes students to different cultural events and provides the opportunity for them to travel outside their community."

Field trips--both recreational and educational--are an important part of the program and the learning process. "There are so many things we take for granted that we were exposed to as children that [our students] have not been exposed to," says Kwaw. "These trips expose them to words and terms that might be on the [standardized tests]."

While the teachers and tutors are doing their parts to improve student performance, BTU member Vernetta Lynch, a 30-year veteran of the Baltimore City school system, is doing her part to reach the parents--and grandparents--of the Collington students. Lynch, a paraprofessional, is Collington's parent outreach coordinator. She organizes meetings on topics such as health, nutrition and home buying. A table in her office is flanked with an assortment of handouts that address subjects ranging from "how to keep your child's self-image strong" to "10 tips for reading with your child" to "making the most of your time together." Lynch assists parents in need of food and clothing; and right now, she is working on establishing an adult basic education program, which will supplement the adult computer classes Collington offers as part of its after-school program.

With the grant funding expiring after the 2001-02 school year, Collington's administrators and teachers are cautiously optimistic that money will be found elsewhere to keep the after-school program afloat. "If you are talking about keeping kids off the street, in a safe environment, our leaders need to find the money for after-school programs," Lynch says. "This program has been a security blanket for many kids. It takes them off the streets and helps them learn."

American Federation of Teachers, AFL•CIO - 555 New Jersey Avenue, NW - Washington, DC 20001