Both Mike and Geoff point to the increased pressure on outside-of-school
programs to become more like in school ones -- defeating their purpose and
minimizing or even eliminating their positive impact. I see two tactics to
take -- both having to do with educating and organizing regular folks and
policy makers about the value of supplemental/enriching/complimentary
programs. First, the projects I work most closely with -- the All Stars
Talent Show Network and the Development School for Youth -- are funded by
individuals not local, state of national government. They're promoted as
programs that are developmental, that help kids become more worldly, etc. and
they haven't received pressure from contributors to raise test scores,
grades, etc. The participants are active spokespersons for the program and
when adults see and hear the kids, that means more to them than any numbers
in some research report or newspaper. Second, there is a fair amount of
pretty traditional research pointing to the value -- in standard school terms
-- of supplemental/enriching/complimentary ed. For example, the 20-year
study of Baltimore students conducted by Johns Hopkins University
sociologists Karl Alexander and Doris Entwistle, showing that while children
from poor neighborhoods learned at the same rate as middle class students
during the school year, they lost ground every summer when children from more
affluent families enrolled in summer camps, took music and art lessons and
participated in other social and cultural activities. By the end of fifth
grade, the difference in verbal achievement between poor and middle
class/affluent students was more than two years. Another study is the
National Educational Longitudinal Study (NELS), which demonstrated that young
people who participated in after-school activities were significantly more
likely to enroll in college, vote and become actively involved in their
communities. I know there's lots more but these are studies that are cited
by the programs I work with, and they seem to impress people.
Lois
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