Big expectations for after-school hours

A small group of third-graders stands in an auditorium that easily seats 500. But today there is no audience. Framed by dusty orange curtains, they move their lips soundlessly, their hands gesturing in time to a 1980s ballad. This is the grand finale to Cinderella, choreographed by their after-school counselor Pina Trapani in the sign-language that they've learned from her.

Over the past decade, after-school programs, like this one at a public elementary school deep in Brooklyn, have quietly become a mainstay in communities across the United States.

A supplement to academic work, they provide the backdrop for pursuits like sign-language - an extra that few school budgets can support. For low-income families in particular, they offer a safe place to foster emotional and social development, buying working parents a couple of extra hours at the end of the day.

But even with demand growing - here at PS 205, 500 children vie for 300 spots - there has been tension over the purpose of after-school programs: Should they emphasize recreation or education?

Education, it seems, is winning. Moves are afoot to link funding to how well programs are able to show quantifiable academic progress. And the after-school community is feeling vulnerable.

Advocates and some researchers say remediation is an unfair burden for after-school initiatives.

"Many programs are being asked to produce academic gains without being prepared to do so - meaning they're working with untrained or poorly trained staff who are poorly paid," says Joyce Shortt, codirector of the National Institute on Out-of-School Time at Wellesley College in Massachusetts. "They're asked to produce results that a teacher can't produce in a school day."

Historically, after-school activities have fitted the needs of different eras, responding "to whatever aim society was preoccupied with at the moment," says Robert Halpern, a professor at the Erikson Institute for Graduate Study in Child Development in Chicago and author of "Making Play Work: The Promise of After-School Programs for Low-Income Children."

Near the turn of the century, the goal was "Americanizing" immigrant children. During World War II, with fathers at war and mothers at work, programs served primarily as child care.

Today, there's a push to address the achievement gap - the academic divide between white students and some minorities. As a result, there are educators and politicians who, desperate to meet standards, have come to see after-school hours as simply more class time.

In 2003, the first in a series of reports came out showing no effects on academic achievement for children enrolled in 21st Century Community Learning Centers. With a $1 billion budget, it's the largest federally funded after-school initiative, serving 1.4 million children. President Bush responded to the study by proposing that funding be slashed by $400 million. Congress rejected the cuts. In April, there were more murmurs of cutbacks, when the final report on the 21st Century Centers affirmed the original findings, but the budget has remained mostly level.

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