April 2003
The news that Congress is considering a proposal to reduce federal funding for after-school programs by 40 percent is deeply disturbing on a number of levels to all of us who care about and advocate for children.
The proposed dramatic cuts in funding are yet another sign of a larger shift in both the public and private sectors to pull back on support for children. The declining economy, fewer resources at the state, local, and federal levels, a drop in foundation endowments, and the loss of confidence in some philanthropic organizations owing to recent scandals are clearly contributing factors to this shift. Proponents of the cuts are basing their arguments on scanty data: the results of one study of the 21st Century Learning Community after-school programs, a federally administered discretionary grant program created in 1998 that was converted to a state-administered program as part of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2002. The study suggests that after one year these programs haven’t had the outcomes that were initially expected.
According to a report by Fight Crime: Invest in Kids, 10 million children annually are left unsupervised between 3 and 6 p.m. — the prime-time hours for teens to commit crimes, become crime victims, smoke, drink, use drugs, or get pregnant. The proposed funding cuts mean that some 570,000 children will be denied access to after-school programs and added to the rolls of children left unsupervised each year. The cuts represent a lost opportunity to prevent 41,000 crimes and save taxpayers $2.4 billion dollars.
Research has shown that high-quality after-school programs can protect children from crime, drug use, and teen pregnancy and can increase rates of high school graduation and college enrollments. The operative word here is “high-quality.” To be sure, there are many after-school programs not offering the structure and support needed to achieve positive outcomes. The response to this situation should not be to reduce our efforts. Rather, we should be looking at how to make effective programs better and finding ways to make those excellent programs available to more children.
The funding crisis is real and is not going away any time soon. We at VPP believe that funders and nonprofits alike need to do a better job leveraging and using the funding that is available. Instead of cutting funding across the board to after-school programs, we need to direct the available funding toward strengthening organizations that have developed high-quality, structured programs and that could, with support, expand and grow to serve many more children. VPP investment partners Asian American LEAD and Heads Up, for instance, have demonstrated this level of high performance in their after-school services. These organizations have developed programs that turn the risky hours of 3 to 6 p.m. into a time of constructive supervised activities.
For example, Asian American LEAD has provided tutoring and mentoring programs for the past five years to several hundred children from low-income families in grades one through twelve. Approximately 100 high school seniors have graduated from these programs and the vast majority of them have gone on to college, most of them earning scholarships. A 1999 self-evaluation by Heads Up showed that 69 percent of its first through sixth graders improved at least one reading grade level over one year, while 31 percent improved by two levels. Additionally, 97 percent of parents rated their children’s improvement in their attitude toward learning as “very good” or “excellent.”
We must also identify emerging organizations with strong leaders to ensure they have the funding and support to help them grow and realize their vision of serving children and families. These organizations certainly need not just programmatic and operating dollars but a better allocation of funding to ensure that they, and others like them, have the resources they need to grow, to continue to strengthen their management team, board, and financial development systems, and to continue to improve their product offerings.
The debate about serving the needs of America’s children, including issues like after-school programs, must be reframed as a national priority that is every bit as important as the national focus on improving public schools, fighting cancer, and reforming healthcare. Cutting funding of after-school programs is like saying we should reduce cancer research because we haven’t found the right cure. No one would consider taking that position, and yet this is exactly the attitude that pervades today in regard to funding children’s programs and services. We at VPP are committed to working with our investment partners and other organizations, public and private, to see how we can together be a voice for children’s issues. High-quality after-school programs work. Let’s figure out how to support and encourage the growth of those programs and not throw the baby out with the bathwater.
—Mario Morino
