Giving Compass' Take:

• Amy Anderson and Julia Freeland Fisher argue that poor and minority students are disadvantaged by the lack of extracurricular activities that are the first to go when budgets get cut. 

• How can funders work to close this gap in access extracurriculars at scale? What opportunities are already available to low-income students in your area? 

• Learn about the potential of vouchers for after school programs. 

Among many seemingly intractable problems in education, there’s one wide learning gap between the haves and have-nots that we know how to close: the extracurricular gap.

Here’s the problem: Low-income and minority students are at a structural disadvantage when it comes to accessing out-of-school opportunities. Children from low-income families are three times less likely to participate in after-school programs. By sixth grade, middle-income students will have spent nearly 4,000 more hours in after-school and summer learning programs than their lower-income peers. And parents in low-income and minority households are more likely to report a lack of available learning opportunities on offer in their communities.

This happens in tandem with increasing budget cuts to non-core academic subjects in schools across our country, foreclosing students who stand to benefit the most from enriching experiences across relevant fields like computer science, business and the arts.

This gap continues to grow, even in light of proven solutions like high-quality, out-of-school learning programs that provide dedicated academic enrichment, critical connections and opportunities to explore professional passions. As stated by Robert Putnam in the book “Our Kids,” “out-of-school activities are as important as formal schooling in predicting youths’ long-term educational attainment and earnings.” Children consistently involved in extracurriculars are 400 percent more likely to go to college than kids who cannot access these programs. And yet, these opportunities are still considered as “nice-to-have” rather than essential, particularly in our communities that need them most.

So how do we bridge this gap? We must revisit the largely held perception of school as a primarily academic institution that offers learning opportunities at a fixed time in a fixed setting. Re-imagining and expanding learning beyond the school—and school day—can allow the education system to fully leverage its community-based resources and assets.

Read the full article about the importance of extracurricular activities by Amy Anderson and Julia Freeland Fisher at EdSurge.