21st Century Community Learning

The subheading of this article reads, "Coordinators of 33 Maine programs fear a shift in how 21st Century Community Learning money is given out." The article goes on to list some of the programs that will be cut - a wide variety, but what these programs have in common is that they keep kids engaged in adult-led activities after school. In Maine, lots of middle and high-schoolers get out pretty close to 2:00 and, unless they have an extracurricular activity or parent who can pick them up, they're on their own. For now, let's assume all 107 programs receiving the funds are making a real difference in the lives of the kids they work with.

The question would then be, why redirect this money? Some context will help. The 21st Century Community Learning Grants "provide academic enrichment opportunities during non-school hours for children, particularly students who attend high-poverty and low-performing schools. The program helps students meet state and local student standards in core academic subjects, such as reading and math; offers students a broad array of enrichment activities that can complement their regular academic programs; and offers literacy and other educational services to the families of participating children." In fact, Congress authorized this program as something of an afterthought linked to No Child Left Behind; the idea was that kids who were not succeeding in schools needed access to the same kinds of things many middle-class students can count on - not just academic tutoring and homework help, but visual and performing arts and other activities that create a sense of belonging, offer opportunities for mentoring and social service support, etc. How could anyone argue against that?

I can't. But I can argue against the assumptions on which it is based. Simply put, these programs exist to fill gaps that we create - with schools that operate 180 days a year for 6-7 hours a day, with after school activities that are available to some, but not all kids - and fewer and fewer as budgets are cut, with social services that are largely crisis-based rather than genuinely preventative. I'll save the rant about employment and economic policies that force parents to choose between adequate care and supervision of their kids and putting food on the table, but let's just say that argument could be had. The reason I'm offering VERY qualified support for a rethinking of how we some this money is simple: The kids we're trying to reach would be better off (and get more bang for our buck) if we found ways not to create the gaps on the first place.

We know that certain things work (when well done.) A longer school day and school year is one. Requiring every child to be in an after-school activity, as many private schools such as North Yarmouth Academy do, is another. Integration of health and social services, and Portland's school-based health clinics do, is yet another. The Harlem Children's Zone, whose founder Geoffey Canada has a Maine connection as Bowdoin grad, is an integrated, birth-to-college-and- career approach to ending generational poverty. These approaches not only seek to reduce the amount of time children are, for simple lack of a better option, "on their own," they do so in an integrated way that is much more likely to prevent the deficits in learning, attentiveness, motivation from occurring.

The Obama administration proposes "opening up the grants to competition among states, school districts and nonprofit organizations, rather than doling the money strictly to states through a formula." While I think Maine spends that money reasonably well, nationwide this program has been rather huge pot for lots of operators of lots stripes to dig their mitts into. Let's just say that not all of it produces the results it is intended to, and even if it does, is sustainable only with repeated congressional authorizations. As is often the case, what was meant as a short-term remediation as part of larger plan to close certain gaps becomes a built-in part of a patchwork system.

If, on balance, this is the best we can do, then we should keep doing it. But if we can use that same money to, say, help create schools that engage students all day, and even on Saturday, as Codman Academy Public Charter School in Boston does, then shouldn't we? If we can use this money to help non-profits (some of the same folks that are receiving this money now) develop those schools, or work with their local schools to create much more integrated preventative approaches like the Harlem Children's Zone, shouldn't we?

The "competition among states" approach is one that I think is ill-advised, just as it is with Race to the Top. While I understand Secretary Duncan's need to create some leverage that breaks through entrenched systems that stifle innovation, we have deep and long experience that shows is that for the most part, big piles of money filtered through large state bureaucracies do not fulfill the promise. Awarding them through competition is unlikely to change that...as with Race to the Top, it ends up substituting one formula for another. But school districts and non-profits could apply for this, with one criteria only: develop integrated, "one-stop" approaches that ensure that schools, social service providers, non-profits and others don't operate as patches for what the others can't or won't do. Such approaches are out there; they're better for kids and families, and they spend what money we have in ways that reduce, rather than increase, the need to spend more money later.