Eighty percent of children’s waking hours are spent outside of school. But for too many, especially those growing up in urban settings, the end of the school day signals long hours of boredom and risk rather than opportunities to participate in enriching learning activities such as sports, arts or homework help. Building on its long legacy of support for out-of-school time (OST) opportunities, The Wallace Foundation is seeking to change that picture. Our current goal is to help selected cities develop and test ways to plan and implement sustainable systems that increase overall participation in high-quality OST programs so that more children and youth attend often enough to gain developmental benefits.

Wallace is funding such efforts in five cities: Boston, Chicago, New York, Providence and Washington, D.C. Experience to date suggests that a “coordinated approach” is a promising route for increasing the quality of and access to OST opportunities citywide. A Place to Grow and Learn describes in detail this hypothesis and suggests that there are six “action elements” for achieving a coordinated approach to improving OST: 

• Committed leadership –  including top political, school, community and OST leaders, to secure funding and other resources and shape policies;
• A public or private coordinating entity – to manage the development of plans, link disparate OST players, build citywide attention and support for OST, and ensure that plans and performance stay on track;
• Multi-year planning – to set goals and priorities, develop ways to hold key players accountable for results and identify necessary resources;
• Reliable information – to document the needs and wishes of parents and children, track participation and identify underserved neighborhoods and families;
• Expanding participation – to reach more children and ensure that they attend often enough to benefit; and
• A commitment to quality – because quality programs are likeliest to benefit children and therefore scarce OST funding should be directed to delivering high-quality programming.    

A number of Wallace knowledge products have helped inform this work. Making Out-of-School Time Matter, by RAND, reviews the available evidence on key topics such as defining quality programming, assessing demand and promoting participation. All Work and No Play, a national survey from Public Agenda, adds the essential but often-missing voices of parents and children to the national debate about what out-of-school learning ought to provide.

In each of Wallace’s three current areas of activity — arts participation, education leadership and out-of-school time learning — we seek to create widespread change by sharing lessons that public and private institutions can use to promote benefits for the people they serve. Please visit the Out-of-School Time Learning section of Wallace’s Knowledge Center to download publications that offer field-based insights.

Partner institutions

In each of its three focus areas, The Wallace Foundation supports public and private institutions that are committed to pursuing innovative ideas and practices. Wallace funds their work so that their experiences and lessons can ultimately help the field nationwide.

For more information about Wallace’s grant policies and restrictions, see our Funding Guidelines page. To download publications that can help further your own organization’s work, please visit the Knowledge Center.