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Coalition for Science After School (CSAS)
More than 50 years after the launch of Sputnik initiated a broad campaign to increase science-related education in American classrooms, the nation’s after-school programs still fall short of achieving consistent, high-quality science curricula, this CSAS study reported.
The study found that while almost all after-school programs offer some science, less than 40 percent of those programs provide activities related to the subject on a regular basis. Themes of those activities included scientific processes such as the scientific method, observations, measurement and cause and effect.
The majority of after-school programs offered no more than 40 hours of science programming annually. According to the study, limited funding and time are the two greatest challenges faced by after-school programs in implementing regular science activities. Free, 24 pages. (510) 642-8106, http://www.scienceafterschool.org/pdfs/CSAS_Market_Study2008.pdf.
