After-school activity

After-school activities, also known as after-school programs or after-school care, started in the early 1900s mainly just as supervision of students after the final school bell.^[1] Today, after-school programs do much more. There is a focus on helping students with school work but can be beneficial to students in other ways. An after-school program, today, will not limit its focus on academics but with a holistic sense of helping the student population.^[2] An after-school activity is any organized program that youth or adult learner voluntary can participate in outside of the traditional school day. Some programs are run by a primary or secondary school, while others are run by externally funded non-profit or commercial organizations. After-school youth programs can occur inside a school building or elsewhere in the community, for instance at a community center, church, library, or park. After-school activities are a cornerstone of concerted cultivation, which is a style of parenting that emphasizes children gaining leadership experience and social skills through participating in organized activities.^[3] Such children are believed by proponents to be more successful in later life, while others consider too many activities to indicate overparenting.^[4] While some research has shown that structured after-school programs can lead to better test scores, improved homework completion, and higher grades,^[5] further research has questioned the effectiveness of after-school programs at improving youth outcomes such as externalizing behavior and school attendance.^[6] Additionally, certain activities or programs have made strides in closing the achievement gap, or the gap in academic performance between white students and students of color as measured by standardized tests.^[7][8] Though the existence of after-school activities is relatively universal, different countries implement after-school activities differently, causing after-school activities to vary on a global scale.