As schools seek opportunities to bolster student learning, fostering academic alignment between schools and their after-school programs (ASPs) has emerged as a promising practice. In this report, the authors provide national data about the state of academic alignment between school-day and after-school learning, illustrate how schools and ASPs put academic alignment into practice, and identify enabling and impeding factors.

How Schools and After-School Programs Can Collaborate to Support Academic Alignment

Ashley Woo, Lauren Covelli, Srikant Kumar Sahoo, Catherine H. Augustine

ResearchPublished Jun 29, 2026

As schools seek opportunities to bolster student learning, fostering academic alignment between schools and their after-school programs (ASPs) has emerged as a promising practice. In this report, the authors define academic alignment as the degree to which after-school programming is coordinated with school-day instruction. Drawing on survey data from a nationally representative sample of public school principals, the authors examine the extent to which schools’ after-school programming academically aligns to school-day instruction and how schools and ASPs put academic alignment into practice.

Survey data suggest that many schools are working toward academic alignment to some extent, although fewer than half of all schools nationally offer academically aligned after-school programming. Principals’ reports about how they approach alignment revealed a wide spectrum of experiences, from ASPs with no academic focus to those explicitly reinforcing school-day learning through shared curricula, data-driven targeting of skill gaps, and common instructional strategies. Collaborative structures that bridged school-day and ASP learning, such as shared resources, staff, and data, emerged as key facilitators of academic alignment.

The authors close with recommendations on how school and district leaders and ASP leaders can strengthen academic alignment in their contexts.

Key Takeaways

  • Just over half of surveyed principals with ASPs agreed that their after-school programming was academically aligned to instruction provided during the school day.
  • When asked to describe efforts and strategies at their school or district to align school-day and after-school instruction, some principals said that their ASPs had a minimal focus on academics, while others said that their ASPs explicitly reinforced school-day learning through after-school activities.
  • Principals of secondary schools, urban schools, and high-poverty schools were more likely than their counterparts to report that their after-school programming aligned academically to school-day instruction.
  • Principals with school- or district-staff-provided ASPs more often reported that their ASPs academically aligned to school-day instruction than did principals with ASPs provided by an external partner.
  • Principals said that ASPs used tutoring, enrichment activities, and homework help sessions to deliver academic content, although the extent of academic alignment varied within and across these approaches.
  • Collaborative structures between schools and ASPs, such as shared resources, staff, and data, created conditions that facilitated academic alignment.

Recommendations

  • District leaders could create the conditions for academic alignment by communicating its importance and supporting the selection of ASP partners that are open to collaboration with schools.
  • Schools and ASPs could develop intentional, systematic routines to enhance collaboration, such as channels to share information and scheduled joint meetings.
  • School and ASP leaders could seek opportunities to provide academically aligned enrichment activities.

Topics

Document Details

  • Copyright: The Fund for Public Schools
  • Publisher: RAND Corporation
  • Availability: Web-Only
  • Year: 2026
  • Pages: 20
  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.7249/RRA4386-2
  • Document Number: RR-A4386-2

Citation

Chicago Manual of Style

Woo, Ashley, Lauren Covelli, Srikant Kumar Sahoo, and Catherine H. Augustine, How Schools and After-School Programs Can Collaborate to Support Academic Alignment. Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2026. https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RRA4386-2.html.
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This research was sponsored by the New York City's Mayor's Office for Economic Opportunity, in partnership with NYCPS, the Fund for NYCPS, and Robin Hood and conducted in the Education and Employment Program of RAND Education, Employment, and Infrastructure.

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