The importance of afterschool academic enrichment programs cannot be understated. Afterschool academic enrichment programs allow students the opportunity to remediate if necessary and to advance beyond their peers. During the daily schedule of most schools there is a required amount of material that must be covered in a timely manner. This requisite of required material may actually be harming certain students who may be falling behind. As the teacher advances with the lesson plans, the left behind students are even more behind. Problems like this are far too common in the educational system today. According to the U.S. Department of Education “Research has consistently shown that well-designed tutoring programs that use volunteers and other nonprofessionals as tutors can be effective in improving children’s reading skills. Students with below-average reading skills who are tutored by volunteers show significant gains in reading skills when compared with similar students who do not receive tutoring from a high-quality tutoring program.” The research supports the idea that tutoring in addition to regular schooling can benefit most students and especially those students who fall behind. Tutoring is more than supplementing academic education, it’s about the students seeing that someone besides their teacher is advocating for them. Positive morale support can have great lasting impacts on a student’s education. Academic enrichment programs even have a proven track record in the undergraduate years. One example of this is the Summer Medical Dental Education Program designed for aspiring pre-medical and pre-dental students. The unique goal of this specific program is to educate economically disadvantaged students on the admissions process for the respective professional schools. Like afterschool tutoring, this program fosters educational competence and confidence in one’s ability’s.
Overall, academic enrichment programs support all types of students. These programs range from afterschool tutoring to pre-medical programs preparing students for successful admission to medical school.
Reference
Evidence That Tutoring Works. (n.d.). Retrieved April 28, 2019, from https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/ERIC-ED464343/pdf/ERIC-ED464343.pdf