Dive Brief:
- More than 90% of parents polled said their children who participated in after-school programming in early 2025 had access to STEM activities, compared to 73% in 2020 and 69% in 2014, according to survey results released by The Afterschool Alliance last week.
- Access to computer science, technology and engineering activities more than doubled in after-school programs between 2014 and 2025. Additionally, 77% of parents said after-school programs helped their children gain STEM skills and interests.
- Despite the positive trends, the Afterschool Alliance said after-school participation is still a challenge. More than 3 in 4 students, or about 23 million youth, don't have access to after-school programming, and rural parents say there are fewer after-school opportunities compared to urban parents.
Dive Insight:
More parents are saying they prioritize STEM activities when selecting an after-school program for their children — 65% in 2025 compared to 53% in 2014, according to theAfterschool Alliance survey report.
The survey also revealed that boys and girls were offered STEM opportunities at nearly identical rates in 2025 (93% and 91%). That's an improvement from prior years when availability grew faster for boys, the report said.
"The bottom line, and this is huge, STEM in after-school has shown tremendous growth," said Jodi Grant, executive director of Afterschool Alliance, during an event Thursday announcing the survey findings. "The growth we've seen in STEM is nothing short of extraordinary."
Grant, however, said cost is the biggest barrier for students who can't access after-school programs. "We know that these children — 23 million children — would be accessing STEM learning opportunities if they were in a program. So that's a data point that we really need to address," she said.
The survey data also showed that rural families living more than 30 miles from a metro area had the biggest gaps in availability, frequency and satisfaction across every STEM subject.
Hilary Lozar, STEM coordinator for the Boys and Girls Club of the Flathead Reservation and Lake County in Montana, said that although she has worked with three small, rural districts in the state, her program has access to "some very cool STEM resources," such as a tribal college, local businesses and donors.
"I've been taking on sort of a side quest as an educator to prepare all the staff members that I work with to be STEM stand-ins for me, so that we can address the data that shows that rural families don't get STEM regularly," Lozar said during the report’s release event.
Lozar also said she does outreach to other clubs and organizations across Montana to help them boost their STEM offerings and resources.
Grant added that "STEM learning is an amazing way to help address the top priorities of parents, to help address the top priorities of our businesses, to help address developing content knowledge and workforce skills for our kids, and to help our country be stronger in the future."
The data in the report is based on the 2025 America After 3PM survey results. The Afterschool Alliance has been conducting the survey every five years since 2004. Data specific to STEM in after-school programming has been collected since 2014, and this was the alliance's third STEM-focused report, said Grant.
This report draws on data collected from 30,515 households that were surveyed between January and April 2025.
