America After 3PM: Afterschool STEM Takes Off

A parent looking for an afterschool program wants a few essentials: a safe environment, caring staff, and engaging activities. Increasingly, those activity expectations include engaging children with building, coding, asking questions about how things work, and preparing them to engage with the world around them. Afterschool programs have responded, designing and offering science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) learning experiences that can meet these needs.

The Afterschool Alliance first asked about STEM in the 2014 America After 3PM survey, a national household survey on children's afterschool experiences conducted every five to six years. The 2025 data let us track how STEM in afterschool has changed over the decade since then. The special report based on this data and funded by Overdeck Family Foundation, "Afterschool STEM Takes Off: Programs Offer More STEM Than Ever, But Too Many Young People Still Miss Out” allows us to delve into parent priorities and expectations for STEM learning in afterschool, STEM subjects and skills young people are accessing in afterschool, and where the gaps are.

Our five key findings from the report show how far the afterschool field has come in the past decade and where we need to focus attention in the coming decade.

1. STEM in afterschool has become nearly universal and parents value STEM when choosing their child’s afterschool program. In 2025, a record 92% of parents said their child's afterschool program offers STEM, up from 69% in 2014, when America After 3PM first asked this question. That value shows up directly:
   1. Seventy-seven percent of all parents agree these programs help children gain interest and skills in STEM fields.
   2. Nearly two-thirds (65%) of parents with children in an afterschool program value STEM when choosing a program for their child.

Once children are in a program, STEM access is similar across income, gender, and race. But the massive unmet need for afterschool programs - nearly 30 million young people have parents who want a program, yet only 7 million can be in one - underscores that the gap in afterschool access is now a gap in STEM access.

2. Parents make a distinction between the individual subjects that comprise the term “STEM.” Science, technology, engineering, math, (and computer science) get lumped into a single acronym called “STEM,” but our data shows parents hold different expectations and attitudes toward each subject. Availability has grown across all five, but parents place far more emphasis on science and math than on computer science, technology, and engineering, a pattern that holds across income, race, and gender.
   
   Availability and satisfaction vary modestly by income and race. The most notable gap is in priority for computer science: parents of boys rank it 10 points higher than parents of girls.
    
3. Rural parents report large gaps in afterschool STEM access. They place less priority on STEM than urban parents, though a majority still value it when choosing a program. Rural families report lower STEM availability and satisfaction than urban families, especially in computer science and technology, as well as a lower “dosage”: only 39% of rural parents say their child engages with STEM in afterschool several times a week, compared to 67% of urban parents.
   
   Families in more remote rural areas, more than 30 miles from the nearest metro center, report even less availability and lower satisfaction. The data points to a systemic issue with STEM access in rural afterschool programs, tied to the field's long-standing access gaps in these areas overall.
    
4. Parents of teens focus on preparing them for college, career, and life as an engaged community member. They place a higher priority on STEM for their high schooler's afterschool program than parents of elementary schoolers do, especially in computer science, which rises from 53% importance at the elementary level to 68% at the high school level.
   
   College and career exploration, work-based learning like internships and apprenticeships, and service learning all matter more to parents of high schoolers. Parents of teens are looking for support preparing their children for next steps, and will value afterschool STEM experiences rooted in real-world contexts.
    
5. Parents want afterschool programs to help their children develop social and durable skills more than any specific content area. They place a much higher priority on social skills, confidence, belonging, communication, teamwork, and critical thinking than on STEM or any other content area, and report high satisfaction with what programs deliver on this front. This is an opportunity to show parents that STEM builds the very skills they value: skills that develop not in the abstract, but through hands-on projects rooted in content young people care about.

Finally, homeschool parents report higher STEM participation, importance, and satisfaction than parents of children in public or private school. Expectations for STEM also shift by season: in summer, parents want outdoor, active, social experiences over academics, but families who do enroll their child in a STEM camp report high satisfaction, an opening to position hands-on STEM as both fun and educational.

The report concludes with a set of policy recommendations to build on the decade of progress that afterschool programs have made to offer more STEM engagement experiences for young people. Given today’s prevalence of STEM learning in afterschool programs, there is a great need to increase investments in afterschool access so that more children can benefit from programs and the STEM learning that is offered there.

The growth of STEM in afterschool over the past decade is something that we can all be proud of. It results from intentional efforts and investments at all levels. We still have a long way to go — with almost 23 million students missing out on the afterschool opportunities that provide rich STEM learning — we need to do even more so that all young people can be supported to thrive in our STEM-driven world.

To learn more and dig deeper, visit aa3pm.co/stem to find the full report, executive summary, and a data dashboard to explore what afterschool STEM looks like for children and families both nationally and in your state.