Is MCPS aftercare becoming too much like school? #washpost #kaplan

This was our first experience with an aftercare program. We’d chosen it because it was there, in our five5-year-old’s Montgomery County public school, and the price was within our budget. I hadn’t paid much attention to what was going on beyond that. By the time I picked up our daughter up, she was usually doing some kind of craft or just running around. Occasionally, she was playing on an iPad, which didn’t thrill me, but she always seemed happy. She loved her teachers, and almost never wanted to leave. 

A couple of weeks later, I was sitting at a PTA meeting, hearing a presentation about the new program, run by AlphaBest Education√, Inc., a subsidiary of Kaplan Early Learning√ Education in

Lewisville, N.C.North Carolina, which started out 48 years

ago as a business selling furniture for day-care centers a day-care-furniture business. AlphaBest serves 14,000 kids in 12 states. At the meeting, a representative spoke about homework time. For those who don’t have homework any, AlphaBest would provide their own worksheets. He also talked about enrichment activities such as like calligraphy, cartooning, and Lego robotics. I asked if there would be any unstructured time.  

“Don’t worry,” the representative told me. “Not much.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/magazine/is-aftercare-becoming-too-much-like-school/2016/11/10/1cb43c02-875e-11e6-ac72-a29979381495_story.html