September 1, 2026

12.6 Million Students Missed Out on Summer Programs. Not Because Families Didn’t Want In.

Families want access to afterschool and summer programs, and they want it badly. The Afterschool Alliance’s newest America After 3PM report, drawn from more than 30,000 parents, makes that clear: out of the 24.6 million children seeking a structured summer program this year, about half didn’t get one.

So what stood in their way? For most families, it came down to one thing: cost.

Why families can’t access summer programs

For most families, the price of these programs became a problem. Nearly 4 in 10 said cost kept them from enrolling. Transportation, full programs, and not being able to find one nearby came up too, but cost topped the list.

And it hit some families harder than others. High-income families landed a spot for their student about three times more often than low-income families this summer. Low- and middle-income families also spent a much bigger share of what they earned to make it happen. So the families with the least room in the budget stretched the most for it, or went without.

Parents are highly satisfied with the summer programs they can access

Families weren’t missing out on mediocre programs. Among those who enrolled their students, 96% came away satisfied and 63% extremely so. The report makes clear that these programs do real work

What families want isn’t complicated: somewhere safe, good people, and real time for their students to build confidence and make friends. Two-thirds pointed to confidence, well-being, and social skills in particular. These are the reasons families seek out these hours in the first place, and 12.6 million students went without them this summer.

Summer programs work. There just aren’t enough of them.

Put those two figures side by side: 96% satisfied, and 12.6 million shut out. It’s tempting to read them as separate findings, but they tell the same story. The families who get into programs overwhelmingly love them, and the families locked out are missing real experiences.

This conviction runs deep: 87% of parents say every young person deserves access to a quality program. But it runs up against a hard reality. Funding for these hours hasn’t kept pace with what it costs to run them, and providers are holding on to something families clearly value while their budgets stretch thinner each year.

What the America After 3PM report means for the year ahead

Behind every number in this report is a student who missed out on a summer program. As afterschool staff, we don’t need a report to tell us what’s at stake. We’ve seen what a good program does for a student, and we’ve seen what it costs them to go without one. The work now is closing the distance between what they want and what they can reach.

AB Studios builds ready-to-run enrichment for afterschool and summer programs. We’re sharing this report because access to these hours matters to everyone in the field. You can read the full report from the Afterschool Alliance here.