The Right Place for After-School: Lessons from Making Quality Count
Our release of Making Quality Count—lessons learned from our work helping 12 communities and states build quality improvement systems for networks of youth programs—came right on the heels of a heftier but remarkably parallel set of reports from Rand and the Wallace Foundation, documenting the foundation’s out-of-school time system building investments over the past five years.
These two separate efforts (with overlap in one site, Rhode Island), led to essentially the same conclusions about what communities need to create effective out-of-school-time systems. The list won’t surprise anyone involved in this work: strong leadership buy-in; solid intermediary capacity; effective, affordable assessment and improvement strategies that can be implemented by the community with training; and real-time information systems that link leader efforts to program/system improvements and ideally, to youth outcomes.
Although I hope people take the time to read the whole report, the most important lesson in Making Quality Count may be reflected in a short quote by a school district employee in Austin, one of the sites:
“The implementation of the Youth Program Quality Intervention in the afterschool community of Central Texas has truly been transforming…For the first time, afterschool is being viewed as a true link to learning and development.”
It’s not surprising, really. Once youth organizations have the tools they need to articulate standards of practice and demonstrate to themselves and their partners that they are focused on delivering quality services that engage young people, why wouldn’t they be recognized as valuable partners in learning and development?
Perhaps the release of Making Quality Count and the Wallace reports marks a turning point. It seems we have officially moved beyond defending our field and are focused on building it.
What do you think? Share comments and reactions below.
Nicole Yohalem is Director of Special Projects with the Forum for Youth Investment, where she oversees work related to postsecondary success, out-of-school time and bridging research, policy and practice. The Forum is SparkAction's managing partner.
