Evaluating afterschool: The evaluation basics, part III

The Afterschool Alliance is pleased to present the tenth installment of our "Evaluating afterschool" blog series, which answers some of the common questions asked about program evaluation and highlights program evaluation best practices. Be sure to take a look at earlier posts of the series, including blogs on how to collect data and how to build your own evaluation advisory board.

Regino Chávez has worked for LA’s BEST since 2007, designing and implementing formative research for program improvement and internal evaluations, as well as monitoring external evaluations of the program. LA’s BEST serves approximately 25,000 children ages 5 to 12 in close to 200 Los Angeles Unified School District elementary schools. A recent evaluation of LA’s BEST by the Center for Research and Evaluation of Student Standards and Testing (CRESST) at University of California, Los Angeles, found that LA’s BEST students with high levels of attendance in the program were 5 percent less likely to drop out of school and 6 percent more likely to graduate from high school on time compared to their peers who did not participate in the program.

Be sure to check out both Part I and Part II of Regino’s blog.

Who can do this evaluation for me?

Once the evaluation questions have been set, the next step is figuring out how to get it done. At LA’s BEST, we have a Board that raises monies for aspects of programming including evaluation. In the past, such funding has been used to contract UCLA’s Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards and Student Testing (CRESST) to carry out research on the long-term benefits of our program. We have also contracted with the Claremont Evaluation Center to examine our work with social emotional learning. 

It is important to take advantage of our community resources as well. For example, we have benefitted from graduate students conducting studies of our program: USC’s Los Angeles Community Impact (LACI) program has carried out marketing studies for LA’s BEST when we sought to explore monetizing an SEL proprietary program we had developed. We are now engaged with a team from UCLA to conduct exploratory research that will help frame how the program develops resiliency among staff and students. Students from state and community colleges also approach us for conducting their research in our program. These have led to a variety of studies that explored staffing competencies and program implementation of core subjects

Finally, when we submit proposals for new programming, the applications incorporate monies for evaluation. Funders are aware that evaluations yield important insights on what difference their funding makes in the experience of the students. Programs can use the data to become better informed on who is served, how practices worked to enhance improvements in knowledge, and how to enhance skill development. However, they can also assess attitude changes or examine the extent of awareness created regarding important issues. For example, annual student surveys keep us informed on how safe students feel in the program. Assessments of our health trainings led to including calming strategies as part of the healthy lifestyle education. Other formative evaluations have resulted in training improvements for financial literacy programs and for teaching male coaches to better support female students.

Evaluations of afterschool programs are an important aspect of quality improvement. The goals of your program are the basis for framing the evaluation questions. Information obtained through impact and formative evaluations can be used to assure that the program has relevance and meaning for those being served. It also serves to enhance program practices to better serve students, demonstrate how afterschool is a needed service in your community, and highlight how your program has evidence for changes in student performance.