Friday, November 23, 2007

Assessment: How to Measure if a Program is Successful


One of the biggest challenges faced by after school programs is that it is difficult to evaluate the effectiveness of the program. Many times, positive social and academic changes can occur amongst the youth that participate, but it is hard to isolate the factors of the program that results in those positive changes. It is important for after school programs to measure the affects they have on youth because this enables them to show results to those they seek funding and resources from. Without this evaluation and evidence, why would people and funding foundations put money towards the initiative?


Most quality programs combine academic, recreational, physical, and artistic elements in the curriculum to engage youth in somewhat structured activities. Good after school programs should provice youth with a safe environment to nurture social, physical, and emotional development. Again, these terms seem somewhat ambiguous, hard to evaluate, and measure.


Zhang, Lam, Smith, Fleming, Connaughton address assessing effectiveness in afterschool programs in their 2006 article, "Development of the Scale for Program Facilities to Assess the Effectiveness of After School Achievement Programs". In this article, they identify 4 steps to assess effectiveness of afterschool programs. The four aspects of after school programs that determine their effectiveness include scholastic development, social behavior, caring environment, and personal inspiration. Scholastic Development includes homework assistance, academic remediation, career awareness, learning of technology, enriching activities (sports, fitness, recreation, music, and arts) and can be measured in increased grades and standardized test scores. Social behavior includes behavioral issues, character building, youth development, increased prosocial behavior, cope with behavioral problems, obtain new social skills to meet increased demands school and society, postively affect student attitudes and behaviors in school and ability to achieve learning goals, stay out of trouble, resolution to decrease fighting, and are less likely to drink and skip school. A caring environment is a safe haven, less parental stress with safe and motivating environment and increased children's behavior and rate of homework completion, decreased worry about safety, increased apprecaitive of child's talents, and at ease to concentrate on vocation. Personal inspiration involves an increased sense of personal competence and confidence, feelings of self worth, increased self-concept, increased self esteem leading to increased efficacy.


After school programs need to establish ways to monitor the progress of the program to achieve objectives. Programs need to seek ways to evaluate their programs to increase their effectiveness and accountability to ensure parent and children satisfaction. Through the process of evaluation, program facilitators can adjust curriculum, reallocate funding, increase facilities, develop staff, make decisions, and increase accountability.

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