To provide some answers to this question, Every Hour Counts—a national coalition of citywide organizations that increases access to quality learning opportunities, particularly for underserved students—has created a new measurement framework and companion guidebook, Putting Data to Work for Young People: A Guidebook for the Every Hour Counts Framework for Measurement, Continuous Improvement, and Equitable Systems.
As one of the contributing organizations, PASA is excited to share these new resources with our robust community of out-of-school time leaders here in Providence, particularly as we all work to build more equitable learning systems.
Drawing from research by The RAND Corporation and piloted by three different intermediaries—one each in Boston (Boston After School & Beyond); Providence, R.I. (Providence After School Alliance); and St. Paul (Sprockets), the new resources can help out-of-school time (OST) system leaders and providers better understand how to gather and analyze data to develop stronger afterschool programs. The framework and accompanying guidebook explore why data is important for OST systems, providing direction on identifying what information to collect, why to collect it, and how to use it. Using a model set of ideal outcomes for the system, program, and youth levels, the framework evaluates ways to measure progress on all three, with a particular focus on using data to advance equity in OST systems.
