Program Quality News: April 2022

April 8, 2022

Greetings!

Each day, millions of professionals and volunteers work with young people in the many settings where youth play, learn, and grow outside of the school day, yet we have little collective information about this essential workforce. The recently launched Power of Us Workforce Survey provides an important opportunity for the youth fields workforce, across sectors and geographies, to contribute to a national effort to explore, define, and elevate their profession. If you are a present or former youth-serving professional or volunteer, your participation in this national effort is invaluable to informing future policy, practice, and research to support the youth fields workforce. We hope you’ll take the survey today!

A separate survey being conducted by Afterschool Alliance aims to help tell the story of the ways COVID-19 continues to impact programs and the kids and families served. The survey, which focuses on how the pandemic has affected winter/spring programming, will provide funders, policy makers, education leaders, and the overall public with information to understand the current supports offered by afterschool and summer learning programs, as well as the current challenges and needs. The survey closes at 11:59 PM PT on April 10 – so please take a moment today to respond. You may even be selected to win a $50 cash prize!

Both surveys present an important opportunity for voices across the youth-serving field to be heard. I encourage you to take advantage of these opportunities!

With gratitude for our youth work field,

Kimberly H. Robinson, Ph.D. | (she, her, hers)
Executive Vice President, Youth Program Quality
The Forum for Youth Investment
David P. Weikart Center for Youth Program Quality
kim@forumfyi.org

Mark your calendar

Join the Forum for Youth Investment on April 14 from 3:00-4:00 PM EDT for Summer for All: How Coordination in Dallas is Making this Goal a Reality, a conversation with Big Thought Dallas. In this session, we’ll learn more about how they have built a coordinated network focused on summer and how they’ve taken what they learned about summer to integrate a focus on social and emotional learning into their network as well. Big Thought Dallas was featured in the latest report in RAND’s Summer Learning Series, Summer for All: Building Coordinated Networks to Promote Access to Quality Summer Learning and Enrichment Opportunities Across a Community.
Do you want to use data to work smarter, not harder? How can data reveal inequities and help us find stronger solutions? Learn more during a free, virtual event from Every Hour Counts: Data Symposium: Putting Data to Work for Young People on Wednesday, May 4, 2022, 12:00-4:30 PM EDT. Join us to strategize how to collect, analyze, and use data to advance racial equity and drive continuous improvement in your community. Featured Resource: Putting Data to Work for Young People: A Framework and Guidebook for Measurement, Continuous Improvement, and Equitable Systems.
Afterschool Professionals Appreciation Week is April 25-29! This week is a time to recognize, appreciate, and advocate for those who work with young people during out-of-school hours. Prepare by checking out the National AfterSchool Association’s toolkit to gain ideas and inspiration for honoring families, staff, and communities.
Consider building capacity this spring by becoming an external assessor! Our External Assessor Reliability Training (EART) workshops prepare participants to observe program offerings and reliably score a Program Quality Assessment (PQA), providing an objective perspective to help identify areas of improvement. Visit our events page to learn more and sign up for our upcoming School-Age and SEL PQA EARTs.

Resources from the field

Meeting the Moment: Cities Investing in Young People to Support Pandemic Recovery and Beyond, a report by the National League of Cities (NLC), highlights key findings and action steps from their National Municipal Afterschool & Summer Learning survey for municipal leaders who seek to expand or improve their community’s afterschool and summer learning programs while navigating an ongoing pandemic.
The NLC COVID-19 Local Action Tracker, developed in partnership with Bloomberg Philanthropies, serves as a reflection of the ways that cities across the country leapt into action to meet community needs and learn from each other at the onset of the pandemic and over the following two years. Visit the Local Action Tracker to learn about actions taken by local leaders in response to the COVID-19 pandemic between February 2020 and February 2022.

Read as a PDF.

Technical Assistance & Action Centers

David P. Weikart Center for Youth Program Quality

Cross-Systems Consulting

Networks & Initiatives

Children's Cabinet Networks

Opportunity Index

Improving & Aligning Policies

Planning & Partnering for Impact

Strengthening Practices & Programs