Pedro-- Your thoughts on evaluation of afterschool activities strike me
as completely reasonable. There are tremendous difficulties in such
efforts, some of them associated with the question "what to evaluate"
and some with the practical difficulties of carrying out any systematic
evaluation because the institutions where the kids participate have
low paid staff, high turn over of staff, enormous mobility of kids,
are attended voluntarily, and etc.
I have spent a reasonable portion of the past week simply
collecting inforomation from organizations that are doing such evaluations
and have a thick file drawer full (don't overlook Paul Dillon's suggestions
for two days ago).
My general conclusion is this: All of the available evidence, with
one exception, points to the efficacy of a wide variety of afterschool
activities in improving the academic performance and social integration
of children and youth. All of it. The data can be faulted, but there are
a fair number of cases which meet reasonable pre-test-post-test/control
group criteria and lots of quasi-experimental and qualitative longitudinal
data that can be marshalled. The one exception is when you have a progam
run by males for males in which a coercive culture is present.
Nevertheless, all programs, including the ones we have been running
for many years, are under yearly pressure to spend a signicant portion
of their funds proving that they are good for kids. I am currently
focused on why we have to keep proving that if we drop a rock off a
bridge it will fall in the water. I know that there are completing
claims on local monies, but still, the focus on continuing to prove that
a proven "good thing" "works" is interesting. One legitimae fear is
that what is called "the same program" really isn't-- the program
deteriorates in quality. The solution I have seen here is a form of
evaluation which focuses on the question, "Is the program being implemented."
Anyway, I continue to find the issue of interest.
mike
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Mon Oct 01 2001 - 01:02:21 PDT