Funded by the C.S. Mott Foundation
We are evaluating the C.S. Mott Foundation’s Statewide Afterschool Networks, a multistate effort to improve the partnerships and policies needed to develop and sustain quality after school programs.
The Networks are a vehicle for bringing together key decision makers in states who want to improve youth outcomes using school-based and school-linked after school programs. The Mott Foundation's long-term goal is to build bridges between leaders of schools, communities, and families to better support student learning, youth development, and lifelong learning. Statewide Afterschool Networks are creating a sustainable structure of state, regional, and local partnerships that support policies to secure the resources that after school programs need, and support systems that ensure programs are high quality.
Our evaluation is creating a self-assessment system to promote ongoing feedback and learning within each Network and informing the Mott Foundation about the effectiveness of the Statewide Afterschool Networks as a whole. Using a cross-network theory of change and logic model as a guide, the self-assessment system is meant to provide performance measure data to inform progress on a set of cross-network indicators.
Additional data come from sources internal and external to the initiative, with an emphasis on information from those closest to the initiative. These data include a review of network-related documents and websites, network self-assessment, and interviews with after school experts.
To drill deeper on issues of effectiveness and identify what it takes for a network to succeed, more intensive data collection is focused in several states as “best case” scenarios. Data collection in these focus states includes interviews with network leads and key state after school experts, as well as policy and media tracking.
Read more about the Statewide Afterschool Networks.