Elizabeth Reisner, Founder and Principal, Policy Studies Associates, Inc.
GETTING TO QUALITY
Among those who care about extending positive out-of-school time (OST) options to all young people, it’s clear that major change is afoot. The emerging focus today is all about improving the quality of OST experiences, so that they can promote good outcomes for youth. New information from research and other sources is propelling this trend, and the most important single source is recent research conducted by Professors Joseph Durlak of Loyola University and Roger Weissburg of the University of Illinois at Chicago. They analyzed the results of 73 evaluations of OST programs that sought to improve participants’ personal and social development. They found that the programs that were consistently linked to skill growth by youth were those that were SAFE.
In this case, SAFE means Sequenced, Active, Focused, and Explicit. SAFE programs use a sequenced series of planned activities to meet their goals. They use active, hands-on learning experiences. They focus on the skills that they are trying to promote and make sure everyone understands the focus. And they have explicit objectives. When programs meet these criteria, they have better than even odds of achieving positive youth outcomes. In fact, they tend to promote positive outcomes in a wide range of areas, including educational performance, if that is one of their objectives. The only bad news from this study is that OST programs that aren’t SAFE achieve very few of their goals for youth. You can read this important report at www.casel.org.
Elizabeth Reisner is a founder and principal of Policy Studies Associates, Inc., in Washington, DC. PSA is the evaluator of Partners for Student Success.