Partnership or Pilot: What is the future of Out of School Time in DC?

From California to Arkansas, states and localities are crafting agreements and funding initiatives that promote new kinds of partnerships between school districts and their neighboring communities. As reported in a recent article by Education Week, these “ joint-use partnerships” are cropping up to tackle all sorts of education and social issues while maximizing the use of public resources. The partnerships address a range of youth development  needs through programming including academic support to both teachers and students, health programming, social service provision and enrichment activities; all provided on location – at schools - by local community organizations and businesses.  These partnerships differ from historical relationships between out-of-school time providers, according to Education Week, because unlike in the past, the partners are sharing a vision for community improvement instead of being driven solely by lack of space or limited finances.

In the District the idea of the building joint-partnerships is not new. Over the last decade, many community partners working with DCPS advocated strongly for a more integrated and effectively coordinated system. This effort came to bear close to 6 years ago. In 2006, DC was one of five cities to begin the implementation of a national pilot project for OST coordination lead by RAND Education and funded by the Wallace Foundation. The three year implementation grant awarded to the District at $8 million, had the goal of developing and improving OST on the system wide level.

During this time the DC Children and Youth Investment Trust (the Trust) lead community partners and city agencies to identify a lack of programming targeted towards middle school aged youth. This finding, lead the Trust to propose the creation of high-quality OST programming, coordinated by a full-time in school coordinator that was piloted in five middle schools .The point of this pilot? “To demonstrate what better coordination and alignment might accomplish”[1].

In the last year of the Wallace Foundation grant DCPS, recognizing the strength of the programming in the pilot schools, decided to scale up the model. Schools became open to community partners during afterschool hours with janitorial and security services centrally coordinated by the DCPS Office of Out of School Time Programming. This same office became responsible for vetting the community partners and most importantly for placing Full-Time After-School coordinators in each school to work with the service providers, principals, teachers, and parents to improve coordination and service delivery. In the last two years, this office took the focus on coordination and quality a step further, initiating work with community partners, DCPS central office, principals and teachers to align what students learned during the school day (newly defined common core standards) with the academic focus and objectives of after school programming.

Since inception, the school-based coordinator model and the work of the Office of Out of School Time Programming has evolved to be a critical component of the District’s out of school time programming infrastructure. By organizing school based services, coordinating with community partners and constantly striving to ensure quality and access, the OSTP has been integral to achieving equitable access to these services.

Fast forward to today’s system of out-of-school time programming and sadly, we do not see the same rosy picture we saw in that last year of the Wallace Foundation/Rand Project implementation.

This change is linked to a new initiative called “Proving What’s Possible” which began in June 2012 when DCPS announced that grants (from an unidentified source within the DCPS budget) would go to 59 schools, with amounts ranging from $10,000 to $490,000 to implement “innovative programming”  that would improve academic achievement through some combo of three specific intervention strategies: “time, technology and talent”. The grants are meant to help accomplish one of DCPS Chancellor Kaya Henderson’s strategic goals for DCPS– to increase proficiency rates in struggling schools by 40% by 2017. 

Approximately 85% of the $10.4 million did go to the 40 lowest performing schools in DCPS (DCFPI 2012) who undoubtedly could use the extra funding to better support student level outcomes.[2]  However, not all of those schools wrote in funding for Out of School activities. While, some schools are pursuing really innovative partnerships, or targeting extended and innovative teaching to higher need students- for the rest- the overall impact remains, in many ways unclear.

Those schools awarded a PWP major grant will not have afterschool programming- and no coordinator unless they wrote this into their grant proposal. For the remaining schools- they are now operating with 3 million fewer dollars to support OST programming, a loss that significantly changed the coordination of services.  This year, there were no afterschool coordinators working in high schools. At the middle and elementary schools rather than one coordinator per school, DCPS was forced to move to a cluster model wherein each coordinator is responsible for facilitating afterschool for 2-3 different schools. PWP essentially dismantled a significant component of the best-practice system of out-of-school time service delivery that the Wallace/Rand project laid out just three years ago. 

Further complicating matters are questions of oversight, impact and quality control. For example, within the PWP grantees there were 13 different extended day programs proposed. The metrics used to assess the impact of interventions (on all three focus areas, time, talent and technology) have yet to be clearly articulated by DCPS. And while innovation can lead to incredible impact, unless there is a clear way to track how this investment has led to improved outcomes, such a rapid change in infrastructure clearly comes with risks and potential costs.

Bottom line: For parents, principals, community organizations and students many questions remain.

Is this meant to be – at least partially – a replacement strategy for OST programs coordinated with CBO’s? If so, what are the expected outcomes? How will all these various programs be evaluated? Is there a sustainability plan for the extended day or after-school models?

Why the elimination of the coordinator positions recommended by the Wallace/Rand/Trust initiative after such a lengthy (and expensive) grant implementation process?

What’s the purpose/method behind any of the various 13 different extended day programs? And what’s the real impact on out of school time program access given the cuts to the OSTP office?

We’d love to hear your experiences – both as community member organizations and parents.  What’s working?  What’s not? Are you partnering with schools -- how is it going? Are you not partnering with schools? Are your children able to access OST programming at your local school? And what are your questions and concerns about all this?

We heard a bit from a number of providers at last week's Quarterly Breakfast with DCPS, but we're sure there are people out there who still have experiences and recommendations to share about the future relationship between DCPS and community based providers. We invite you to share those with us!

If you would like to hear more about DCAYA's work around the out of school time sector,  or would like to submit a comment or set up a meeting, please contact the DCAYA Policy Team.

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[1] Hours of Opportunity Report p. 24

[2] A full list of the awards can be found at DCFPI, here.

SYEP Oversight Re-Cap

The regular Wilson Building press corps was absorbed with transportation issues on Monday afternoon and as a result the general public and the advocacy community did not hear much about the first hearing conducted by the new Committee on Jobs and Workforce Development. While the lack of press attendance at the Summer Youth Employment Program (SYEP) hearing was regrettable there are a lot of issues to report on here in the District and only so many reporters covering the local beat. Fortunately, DCAYA was at the hearing and we thought we would share some of the interesting tidbits.

Council Member McDuffie led the hearing off with a nod to the program’s troubled history stating, “The Department of Employment Services’ Summer Youth Employment Program is one of the most well known programs run by DOES. Unfortunately in the past it has been well known for the wrong reasons, but under the tenure of Director Mallory the program has definitely seen changes for the better.”  Council Member McDuffie’s statement was completely on point. We have come a long way since the days when 20,000+ program participants were warehoused in school cafeterias being paid either for doing nothing or not being paid at all. The amount of positive change that the program has experienced was a major theme of the hearing and many of the witnesses agreed with Council Member McDuffie that the program has indeed changed for the better.

However, a few witnesses at Monday’s hearing dared to ask the question: “Is simply being better good enough”? For instance, DCAYA pointed out in our testimony that while administratively the program has made important strides, it still lacks key programmatic elements that are consistently recognized as signs of quality in youth workforce programming. Among these: a clear mission/vision, defined evaluation metrics and developmentally appropriate program expectations and service delivery strategies that are clearly articulated and disseminated to program partners (in this case the work sites and supervisors).

Martha Ross from the Brookings Metropolitan Policy Project, who has written extensively about youth unemployment in DC, also pointed out several elements of the program that were causes for concern including confusion around primary and secondary program goals, uneven experiences among participants, and a lack of buy- in from the business community. Ross observed that SYEP’s goals of providing income, positive/enriching experiences for youth, and job placements with well-defined skill and employment-related outcomes are all worthy and not necessarily mutually exclusive.  However, in practice, the blending of the goals does tend to lead to “less of a true employment experience and more of an income supplement and developmental experience for the youth, which implies that the employer/host site is less of a supervisor and more of a camp counselor.”   

Council Member McDuffie also challenged the idea that “better” was synonymous with high-quality programming .He stated, “we cannot rest on our laurels” with regard to recent program successes and asked DOES some very tough questions about how they ensure program quality, track participant outcomes, and how SYEP fits into a larger youth workforce system.  This last point is especially important given the testimony of a few host sites, as well as DCAYA that, the six-weeks of programming offered by SYEP was NOT enough time to comprehensively teach young people the occupational skills and knowledge they need to succeed in the labor market. Perhaps one of the strongest articulations of this reality came from Tim Jones, the Teen Program Director from Martha’s Table. In describing the success the teenagers in his program achieved – 22 matriculated into a post-secondary option- Mr. Jones attributed this outcome more to participation in Martha’s Table’s year-round program than the six week SYEP. Paul Cohn from Cohn’s Kitchen testified that SYEP on its own, while valuable, is not enough: “we need greater investment and emphasis on ongoing year long programs.”

We wholeheartedly agree with Tim and Paul’s points. If we want our young people to successfully enter and thrive in the labor market, both in the short and the long term, experiences gained over the summer months must be better connected to year-round opportunities. The opportunities must be both school-based (e.g. academic remediation, internships and career and technical education) and non-school based (e.g. part-time jobs and even unsubsidized full time employment where appropriate). Perhaps Council Member McDuffie said it best as the very beginning of the hearing when he said, “looking at SYEP not just as a summer job for kids or as a way to keep them off the streets but rather but as an important peg in our education and workforce development programming will truly allow us to maximize the potential of SYEP.”

Overall the hearing provided a great overview of the many ways that DOES can continue to improve on the services it offers young people via SYEP and maybe more importantly it brought out SYEP's inherent limitation as a short-term employment program  While this blog post certainly did not capture every piece of testimony or every answer to every question we hope our little re-cap was helpful and We'll continue to work hard to make sure the city does not mistake "better" with good.

Copies of some of the testimony given at Monday’s hearing are available via the DCAYA website. You can watch the full hearing on the Council’s Website here.

To learn more about DCAYA's policy and advocacy around youth workforce development, please contact Policy Analyst, Anne Abbott.

Want Some Pro-Bono Corporate Support?

This post was written by The Advisory Board Company's Community Impact Senior Director Graham McLaughlin. Graham is also one of the newest members of the DCAYA Board of Directors.

In my role as a Senior Director within The Advisory Board Company’s “Community Impact” program I am fortunate to meet with corporate and non-profit leaders as well as keep abreast of the insights of thought leaders in both sectors.

I learn a tremendous amount from these leaders, but I’m continually surprised by one pervasive notion among this group, especially non-profit funders.  Specifically, the belief that in order to thrive non-profits must adopt corporate principles and become more efficient.  As a member of a firm that focuses on best practice insights and technology solutions enabling greater efficiency through data-driven management, I certainly agree with the importance of efficient and effective practices, however, I would argue no one sector has a monopoly in this area.

No broad stroke can be applied to all organizations in a particular sector, but I do think on average my corporate colleagues and I can learn a tremendous amount from well-run non-profits on how to stretch a dollar effectively and build a framework that is purpose and profit maximizing.  At the same time, corporations are relentlessly driven by improving outcomes and effectiveness, and can hopefully provide our non-profit (and political) colleagues support in measuring impact and then investing in areas yielding the most effective outcomes.

The beauty of pro bono work is that it can take this macro-level concept of learning from each other and apply it to solve specific social problems.  The Advisory Board is fortunate to partner with many youth-oriented DC-area non-profits that are tremendous at what they do, and therefore develop skills and leadership abilities in our employees that would take years of corporate experience to obtain, while at the same time also utilizing our areas of expertise to further critical but underdeveloped areas that enable these partners to exponentially increase the scope of impact and overall effectiveness of their mission-driven work.

DC-AYA is one such partner, as our many of its members.  For instance, Advisory Board teams have helped BUILD DC develop a methodology for evaluating potential partnerships as well as the health of current collaborations, recently reviewed and updated the collateral and messaging strategy for Urban Alliance to ensure the organization’s mission was conveyed consistently and effectively across different stakeholder groups, and had a technical team partner with the LatinAmerican Youth Center’s CIO to provide an IT assessment of current and potential systems.

These are only three examples of the many organizations we are proud to have partnered with that count themselves as members of the DC Alliance for Youth Advocates. Due to the mutually beneficial partnerships to date with your peers, and our strong desire to provide access to a brighter future for ALL youth, I am excited to announce our upcoming 2^nd annual Week of Service and with it a call to action if you are in need of skills-based or other volunteering support.

The Advisory Board Company is on pace to donate over 13,000 hours of service this year, with approximately 2,500 of those hours being delivered during the October 1-5th Week of Service.  Examples of impact during the week include a“branding blitz” put on by our strategic marketing and design services teams, our research team dedicating a day to finding best practice answers to strategic questions or issues of concern for non-profits, and numerous groups going out into the community to have a hands-on impact.

If your organization is in need of skills-based or other support during this week (or in general), please do not hesitate to contact me, as our firm is excited to partner with organizations that are excellent at what they do and can use the complementary expertise of our employees to drive positive social impact and mutual professional growth. 

We are excited to continue to learn from the amazing work that is accomplished by our colleagues in the DC non-profit community, and hope that we can provide complementary support in our areas of strength to ensure a mutually beneficial partnership.

Why We Need to Think Beyond Summer

Department of Labor Secretary Hilda Solis declared in a blogpost last week that the country had “turned the corner on youth unemployment.” Her assertion came on the heels of the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ annual report on youth employment which showed an increase in the number of employed youth aged 16- to 24-year-olds both from the previous quarter (2.1 million more youth were employed than in April of 2012) and from last year’s second quarter numbers (employment for 16- to 24-year-olds only rose 1.7 million over the same period in 2011). While more employed young people is undoubtedly good news, this assertion by Secretary Solis fails to take into account the full gravity of the employment issues facing youth.

For starters, the July 2012 unemployment rate for youth was still an abysmal 17.1 percent (the rate for all workers is 8.2 percent). Additionally, the unemployment rate tells us just one part of the story. It only accounts for youth actually in the labor force (those who are working or who are actively seeking employment opportunities), and only 60.5 percent of all youth aged 16-24 were “in” the labor force this summer. This is troubling for two reasons; first that is a full 17 percentage points down from youth labor force participation’s peak in 1989. More importantly, it means there are still hundreds of thousands of discouraged young people who are not bothering to seek out employment at all because they know their chances of finding a job are so low. For young people engaged in other activities like summer school, enrichment classes or even unpaid work experiences, the situation may not be catastrophic. However, for many discouraged workers, particularly low-income youth, this lack of connection to the labor force may well depress their earning potential and employment trajectories for the rest of their lives.

 Secondly, this declaration of success is overly focused on summer employment. Summer jobs, despite their ability to provide an introduction to the world of work and  a much needed paycheck, are not a panacea to the nation’s youth unemployment woes. Gaining work experience is certainly an essential part of a young person’s development; however, short-term employment experiences have been shown to have many more benefits (increased graduation rates and higher post-secondary enrollment) to young people particularly when they build off of what an individual does with the rest of his/her year. For instance, summer jobs where students can apply the skills and knowledge they have gained during the school year (in either high school or college) and explore career fields they are interested in based on previous coursework will do more to aide in future decisions than simply working in an entry-level job. That is not to say that there are not important skills and behaviors to be learned through all forms of employment, just that certain types of summer experiences can give young people far more than just a paycheck. This is especially important for low-income teenagers, who often lack exposure to different career fields and links to the labor market, and who are at an especially high risk for not graduating high school.

 Furthermore, while students often relish the opportunity to have a job that starts and stops with their academic schedule, the same is not true for young people who are not connected to educational opportunities. Out-of-school 16-to 24-year-olds benefit little from employment that only lasts a few months. Certainly, a paycheck for three months is favorable to no paycheck at all, but out-of-school youth require self-sustaining wages that are more consistent than seasonal paychecks. This is true for everyone from college graduates to high-school dropouts.

 Youth across the board are fairing terribly in the job market, and this will affect them for years to come. The outlook is especially bleak for the 6.4 million “disconnected” youth who are not connected to education or the workforce. College educated young people are faring better than their non-college educated peers, but they are graduating with mountains of student loan debt and likely limited work experience if they have graduated within the last few years. The SummerJobs+ initiative was a good start to getting young people connected to the world of work, but the nation needs to strategically invest in larger and longer term interventions if we want our population of 16- to 24-year-olds to learn new skills, gain work experience and ultimately expand their presence and success in the labor market. A slight uptick in the number of youth employed in the summer is cause for celebration, but declaring that we have “turned a corner” is premature.

Let's Hear it for the Arts!

A Project Create student shows off her work!

We’ve talked (and written!) a lot this summer on generally why summer programming is such an important component of youth development. This week though, we’re going to focus in on why one particular area of programming is so essential in helping young people become healthy and productive adults. Arts education and enrichment are an essential piece of the summer programming pie, and we think they deserve some time in the spotlight!

For starters, “the arts” is a very broad classification and can involve anything from learning to play a musical instrument to growing an appreciation for the work and creativity that went into all those paintings, sketches, and sculptures that line the walls of the Smithsonians to creating and performing spoken word. 

Arts programming can involve advanced instruction in one specific element or a basic introduction to a range of different fields. Summer provides an especially exciting experience for many young people to get involved in these sorts of activities as often they do not have the opportunity to do so during the school year.Through arts programming, students discover their potential to achieve and unleash their natural talents. 

                                         Students at Sitar Arts Center put on a production of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat!

Activities like staging plays, musicals and dance recitals teach participants valuable skills like respect, accountability, teamwork, and conflict resolution. Visual arts enrichment opportunities, whether they're team based (like creating a mural) or all about self-expression help young people create positive cultural and self-identities and can also help foster of sense of belonging which we know from mountains of research, are essential components of positive youth development.  Furthermore, arts and cultural programming expose young people to caring adult mentors who can not only teach specific artistic skills and methods, but can also serve as role models who demonstrate how to achieve goals. Many of our city’s summer arts programs are as much about building life skills as they are about building artistic skills (just think about all the communication skills you learned after your first group project!) and these are invaluable resources to our city.

A mentor leads youth through a discussion on a piece of his work at Life Pieces to Masterpieces.