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More About PTE Additional Resources & Information The assessment has been completed on the first two years of the project.  You can read the full report, the executive summary, and the addendum. This Powerpoint presentation features participants and coaches discussing their experiences in the PTE Project.  It also provides an overview of the project's objectives and methodology. The Executive Summary summarizes the findings from the assessment of Years One and Two. The Fact Sheet for Year Three lists the participant sites and explains the chosen content strand.

Pathway to Excellence Project

The Pathway to Excellence (PTE) Project is a four year project made possible by a grant awarded to School’s Out Washington (SOWA) from The Atlantic Philanthropies beginning in 2007. The overarching goal of the project is to plan, implement and evaluate professional development within the field of afterschool and youth development (AYD). The main objective of the project is to recruit and develop learning communities from across the Pacific Northwest to participate in SOWA’s annual "The Bridge from School to Afterschool and Back Conference" (Bridge) and to receive site-based coaching throughout the year. Program participants attend content specific sessions at Bridge, acquire specific ideas and activities on how to better support children and youth in their programs, and receive on-site coaching on these ideas. Those programs receive training and support throughout the year to implement what they have learned at the conference.

The Year 4 Content Strand is "Addressing Equity & Diversity in Afterschool and Youth Programs".  In the 2010-2011 academic year, staff from the Equity and Diversity in After School and Youth Programs Initiative will work with the Pathway to Excellence project by providing technical assistance, coaching and training to the organization’s staff and afterschool coaches, as well as on-the-ground practitioners in the state.  Our overall goal of this work is to help them create afterschool and youth programs that embrace equity and are truly inclusive to all the youth they serve. Year Four will serve programs in three geographical areas: Spokane, the greater Seattle area, and Pierce County.

In order to accomplish the PTE Project goals, SOWA identified the following key activities: recruit afterschool providers by region who are interested in professional development opportunities; recruit experienced providers by region to serve as coaches; partner providers and coaches to attend conference training sessions together; work with coach/provider teams to develop year-long plans to implement conference learnings; facilitate in-person and online communication within and across teams; provide ongoing support to coaches; evaluate impact of model on improvement in afterschool providers’ practice; create a conference model training guidebook – to be completed in year three; train regional partners on training model – to be completed in year four; and promote the model through public awareness, outreach, media, websites and newsletters.

Each year of the PTE Project focuses on relevant content areas to meet the ever-evolving needs of the AYD field. For Year One and Year Two, the focus was on English Language Learners (ELLs).  For Year Three, we partnered with content experts from Healthy Directions, a non-profit organization focused on children and youth health initiatives.  Their Healthy Children, Healthy Futures (HCHF) curriculum is a healthy eating and physical activity child and parent advocacy program. The project was originally developed by Strang Cancer Prevention Center and founding supporter, MetLife Foundation, and is based out of New York.

SOWA is also working with Organizational Research Services (ORS), a leading national organization that serves non-profits in the areas of outcome-based planning and evaluation, to assess and evaluation the findings and outcomes from the PTE Project. SOWA and ORS coordinated to design a comprehensive evaluation system and are now implementing that system to track child outcomes as a direct result of each site’s participation in the PTE Project. An executive summary has been released for Years One and Two.

THE PATHWAY TO EXCELLENCE MODEL IN YEARS ONE AND TWO

The Pathway to Excellence model consists of four professional development “components” for afterschool staff:  (1) an initial training opportunity, (2) ongoing coaching, (3) participation in a peer learning community and (4) additional supports (e.g., online discussion boards).

During each of the first  two years of the PTE Project, SOWA provided professional development to strengthen the capacity of afterschool programs that support English language learners (ELLs).  SOWA implemented each of the four Pathway to Excellence model components in 2007-09 as follows:

Training.  SOWA hired The Center for Afterschool Education (The Center), experts in both the field of English language learning and afterschool education, to facilitate three training sessions to participating afterschool staff over the course of one and a half days at a regional conference for afterschool providers called The Bridge from School to Afterschool and Back Conference.  The Center provided all training participants with their own set of resource materials to take back and use in their programs following the conference, including two resource books describing relevant techniques and activities and a companion CD containing electronic versions of activity materials that could be adapted and printed. 

Coaching.  Each program received regular onsite visits and communication from coaches with experience in providing youth programming and serving diverse populations.  Coach contacts began just prior to or following the training for an anticipated average of six hours per month until May or June of the academic year.  The format of the site visits varied based on the availability, preferences and stated needs of afterschool program staff, but typically included a combination of lesson planning, one-on-one consultation and “problem solving,” modeling, observation and feedback. During their site visits, coaches also provided additional training for those staff who had attended the conference, as well as initial training for other program staff, volunteers or members of the agencies that offer afterschool programming.

Learning Communities.  The program representatives who attended the conference also participated in regional Learning Community meetings.  One to two staff (those who participated in the training) attended quarterly meetings facilitated by the coach and/or their peers.  The format of these meetings varied based on the style of the coach and the preferences of group members. They included opportunities for sharing activities and resources, problem solving related to the content strand and networking.
 
Online Discussion Board.  The Center supported and managed an online discussion board for SOWA the first year, after which SOWA designed and managed online discussion board itself using Yahoo! Groups.  Coaches encouraged program staff to post to and read the online discussion board messages regularly.  Postings ranged from posed questions regarding individual program challenges to requests for or descriptions of activity ideas and resources.

The initial evaluation of Years One and Two showed the following results highlights:

• Training participants increased their knowledge and use of skills related to English language learning (ELL) regardless of their exposure to other model components, and maintained these changes over the school year.
• The model resulted in program-level changes that help to institutionalize supports for English language learners. Although there are considerable limitations to any conclusions that can be made about the impact of the model on student engagement outcomes based on this evaluation design, results indicate that students in programs that participated in the “full model” became more engaged in their programs over the course of the year.

Evaluation data also show the unique contribution of coaching, resource materials and Learning Community components of the model:

•  In particular, Learning Community participants found the coaching a strong component of the model.
•  Quality resource materials can support sustained improvements in knowledge and skills from the conference, ultimately supporting program-level changes.
•  The Learning Community component of the model promoted program networking and sharing of resources and best practices, which also supported program-level changes.