Quality Improvement Programs

At School's Out, we believe that quality doesn’t occur by accident. Some people may have a natural talent for connecting with youth or organizing fun activities, but ensuring that school-age children and youth are getting the best possible experience from a program takes intentionality.

Much research has been done in recent years to identify the program components that correlate to better outcomes for kids in one aspect or another. The focus of this research may be anything from academic outcomes to social/emotional health to increased attendance rates to generally positive experience. Some program components, like staff-youth relationships, appear as key items across several quality studies. Others seem to have implications for only specific program outcomes.

Once a program identifies a tool, a self-improvement process generally follows that looks something like this:

School's Out is familiar with several common assessment tools and can provide support to programs at all points of this process. For more information on program improvement process resources available through School's Out, contact Krista Galloway.