The landscape of education and learning has changed. In times of depleted funding and budget cuts, PASA and the Providence community are working collectively to leverage and maximize local resources to better serve our youth.
PASA believes that in order to maximize youth outcomes and ensure that our young people succeed, schools,after-school programs, and the expanded learning field must work together to support youth.
Youth development and youth voice are at the center of everything that PASA does, and we work toward three primary outcomes to ensure our overall success:
- Youth: supporting students’ academic success and improving social and emotional competencies
- Program: focusing on improvements in the quality of programming, the number of youth served regularly, and retention
- System: looking toward successful partnerships and leveraging funding to create a more efficient systems building effort that’s long lasting
Public/Private Ventures, a nonprofit organization that assesses and evaluates community programming to identify and replicate effective programs, conducted a three-year, two-part, quasi-experimental evaluation of the AfterZone, supported by the Wallace Foundation.
Their study consisted of an implementation and quality study of the structure and operations of the AfterZone model, and a participation and outcomes study designed to examine the patterns of youth participation in the AfterZone and the effects of participation on developmental outcomes compared with a group of non-participants.
The full results of each part of the study can be read below, but P/PV found that, when compared to nonparticipating peers, AfterZone youth:
- Had 25% fewer school absences and had math grades that are 1/3 of a grade higher (e.g., a B- to a B)
- Those students who attend 32 or more days of the AfterZone per year had higher scores on standardized math tests, had higher math, ELA and science GPAs, and reported greater school connectedness
- Those students who reported high levels of engagement in the AfterZone thought more about their future, had better social skills, and demonstrated more positive behavior
AfterZones: Creating a Citywide System to Support and Sustain High-Quality After-School Programs
Download this AfterZone Impacts Infographic
PASA has created this snapshot tool that culls data from the Providence Public School District, as well as long-term data collected by PASA about our AfterZone participants. This data shows that regular participation in AfterZone programs has considerable impacts on chronic absenteeism and high school graduation rates.
