Cities Building After-School Systems

With many cities expressing interest in afterschool system-building and more useful information becoming available, this Wallace Perspective offers a digest of the latest thinking on how to build and sustain an afterschool system, along with what challenges and opportunities lie ahead for this promising field. The report focuses on the four components of system-building that current evidence and experience suggest are essential:

Strong leadership from major players: There is no substitute for a committed mayor or superintendent, but city agencies, private funders, schools, program providers and families all need to “own” the effort to some degree to ensure long-term success.
Coordination that fits local context: A system’s coordinating entity can be a single public agency, multiple agencies working together, a nonprofit intermediary or a network of partners, depending on local needs.
Effective use of data: Large-scale data gathering and sharing takes both technology to track and organize information and a skilled staff to interpret and act upon it.
A comprehensive approach to quality: Cities must decide upon their definition of quality, how “high stakes” to make their assessments of the quality of individual programs and how to support continuous program improvement.

Points of Interest

Building strong afterschool systems in cities requires coordination among institutions involved and rests on four key elements: leadership from all the major players, a coordinating entity, use of data and efforts to bolster program quality.
Leadership, coordination, data, quality: the four elements that compose successful #afterschool systems
Coordination of afterschool systems varies city by city and can be the responsibility of entities ranging from a single government agency or a coordinating council to a nonprofit intermediary.
There’s no one-size-fits-all approach to coordinating citywide #afterschool systems.
Data has many uses in afterschool systems. A few: assessing the supply of—and demand for—programming; recruiting and retaining students; and assessing program quality.
How do data help #afterschool systems? Many ways, including recruiting students and assessing program quality.

Supplementary Materials

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Is Citywide Afterschool Coordination Going Nationwide? An Exploratory Study in Large Cities	https://www.wallacefoundation.org/knowledge-center/Pages/Citywide-Afterschool-Coordination-Going-Nationwide-An-Exploratory-Study-in-Large-Cities.aspx	Is Citywide Afterschool Coordination Going Nationwide? An Exploratory Study in Large Cities	Read this study, which finds that at least 77 of the nation’s largest cities coordinate after-school programming.	54092405-3ed7-43af-891b-ab77fa4f2517	Report	<img alt="Is Citywide Afterschool Coordination Going Nationwide: An Exploratory Study in Large Cities" src="/knowledge-center/PublishingImages/Is-Citywide-Afterschool-Coordination-Going-Nationwide-b.jpg" style="BORDER:0px solid;" /> <img alt="Is Citywide Afterschool Coordination Going Nationwide: An Exploratory Study in Large Cities" src="/knowledge-center/PublishingImages/Is-Citywide-Afterschool-Coordination-Going-Nationwide-a.jpg" style="BORDER:0px solid;" />
Building Citywide Systems for Quality: A Guide and Case Studies for Afterschool Leaders	https://www.wallacefoundation.org/knowledge-center/Pages/Building-Citywide-Systems-for-Quality-A-Guide-and-Case-Studies-for-Afterschool-Leaders.aspx	Building Citywide Systems for Quality: A Guide and Case Studies for Afterschool Leaders	Learn how after-school systems improve when cities and intermediaries work with providers across an entire neighborhood, city or region to build quality across a system.	54092405-3ed7-43af-891b-ab77fa4f2517	Report	<img alt="Building Citywide Systems for Quality: A Guide and Case Studies" src="/knowledge-center/PublishingImages/Building-Citywide-Systems-for-Quality-A-Guide-and-Case-Studies-for-Afterschool-Leaders-b.jpg" style="BORDER:0px solid;" /> <img alt="Building Citywide Systems for Quality: A Guide and Case Studies" src="/knowledge-center/PublishingImages/Building-Citywide-Systems-for-Quality-A-Guide-and-Case-Studies-for-Afterschool-Leaders-a.jpg" style="BORDER:0px solid;" />
Hours of Opportunity: Lessons from Five Cities on Building Systems to Improve After-School, Summer, and Other Out-of-School-Time Programs (Volumes I, II and III)	https://www.wallacefoundation.org/knowledge-center/Pages/Hours-of-Opportunity-Volumes-I-II-III.aspx	Hours of Opportunity: Lessons from Five Cities on Building Systems to Improve After-School, Summer, and Other Out-of-School-Time Programs (Volumes I, II and III)	Read a report that finds both promise and challenges in a citywide approach to improving the quality and availability of after-school programs.	54092405-3ed7-43af-891b-ab77fa4f2517	Report	<img alt="Hours of Opportunity: Lessons from Five Cities on Building Systems to Improve After-School, Summer, and Other Out-of-School-Tim" src="/knowledge-center/PublishingImages/hours-of-opportunity-volumes-I-B.jpg" style="BORDER:0px solid;" /> <img alt="" src="/knowledge-center/PublishingImages/hours-of-opportunity-volumes-I-A.jpg" style="BORDER:0px solid;" />

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