School-Age

Program Management
Evaluation for Continuous
Improvement
In this lesson, you will learn about the importance of evaluation as a way to
know whether the services you provide to school-age children and youth in
your program are going well and what aspects of your practice and program
need improvement.

Objectives
Learn about the importance of working together with families,
colleagues, and supervisors to evaluate your practices and
program.
Examine the importance of using program evaluation data to
improve program outcomes for school-age children and families.
Reflect on what it means to work towards continuous program
quality improvement.

 Learn

Know
Throughout this course, you have learned about what program management
means for a school-age staff member. You have learned about the roles and
responsibilities you assume on a day-to-day basis, the importance of
collaborating with others, the importance of establishing and nurturing
partnerships with families, and the significance of program management for
program quality. Working with school-age children and their families means
that you will have impressionable minds watching, listening, and learning
from you. It means that you will interact with family members who should be
your partners along the way. And it means that you will work with colleagues
to strive for high-quality care.
Throughout this process, how will you be able to know whether you are
indeed providing high-quality services for children and families in your care?
How are you currently determining whether you are doing a good job with
school-age children in your care? Answers to these questions are what
program evaluation is all about.

Program Evaluation
Program evaluation is necessary in order to know whether or not a program
is doing what it says it is doing. Program evaluation is typically completed on
an annual basis in order to learn if the program is effectively meeting its
goals. The findings of the program evaluation are typically shared with all the
program's stakeholders: families, staff, and in some cases, the community.

What does this mean for you?

Evaluation of practice also can be done more frequently, and this involves all
the things you do as a school-age staff member with children and families on
a daily basis. In your daily work with school-age children, you plan
experiences, activities, routines, and transitions. You carefully select
materials and purposefully organize your environment so that it promotes
optimum growth and development. As you implement your plans, it is
important to look back and review what actually happened during a certain
day, a certain week, or a period of time. Doing that allows you to take into
consideration important observations that tell you if things went well, or not
so well and therefore need modified. For example, you may notice which
activities school-age children were engaged in, whether children seemed to
enjoy working with the materials, or if routines and transitions were smooth
or chaotic. This kind of information can help you make decisions about
maintaining or changing transitions, materials, or activities and experiences.

Collaborating with Others for Program Evaluation

Leaders in your program including T&CSs and Program Managers, work with
you and families to collect relevant data about program outcomes, analyze it,
and use the findings to make changes that will improve overall program
quality. Program relevant data might include the results of a survey given to
family members asking them how well the program is meeting their child’s
and family’s needs, that month’s curriculum and activity plans, or evidence
from children’s portfolios or assessments that they are meeting
developmental goals. T&CSs and Program Managers use this information to
create a formal report or description of the program for those outside the
program who are interested partners (families, advisory board members,
etc.).
Formative Evaluation
Formative evaluation is used during the daily operation of the program to
examine ongoing processes and to help improve the program. A formative
evaluation examines day-to-day successes and challenges. It is often used
when programs are just starting or a new policy has just been put into effect.
Formative evaluation provides a fast feedback loop to influence program
decisions and make necessary changes.

For example, your program T&CS observes two activity areas each afternoon
during your transition to playground time and leaves a brief note
summarizing her observation in each staff member’s mailbox. Both of these
activity areas were starting a new routine at playground time, and you and
your colleague wanted your T&CS to observe the transition several times to
provide feedback about how it was working. At the end of two weeks, your
T&CS meets with you and your colleague to discuss her observations over
that period and to help you decide if the new routine was working well for
the children and staff.

Summative Evaluation
A summative evaluation is typically conducted at the end of a program or
after a program has been in existence for some time. The summative
evaluation is often shared with those outside the program (advisory board,
interagency council, funders) to provide data about the effectiveness of the
program.

For example, each July your program manager writes an evaluation report. In
it, she summarizes child data, family event data, child and family satisfaction
data, and the overall program budget report. This report also highlights
progress on the program’s goals (e.g., increase the number of family
volunteers on school-age field trips). In many ways a summative evaluation
report may be of interest to anyone affiliated with the program, but is also of
importance to individuals outside the program.

Although a summative evaluation report might only be written and shared

once per year, the information that is used to create the report is collected
across the year at many different points and includes many different
stakeholders (e.g., staff, families, advisory board members).

Evaluations may be conducted by a staff member who is internal to the

program (e.g., T&CSs, Program Managers) or the evaluation may be
conducted by someone who is external to the program (e.g., paid consultant,
higher-education personnel or state licensing representative with expertise
in conducting program evaluations).
What are Indicators of Effective Program Evaluation?
You should familiarize yourself with the following indicators of effective
program evaluation as stated by the National Association for the Education
of Young Children (NAEYC), the National Association of Early Childhood
Specialists in State Departments of Education (NAECS/SDE) (2009), and the
National Afterschool Association (NAA, 2011):

Evaluation is used for continuous improvement of your practice.

Your goals for children become the guide for the evaluation.
Evaluations are done by well-trained individuals; for example, your
program leaders (T&CSs and Program Managers) or individual
experts who are external to your program.
Multiple sources of data are used for the purposes of the
evaluation.
In the process of evaluation, children's gains over time are
emphasized.
The results of the evaluation are shared with others in the
program.
Evaluations promote collaboration between school-age staff
members, T&CSs and Program Managers, family members, and
members of the community.
Evaluations are based on current theories, research, and policies.

Planning Evaluation for Improvement

Planning involves thinking ahead about what you want to do and how you
will do it. When planning for the purpose of evaluating your practices, you
need to be thoughtful about the purpose of your evaluation. Being clear
about the purpose of your evaluation will help drive the types of information
you gather, the questions you ask, the way you time your gathering of
information, and the individuals that will be involved in the process.
Ultimately, the information you collect will enable you to make decisions
about things that you are doing well and things that need to be changed or
improved.

For example, you may want to get feedback about how materials are used in
your program, how experiences and activities involve and engage each
school-age child and youth, how routines and events are carried out, or
whether families in your program feel welcomed. You will work with your
T&CS or Program Manager, as their support will be invaluable throughout
this process. They can help you identify and clarify aspects of your practice
that you may want to improve, make a plan to collect the information you
need, and then use that information to improve your practices with children
and families. Your T&CS or Program Manager can help you select the best
ways to gather accurate information relevant to your question, and help you
analyze that information to make informed next steps. For example, if you
are interested in understanding whether families feel welcomed in your
classroom, your T&CS might suggest a small anonymous family survey, with
well-crafted questions, and/or they may conduct a detailed observation of
how families interact with you while dropping off or picking up their child.
You can then review this information together and see what within this area
of your practice is working well and identify strategies for improvement.

Striving for Continuous Quality Improvement

You should work with your T&CSs and Program Managers to improve your
daily work with school-age children and families in your care. You should also
collaborate with these program leaders to assist with any activities that are
related to your program’s quality improvement. Staff members who are
committed to consciously improving services to children, youth, and families
should demonstrate an openness to learning new knowledge and skills.

Continuous quality improvement entails:

A commitment to lifelong learning

Program changes that result in better quality care
Self-reflection about daily practices with school-age children and
families
Shared leadership
Collaboration with fellow staff members and program
administration

With the leadership of your T&CSs and Program Managers, you should strive
for high-quality services and continuous improvement. Excellence within
yourself contributes to your program’s success and growth.


 See
 Do
In your daily work with school-age children and youth, you can do the
following when it comes to using information to evaluate your own practices
and ultimately your program:

Identify the good things and the not-so-good things that happen in
your program each day. For example, you may notice that there
may not be a wide variety of writing materials (journals, pens,
pencils, postcards, unlined paper, index cards, etc.) available for
school-age children in your program to be engaged in the writing
area.
Be purposeful and intentional when designing experiences and
choosing materials for school-age children in your care. Be flexible
and willing to make changes in your environment, materials, or
routines, based on what you learn or observe about each school-
age child.
It’s important to know whether families of school-age children in
your program feel welcome and supported. You can use your
program’s or curriculum’s goals as a way to know whether you are
doing well when it comes to working with families and then make
changes if needed.
Use your program’s goals as a component of program evaluation.
Your program goals should drive your planning of experiences and
activities. You should also keep these goals in mind when
determining whether school-age children are developing and
progressing.

 Explore
Take some time to review the resources in the Program Evaluation activity,
then think of ways that you can assist with your program’s approach to
quality improvement. Share and discuss your responses with your coach,
trainer, or administrator.
 Program Evaluation
Think of ways to bring quality improvements to your program

 Required: Complete and review this document with your trainer,

supervisor, or administrator

 Apply

An important and challenging part of your trainer’s or administrator job is

keeping you and your colleagues motivated in your work with children and
families. Use the tip sheet, Get Your Staff Motivated from the National After
School Association, to get ideas about how you can motivate your co-workers
with your words and actions to improve your practice.

Get Your Staff Motivated

Consider ways you and your co-workers can stay motivated

GLOSSARY
Continuous quality improvement:
An ongoing process that ensures programs are systematically and
intentionally improving services and increasing positive outcomes

 Demonstrate

Q1 Which of the following is not a strategy for improving services to

children and families? *

Assume families feel welcomed and supported in your program

because there are no complaints.
Commitment to lifelong learning.
Self-reflection about daily practices.
Collaboration with fellow providers and program administration.
Q2 You and your colleague are introducing a new playground routine
with the school-age children in your care. A parent asks how you
will determine if this new routine is working. What do you say? *

“This is the way we will be handling playground time going forward.

It will work out great.”
“We’ll know in a few months if this new routine is working well.”
“My colleague and I will talk in the next few days and decide if we
will continue this new playground routine.”
“Our T&CS will be observing our program several times each
afternoon during our playground routine and give us a brief
summary of her observations. It will be good to have feedback
about how the new routine is working.”

Q3 Which of the following is an indicator of effective program

evaluation? *

The results of the evaluation are shared with others in the

program.
Children’s gains over time are emphasized.
Evaluations are completed by well-trained people such as program
leaders or experts who are external to your program.
All of these

References & Resources

Carran, D. T. (2009). Early Childhood Program Evaluation. In J. M. Taylor, J.
R. McGowan, & T. Linder (Eds.), The Program Administrator's Guide to
Early Childhood Special Education (pp. 307-335). Baltimore: Paul H.
Brookes Publishing Co.
Feeney, S. (2010). Ethics Today in Early Care and Education: Review,
reflection, and the future. Young Children, 65(2), 72-77.
Feeney, S., Freeman, N. K., & Pizzolongo, P. (2012). Ethics and the Early
Childhood Educator: Using the NAEYC code (2nd ed.). Washington, DC:
National Association for the Education of Young Children.
Illinois State Board of Education Early Childhood Division. Continuous
Quality Improvement Plan (CQIP) for Early Childhood Environment
Rating Scale-R (ECERS-R). https://www.isbe.net/Documents/cqip-ecers-
sample-plan.pdf
Johnson, J. (2010). Keeping Your Smile: Caring for children with joy, love,
and intention. St. Paul, MN: Redleaf Press.
National Afterschool Association (2011). Core Knowledge and
Competencies for Afterschool and Youth Development Professionals.
http://www.naaweb.org/images/pdf/NAA_Final_Print.pdf
National Association for the Education of Young Children. (2011). NAEYC
Position Statement: Code of ethical conduct and statement of
commitment.
http://www.naeyc.org/positionstatements/ethical_conduct
National Association for the Education of Young Children and National
Association of Early Childhood Specialists in State Departments of
Education. (2003). Early Childhood Curriculum, Assessment, and
Program Evaluation: Building an effective, accountable system in
programs for children birth through age 8. Position Statement with
Expanded Resources.
https://www.naeyc.org/files/naeyc/file/positions/CAPEexpand.pdf
National Association for the Education of Young Children and National
Association of Early Childhood Specialists in State Departments of
Education. (2009). Where We Stand on Curriculum, Assessment, and
Program Evaluation.
https://www.naeyc.org/files/naeyc/file/positions/StandCurrAss.pdf
Simon, F. (2015). Look Up and Out to Lead: 20/20 vision for effective
leadership. Young Children, 70(2), 18-24.
Schweikert, G. (2014). Winning Ways for Early Childhood Professionals:
Partnering with families. St. Paul, MN: Redleaf Press.