Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

Alongside development of evidence-based practices of programming for youth, there is growing attention to the simple fact that only the youth who access programs are those that stand to benefit. Despite public commandments and resources to develop and expand such programs, few models of city systems exist that can centrally identify the breadth of youth programming options, and link to information on youth that are--and, critically, are not-- engaged with programs that can support their academic and socioemotional development. This new work develops a way to use such systems to not only describe present-day access gaps, but also analytically identify how programmatic offerings can be reshaped at a city-scale to improve multifaceted goals of promoting accessibility to focal populations.

This work is developed in the context of the Chapin Hall Collaborative, which is a research-practice partnership of eight large non-profits and public agencies that both operate and fund youth programs in Chicago. These agencies collectively serve over 78,000 youth in Chicago each year in diverse program opportunities including mentoring programs, academic enrichment, apprenticeships, homework help, and safe spaces. In particular, groups of these programs represent multi-partner, city-scale efforts to reach specific youth subpopulations with a range of specific program styles. Key practical questions involve understanding (1) what program types and locations can most successfully engage underrepresented youth populations, which are often male, minority, and academically lower-performing; and (2) where to continue to expand programming that is already promising for reaching specific populations.

Within the Collaborative, Chapin Hall establishes the data requirements to answer these questions by linking youth program participation records to administrative data representing individual-level school, arrest, and child welfare records. With this linked administrative data set and partnerships within the Collaborative, this work involves three integrated components to address access gaps:

1. Collaboratively identifying goals and constraints. Chapin Hall researchers work with partners to identify and articulate specific goals and constraints related to accessibility, considering (a) which youth can be effectively served based on program logic models, (b) the service mission of the organization; and (c) resource or other logistical constraints that define the limits of how programming can be extended.
2. Analysis of historic patterns of program uptake. Discrete choice models are used to identify the likelihood of program uptake as a function of information including program features, youth characteristics, transportation accessibility (from both school and home), and neighborhood safety, using historical data on multiple years of program operations. Parsimonious, conditional logit models are used to ensure computational feasibility given the hundreds of options available to tens of thousands of students choosing each year.
3. Optimization algorithms used to recommend changes to program supply. Tailored to the nature of the planning problem, this step variously involves running simulations to suggest which new program types and locations may be most promising for improving accessibility given existing supply; or application of simulated annealing optimization to suggest how funding for slots could be balanced among existing programs.