Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

Nearly 20 percent of our students participate in afterschool programs, yet too often afterschool programming is divorced from children’s formal education[1]. One explanation is that most communities have one school system, yet have numerous public and private afterschool programs—which operate independently from school systems. The Wallace Foundation has funded efforts to strengthen data systems to connect school districts and afterschool providers, thereby supporting high-quality afterschool programs for low-income youth. As part of its Afterschool System Building initiative, Wallace funded eight cities to improve their afterschool systems, to increase afterschool program availability and quality, and to generate actionable information for afterschool program managers, providers, funders, and others. Wallace supported cities’ efforts through grants and technical assistance; it also funded a study about cities’ plans, designs, implementation and use of afterschool data systems.

This paper summarizes results from the four-year study (completed in 2016), which included regular site visits and interviews with afterschool system leaders, stakeholders, and providers; participation in annual network-wide meetings; observations of professional development sessions; and review of city documents. It summarizes findings about (1) how the funded cities approached afterschool data system building; (2) how they operated their data systems; and (3) how they used the data collected to improve their afterschool systems.

Findings

The eight cities established their respective management information systems (MIS) to support increased data use, by building working coalitions across public, philanthropic, and non-profit sectors, including municipal organizations, school districts, foundations, afterschool programs, and other community stakeholders. Cities had to make decisions about technology, specific data elements and data collection, and human resource capacity building. Managing complex data systems required continued attention to three foundational dimensions: functional technology in place, investments in human capital that matched system needs, and policies and practices that supported—and routinized—data use.

When the initiative began, some data use was evident, primarily for accountability and compliance purposes.[2] The cities progressed in how they used system-level data, by expanding how data were used across the system and by engaging providers more systematically and purposefully in using data for multiple purposes. Widening data use reflected shifts toward more nuanced and locally useful functions that applied to program activities and processes—substantially beyond compliance and accountability purposes. Expanded data use also reflected deeper understanding and increasing use of data to inform program strategy.

Afterschool data systems spanning sectors and organizations are complex by definition, and continued viability meant managing such challenges as turnover in both frontline program staff and system leaders, and sustaining providers’ motivation to learn about and use data more effectively. Increased technical capacity to collect more data also required setting priorities about which specific data elements mattered most; simultaneously, greater sophistication about data meant increased data-focused demands from funders and other key audiences. The paper concludes with recommendations for policy makers about data use in this context.

[1] See https://www.afterschoolalliance.org/documents/AA3PM-2014/AA3PM_Key_Findings.pdf

[2] Gerstein, A. (2015). Shifting the norms: From data for compliance to data for strategy. Gardner Center Perspectives. Palo Alto, CA: The Gardner Center.