Description:
During the 2012-2013 program year, the Nashville After Zone Alliance (NAZA) entered its fourth year in partnership with the David P. Weikart Center for Youth Program Quality (Weikart Center) to continue the implementation of a quality improvement system in afterschool programs for two different geographical zones within the city of Nashville--the Northeast Zone and the South Central Zone. During the 2012-2013 programming year, another zone was added, the Northwest Zone, bringing nine additional sites into the quality improvement system. This Quality Improvement model was based on the Youth Program Quality Intervention, an assessment-driven continuous improvement process designed to: (a) build managers' continuous quality improvement skills; (b) increase the quality of instructional practices delivered in afterschool programs; and, ultimately, (c) increase students' engagement with program content and opportunities for skill-building. Both the Northeast Zone and the South Central Zone have participated in this process over the course of several years. This year, the Northeast Zone is participating in its fourth year of the quality improvement system (pilot 2010). NAZA chose to expand the intervention to the South Central Zone when it launched in the spring semester of 2011 and in 2012 NAZA further expanded its quality improvement initiative by adding the Northwest Zone. Each year, sites in each Zone collect data in both the fall and spring semesters. Local Coach/Assessors, certified annually by the Weikart Center, work with the program sites to collect the data as external assessors and work with their assigned sites to implement elements of the Youth Program Quality Intervention (YPQI). Table 1 shows each Zone's participation in the quality improvement process over the past three years. This report is focused on the data collected for the 2012-2013 program year for the three zones. (author abstract)
Resource Type:
Reports & Papers
Country:
United States
State(s)/Territories/Tribal Nation(s):
Tennessee