Evaluation and my Org

 

I work for New Urban Arts, specifically as their Site Director for NUA Knights, an expansion program at Central High school that started in 2017. This partnership was able to come to fruition with the funds from a 21st Century Community Learning Center (21st CCLC) grant. A lot of organizations in RI have 21st CCLC grants across all youth ages and types of programs from YMCA's to places like New Urban Arts. It's a competitive grant since funding has increased very little (if at all) for these grants and organizational needs over the years have increased. I've, unfortunately, seen many great youth-serving orgs lose crucial funding from 21st CCLC because of this. It's very nerve-wracking every five years when the grant is up and you must rewrite and submit a new application. Especially when it is the main, and biggest, the funding stream for your programs like it is for my programs at NUA Knights (we were luckily just awarded the grant again for another 5 years 🎉).

While you're in those 5 years, 21st CCLC has a way to observe and evaluate the quality of your programs. It is called the RIPQA, Rhode Island Program Quality Assessment, which was adopted and modified from other states using similar tools. There are two main parts to this, Form A and Form B. Form A is an observation tool that assesses if the programs offer a Safe, Supportive, Interactive and Engaging environment for young people. And Form B evaluates the organization itself on; Family and Civic Engagement, Staffing and Professional Development, and Program Leadership. 

While this is mandatory for programs with this grant I understand its importance but do feel it can often be surface level if an organization is not using it right. First, both Form A and Form B require the organization to form a team of key stakeholders to observe and evaluate the programs. Personally, I believe this needs to involve majority youth voices who are involved in the programs but I find that often does not happen, and are more adults in the space. But, if you are having the adults in the space evaluate how they run programs are you getting non-bias information? I think there could be a lot more evaluating of the evaluation (haha) tool to see if we're getting information from this to inform organizations on how to best serve young people. 

PASA (Providence After School Alliance) posted an article about the Value of RIPQA that you can read here if you want another opinion as well.