During the summer and fall of 2015, RFA hosted three Learning Community Workshops to provide opportunities for Philadelphia’s 21st CCLC providers to further discuss the findings from the “citywide” report as well as their implications for practice. The Learning Community Workshops focused on program quality, an area that the OST research base cites as critical for impacting student outcomes.2 Each Workshop tackled a particular element of program quality: 1) academic programming; 2) staffing; and 3) OST-school partnerships. RFA selected these topics because OST researchers frequently cite them as key elements of high-quality afterschool programs, RFA had robust data sets within each area, and RFA organized the “citywide” report analyses around these topics.
This document summarizes the Learning Community Workshops and is intended to serve as a resource for providers who attended the workshop. The document includes:
- A description of the Learning Community Workshop format;
- Highlights from the small group and large group discussion of each quality area; and
- Participant feedback on each Workshop.
