Strategic Plan for Children and Youth - Program Evaluation
Improving the evaluation of youth programs is a critical component of this Strategic Plan. The Plan calls for the staff to inform the Board of the effectiveness of programs funded by taxpayer dollars. Unfortunately, evaluation of social programs is difficult for several reasons.
First, we cannot always control for other factors affecting the lives of youth. For example, 59% of youth participating in the Neighborhood Basketball League (NBL) improved their grade point averages between first semester and the second semester (when the program operates). While this is useful information, we cannot conclude that the NBL was the reason that the grades improved. Likewise, we can not conclude that the NBL failed the 41% of the youth who did not improve their grades. Numerous other factors that the County can not control affect the lives of youth.
Second, even if we could form a "control group" to compare the outcomes of program participants to non-program participants, it is not desirable to do so. The vision of this Plan is to involve all youth, or at least all at-risk youth, in programs that will give them the opportunity to grow up "healthy, safe, and prepared for a positive future." Excluding youth from programs for the purpose of conducting an evaluation is simply counter to our goals.
Third, resource considerations prevent certain types of evaluation. For example, conducting longitudinal studies in which we would follow youth who participate in programs for years into their adulthood to determine outcomes, could be useful. However, such an evaluation would be too costly to implement.
Nevertheless, it remains important to collect information that helps us evaluate programs and ultimately make funding recommendations. Staff proposes to accomplish this in two ways: to monitor a number of indicators over time that can help us determine needs of the County's youth, and to administer surveys and conduct focus groups with youth and parents to determine their perception of the effectiveness of youth programs. Staff will present an annual report to the Board on youth services using the information gathered from these indicators, surveys, and focus groups.
Indicators
The KIDS COUNT data previously discussed provides many useful indicators that staff will include in the Children and Youth Services Annual Report:
- Prenatal care beginning in the first trimester
- Low birth weight babies
- Infant mortality rate
- Founded cases of child abuse or neglect
- Child death rate, ages 1-14
- Teen violent death rate, ages 15-17
- Intake cases involving delinquency, ages 12-17
- Juveniles arrested for violent crimes, ages 12-17
- 9th - 12th graders who dropped out of school
- Students (ages 6-18) eligible for special education services
- Students promoted in grades K-3
- Child day care capacity
- Births to teenage girls, ages 15-17
- Births to single mothers
- Children in foster care
- Students approved for free or reduced price school lunch program
- Children receiving TANF
- Unemployment Rate
- Average per capita income
In addition, the County will monitor several other indicators:
- Participation in programs
- Percentage of high school seniors pursuing higher education
- Test scores for 4th, 8th, and 11th grades at or above average on SOL tests
- Number of youth on waiting lists for programs
- Customer satisfaction (youth and parents) with programs
- Percent of students who pass all of the physical education tests
Significant changes should not be expected in these indicators from year-to-year. However, these indicators will enable us to see in the future where our efforts are working and where we need to improve. Appendix I outlines the chronology we intend to follow in implementing the evaluation of youth programs.