Each year there is a continuous process of quality improvement among 21st Century Community Learning Center afterschool programs.  We call this the Youth Program Quality Improvement cycle (YPQI for short).  It is a cycle of program quality assessment, site-based planning informed by data, and intentional improvement through goal setting, concrete action plans, and targeted coaching, professional development, and training.  Within this framework, developed by the Weikart Center for Youth Program Quality, our afterschool programs at Walla Walla Public Schools used the Social Emotional Learning Program Quality Assessment (SEL-PQA) tool to drive our improvement process this past year.

The SEL-PQA is a quality assessment tool based on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.  Fundamentally, it refers to a pyramid of quality practices covering four domains which build upon each other.

Pyramid (Domains) of Program Quality:

  1. Safe Environment - the foundation of learning

  2. Supportive Environment - additional educator supports

  3. Interaction - facilitation & skill development

  4. Engagement - emphasizes reflection & feedback

Because our grant emphasizes non-academic outcomes as a primary influencer of long-term success, we also focus on six specific Social Emotional Learning (SEL) domains which are most likely to influence the development of educational skills in our students.

SEL Domains of Program Quality:

  1. Initiative (Supportive Environment)

  2. Emotion Management (Supportive Environment)

  3. Empathy (Interaction)

  4. Responsibility (Interaction)

  5. Teamwork (Interaction)

  6. Problem Solving (Engagement)

Based on the assessment scores for our programs, nearly all had similar needs and improvement goals. In light of such, we focused on intentional coaching, professional development, and skill-building around:

We will continue to look for growth opportunities within our quality domains to best meet the needs of our students and families within a variety of different learning environments, whether that be in-person, hybrid, and/or remote/virtual, and reinstitute a regular schedule of quality assessment throughout the program year.