Measuring & Assessing Quality
Since 2004, PASA has led the development and implementation of a quality improvement system for after school providers across the state of Rhode Island centered around the High/Scope Youth Program Quality Assessment (Youth PQA) tool.
Together with a group of providers and after-school advocates, PASA developed the Rhode Island Program Quality Assessment Tool (RIPQA) to make quality standards and indicators more useful and practical. This self-assessment tool combines High/Scope's validated program quality assessment tool (Form A) with a supplementary component that addresses the unique needs and priorities of Rhode Island after-school providers (Form B). Collectively, these two forms are known as the RIPQA - a tool all after-school providers can use to measure their performance and track their improvement over time.
The tool was finalized during a pilot in the spring of 2007 and then was implemented statewide beginning in the fall of 2007. The Rhode Island Department of Education’s (RIDE) 21st Century Community Learning Center initiative has adopted the tool and required all of its 55 sites to use it twice over the course of their five-year grant. RIDE has contracted PASA to oversee the implementation of that process with their sites over the next five years.
In addition, PASA has used the tool with the majority of its program partners in Providence as well as with Boys and Girls Clubs, YMCAs, community centers and other youth-serving organizations statewide. Each site is assigned a Quality Advisor who participates in program observations, facilitates quality improvement planning and provides one-on-one technical assistance to each site as needed based on the recommended action steps. See what Joseph Tomchak of the Boys & Girls Club of Pawtucket has to say about the RIPQA.
PASA continues to develop its quality improvement system in partnership with the David P. Weikart Center for Youth Program Quality (CYPQ), a joint venture between the High/Scope Education Foundation and the Forum for Youth Investment. CYPQ provides valuable technical assistance and support as PASA grows and develops use of the RIPQA and its accompanying quality coaching model statewide.
