Investing in Learning & Evaluation

America SCORES Partners with Public Profit 

October 30, 2018 – San Francisco, CA – America SCORES Bay Area is elevating its data-driven approach to service delivery by partnering with Public Profit, the leading Bay Area research and evaluation group that studies the effectiveness of after-school programs.  For the past 18 years, America SCORES has served thousands of children in Bay Area public schools through their innovative after-school program that blends poetry, soccer and service-learning.

This fall, SCORES began working with Public Profit to build its internal Learning & Evaluation capabilities. This long-term effort will enable America SCORES to collect and analyze individualized participant data, so that we can deliver real-time reporting and feedback to the over 70 sites where America SCORES serves our “poet-athletes.” Eventually, the data infrastructure will allow SCORES to build and analyze a longitudinal dataset to understand the impact of student participation over time.

“America SCORES has a long-standing history of providing high quality programs to youth as demonstrated by multiple prior studies conducted by third party evaluators,” remarked Corey Newhouse, Founder and Principal of Public Profit.  “As ASBA embarks upon an ambitious agenda to scale its reach to 400 program sites and 12,000 participants,” adds Newhouse, “they recognize the imperative to invest in internal Learning & Evaluation capacity to assess impact and to support continuous quality improvement.”

Recently SCORES received the 2018 Library of Congress Literacy Honoree Award for best practices in building literacy. Kaiser Permanente, a leader in the health industry and major SCORES funder and partner, recently conducted a study which demonstrates that participation in SCORES leads to decreased BMI, increased aerobic capacity, and changes in attitudes about healthy eating and physical activities.   

CEO Colin Schmidt believes that while laudable, these accomplishments are not enough.  Schmidt asserts,“Our Learning & Evaluation must evolve so that we may continuously deliver outcomes that address the national childhood obesity crisis and the growing achievement gap for low-income students. Learning & Evaluation is a key lever, helping SCORES deliver results to students, school partners, districts and funders.”

Key investments in America SCORES in infrastructure and database over the last year have laid the groundwork for this partnership. By early 2019, America SCORES and Public Profit will create a detailed action plan for data collection, analysis and activities. America SCORES will advance this plan over time and implement best-in-class processes for gathering and analyzing internal and district assessment data to measure outcomes for participants relative to peer groups and modify program elements, as needed.  

Corey Newhouse believes this partnership is far-reaching with implications: “America SCORES commitment to building its capacity to deliver whole child outcomes with a data-driven, evaluative approach will set them apart from others in the field.”