National Afterschool Association Names the Forum's Weikart Center for Youth Program Quality One of its Most Influential in Research and Evaluation 2018

Honorees are distinguished for their contributions to research and evaluation on youth and adolescent development.

A decade ago, the Forum created the Weikart Center as a joint venture with the High Scope Educational Research Foundation, known for their groundbreaking research on the lifetime value of investments in quality early childhood education. Our goal was to complete the work Dave Weikart started, to not only demonstrate that high quality youth programming matters, but to demonstrate that program quality is measurable, malleable, and marketable.

The Weikart Center, under the leadership of Dr. Charles Smith, its former executive director, has spent a decade designing, evaluating, and marketing quality improvement systems and continuous improvement interventions. As a result, administrators and funders of afterschool systems, provider networks, and national organizations can have the confidence and capacities they need to create supportive climates in which program managers and staff willingly use data to assess, plan and improve program practice and, more recently, to assess related social and emotional skill growth.

In selecting NAA's Most Influential in Research and Evaluation, the National AfterSchool Association sought to honor individuals and organizations whose contributions to research and evaluation on afterschool and youth and adolescent development result in stronger practices, higher-quality programs and increased positive outcomes for children and youth. Honorees were profiled in the Summer 2018 issue of NAA's AfterSchool Today magazine.

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If you're not familiar with the work of the Weikart Center, we encourage you to watch this brief video about their work, created by the Community Social Planning Council of Victoria, British Columbia.