Here are some steps to take during and after summer to monitor and improve partnerships from year to year:

• Throughout programming, collect operational data, including student attendance and staff hours. If possible, consider surveying parents and students for feedback on program delivery and overall satisfaction.
• At the end of programming, collect data from leadership staff, especially on program quality. Six key inquiry areas for continuous improvement are as follows:
  • Please detail any best practices you utilized in student recruitment.
  • What strategies did your site use to promote consistent student daily attendance?
  • Please detail a few best practices your site utilized for high quality, effective programming.
  • Please detail any strategies you used to engage with student families, before and/or during summer.
  • Please detail a few content areas of programming in which your site struggled. (to inform future professional development)
  • If applicable: What ideas or feedback does your site have about the pre-summer trainings? Professional development offerings? Year-round learning communities?
• Through the Boston Summer Learning Community, all participating sites receive a PRISM (Program Report for Improvement and System Measurement) each fall. This report summarizes each site’s program quality ratings from the prior summer (based on common implementation of the same tools), and benchmarks each site’s scores across the 79 participating sites. This helps leaders identify strengths and consider improvements. The PRISM serves as the backbone of year-round learning community meetings, where site representatives, researchers, and philanthropy discuss and share best practices.

Visit here to view a sample PRISM and the data collected through the Boston Summer Learning Community over the past several summers.