Empowering Leaders of Summer Learning Programs to Tell Stories of Impact For Long-term Sustainability

Abstract Information: The Sperling Center for Research and Innovation (SCRI) serves as a key partner with the Texas Education Agency (TEA), supporting districts in the development of high quality summer learning programs. As the initiative grew, TEA realized that districts needed assistance collecting and using data to tell stories of positive impact with students, families, staff, and school and community leaders. SCRI’s Research and Evaluation team joined the initiative with the goal of creating a straightforward data collection process for program managers to provide outcomes to populate a customized Impact Report. SCRI quickly learned that program managers were used to collecting data for compliance purposes, but needed assistance understanding how data can be used to tell a positive story of impact. SCRI proposed a data collection process that not only included traditional educational outcomes - such as academic outcomes, survey results, and attendance - but included other data that would showcase program accomplishments, such as the number of meals provided to students, books provided to families, and staff professional development. SCRI also emphasized the need to collect non-traditional data such as stakeholder quotes, descriptive information about program activities, and photos of youth engaged in activities. SCRI then developed an Impact Report for each district, which could be used for a variety of storytelling purposes: recruitment, sharing information with stakeholders, fundraising, and program sustainability. Feedback from districts has been overwhelmingly positive: “Having all of the data in a reader-friendly version really helped all stakeholders understand the true impact our program is having and can have.”

Relevance Statement: Oftentimes in the design of an educational program, educators and program leaders are so busy working to get the initiative off the ground and running that evaluation becomes an afterthought. Even for educational programs with a strong evaluation framework, staff often forget or fail to plan ahead for the process of storytelling or communication of impact after the evaluation is over. One possible reason is the belief that simple formative and/or summative evaluation reporting is the same as storytelling. While there is significant overlap in these processes, storytelling often requires a different focus, process, skills, and involves different audiences. Over the past few years, pandemic related school closures have resulted in growing achievement and opportunities gaps in youth. Students, particularly low-income and children of color, are seeing declining test scores and other indicators of academic engagement and achievement. This has led to large expenditures of federal stimulus funds to states and local communities to support the implementation of evidence-based educational interventions such as summer learning programs aimed at addressing these gaps. While billions of dollars are being invested in summer learning programs and school leaders are steeped in evaluation data from a diverse variety of stakeholders, the same leaders aren’t necessarily equipped to interpret and communicate data and outcomes to tell a powerful story about their program. In 2021, SCRI’s professional Research and Evaluation consulting team participated in the Texas Education Agency’s (TEA) Additional Days School Year (ADSY) summer learning initiative with the goal of creating a straightforward data collection process for program managers to provide outcomes to populate a customized “Impact Report.” SCRI quickly learned that program managers were used to collecting data for compliance purposes, but needed assistance understanding how data can be used to tell a positive story of impact. SCRI proposed a data collection process that not only included traditional educational outcomes - such as academic outcomes, survey results, and attendance - but included other data that would showcase a diverse range of program accomplishments, such as the number of meals provided to students, books provided to families, and staff professional development. SCRI also emphasized the need to collect non-traditional data such as stakeholder quotes, descriptive information about program activities, and photos of youth engaged in activities. SCRI then developed an Impact Report for each district, which could be used for a variety of storytelling purposes: recruitment, sharing information with stakeholders, fundraising, and program sustainability. Through this Ignite presentation, audience members will get a glimpse into the design and implementation of a participatory comprehensive data collection and impact reporting process, learn how SCRI empowered summer program leaders to think about data differently, how to meet program leaders where they are in developing an impact storytelling initiative, and the powerful impact storytelling can have when program leaders have effective communication tools and data to tell stories about their programs to further advocate for youth programs aimed at closing achievement and opportunity gaps.