Giving Compass' Take:

· Writing for Education Dive, Lauren Barack explains that collaboration between schools and after-school programs can expand impact and learning opportunities.

· What do after-school programs do for youths? How do they help expand opportunities and build life skills? 

· Learn more about after-school programs and the need for federal funding. 

Both after-school and regular school programs can benefit when they coordinate based on data that comes from student performance and behavior. Whether the sources are attendance records or surveys asking students about their confidence levels, these data sets can help determine how curriculum is landing with students, and that it’s working as it was designed to.

In a white paper titled "Using Student Achievement Data to Support Instructional Decision Making, the National Association of Elementary School Principals notes that there’s no question data is crucial to today’s education system.

"Good data make for good decisions," wrote the authors. "How student achievement data are collected and implemented will determine how well that data support the instructional decision making by principals and teachers."

After-school programs are permitted access to school records and vice versa under the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) as long as sharing of this data is in the best interest of students, notes a 2014 report from the Afterschool Alliance. Data can help determine the effectiveness of after-school programming and how these after-school hours even impact graduation rates.

Read the full article about after-school programs by Lauren Barack at Education Dive.