In this book we have seen wonderful after-school staff such as Manuel and Victoria who mentored young people and established high-quality programs in chess and dance. We also became acquainted with Mateo, to whom youth were attracted but who spent too much time taking it easy rather than capitalizing on his popularity to actively mentor or develop new programs. As we slide further and further away from excellence, we come to North River, where the director’s obsession with order and authority thwarted youth development and led to a revolt by the basketball team and cheerleaders. In thinking about how to improve after-school centers, we need to consider how to push and coach staff like Mateo so that they become more like Manuel and Victoria. We also need to set up mechanisms to ensure that fundamental changes are made at centers like North River and that even good centers like West River can achieve a higher order of excellence.

In the remainder of this chapter we outline a strategy for continuous quality improvement for after-school centers that grows out of our research and reflects the broad conclusions presented in the last chapter. Given the nature of our approach, it should come as no surprise that we emphasize organizational-level initiatives for staff development and program improvement. An organizational response has the potential to benefit the most staff and youth and thus gives the biggest possible bang for the buck. This approach creates structures and processes that make strategic use of staff strengths that we have seen in these centers, rather than relying on pricey consultants. It is based on organizational learning strategies that have been successfully employed in other social service, educational, and health settings, and tailors them to the after-school world.