After-school and out-of-school-time (OST) programs offer more than just childcare. Research consistently finds that they promote social skills, bolster students’ connection to school, increase school attendance, improve grades and academic achievement, and reduce problem behaviors. Better data enables these programs to improve student outcomes by focusing on services that offer the most value to participants. Many after-school programs rely on the Nita M. Lowey 21st Century Community Learning Centers (21CCLC) program to fund their services. The grants this program funds require annual reporting that includes data on attendance, outcomes, academic achievement, participant demographics, and more. Use the easiest to use and most cost effective 21APR reporting software to meet federal grant requirements.
When after-school programs rely on manual data submission, they expend significant resources on a less efficient and potentially inaccurate reporting process. Human errors are inevitable, as are issues with version control of spreadsheets, data tracking, compilation, and submission. Manual submission creates needless job redundancy, whereby one person collects and sends the same data set to another person, who then enters it into a spreadsheet. It’s challenging to pull out aggregated data after it has been manually entered, which creates difficulties for programs as they try to evaluate effectiveness. Moreover, manually collecting data and merging spreadsheets takes program directors away from other duties, potentially undermining the after-school program’s quality and wasting limited resources. If you face an audit, you’ll need to prove that your aggregated data is valid, necessitating time-consuming additional labor.
Serious reporting errors can wreak havoc on a program. Programs that consistently provide inaccurate or incomplete data may be denied future 21CCLC funding.
Watch our webinar to learn more about how to use spreadsheets to calculate 21CCLC data.
AfterSchool21 has the most experience of any software system in transferring mandated reporting data to the 21APR online system. By the end of the 2019-2020 reporting window on February 15, 2021, AfterSchool21 will have successfully uploaded 21 data submissions for five state departments of education, eliminating the need for manual, and potentially error-prone, data entry.
The benefits of AfterSchool21 include:
A data management solution designed for out-of-school-time programs such as AfterSchool21 eases program directors’ reporting burden, giving them valuable time to focus on helping program participants thrive in school and beyond. AfterSchool21 is the first commercially available software system to eliminate the need for manual transfer of after-school program data into 21APR. This all-in-one solution boasts the following features:
Whether an after-school program is ready to make a switch or is curious about how AfterSchool21 can help them reach program goals while making reporting requirements less onerous, the AfterSchool21 team is here to help. Schedule a demo!