An Evaluation of NPASS (National Partnerships for Afterschool Science) Year 3 Final Report

The National Partnerships for Afterschool Science (NPASS) Project was led by The Center for Science Education (CSE) at Education Development Center, Inc. (EDC) in Newton, MA in partnership with the Lawrence Hall of Science (LHS) in Berkeley, CA, with funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF). The NPASS project approach relied on a professional development training and mentorship model to build the capacity of community-based organizations (CBOs) to lead high-quality, hands-on science and engineering activities in their afterschool programming. An overarching project research question was whether science and 4-H centers and trainers, supervised by the EDC NPASS team, could implement an effective training program for afterschool science CBO staff that, over time, changed the way CBOs lead hands-on science and engineering projects with children. Goodman Research Group, Inc. (GRG), a Cambridge, MA-based education research firm specializing in program evaluation, has been the external evaluator of the three-year NPASS project. GRG has now completed the third and final year of the evaluation. This executive summary contains key findings and recommendations based on GRG’s evaluation of the entire project. The appendix of this report includes the surveys, interview, and observation protocols used in the study.