Ensure Young People are Truly Prepared for College by Evaluating Your Program with Hello Insight: College Readiness
Over the past two years we have worked alongside the YMCA of the USA to develop an easy-to-use continuous improvement tool with real-time, research-based reporting for their Achievers program. But this tool was never intended for just this program — we were driven by a mutual passion to make these tools and resources available to all youth development nonprofits struggling to measure their college readiness outcomes. Therefore, we invited more than 17 programs and 2,500 young people to work alongside us as we piloted this tool.
We are thrilled to announce that the tool has passed through rigorous statistical testing and is now available to everyone using Hello Insight. Hello Insight: College Readiness addresses critical questions that help to enhance and improve programing:
- What are young people’s assets and greatest areas of challenge when they enter our programs?
- How can we help them grow?
- Do young people develop social and emotional learning and college readiness capacities in our programs?
- Are they having high quality program experiences?
- How can we improve our program?
- How can we make meaning of our data, share our findings with funders and key stakeholders, and celebrate our success?
We use Hello Insight in all of our programs that work with opportunity youth. It is important that our team can see exactly how program implementation is increasing (or not) college readiness skills in our students. This helps us to make program adjustments as needed and to improve overall program quality.
Symone McGee Flemming, Sr. Program Director, High School Initiatives, YMCA of Greater Charlotte
HI College Readiness’ pre/post surveys measures five core social and emotional learning capacities: academic self-efficacy, contribution, positive identity, self-management, and social skills. This tool also measures college/future orientation, goal orientation, and a set of key college readiness skills, such as determining if a college is a good fit, goal setting for the future, applying for college, and finding the resources to attend college.
These college readiness capacities were important to our pilot partners as mounting research shows that, if you are moving the needle in these areas, young people are more likely to be college and career ready. They are also more likely to thrive, leading happy, healthy, and meaningful lives.
HI College Readiness, like all Hello Insight tools, also captures the feedback of young people about the quality of their experiences in your program. We know that when young people are having a high quality experience, they are very likely to grow! The voice of young people is critical to understanding how we can continue to improve programs to meet their specific needs.
Using advanced machine-learning algorithms, Hello Insight learns about what has worked for young people like those you serve. This allows reports to include recommendations before your program even begins. Based on a dataset of more than 150,000 young people, Hello Insight prioritizes the experiences that would work best for each group of young people that takes part in a program.
Ready to Bring Hello Insight to Your Organization?
Through cost effective annual subscriptions, Hello Insight: College Readiness is now available to all college readiness programs across the country. Hello Insight makes continuous improvement a key part of your practice.