Vision
The Madison-area Out-of-School Time initiative ensures that all of Madison's children and youth have access to comprehensive, high-quality, out-of-school time programs that support positive youth development, educational achievement, and readiness for college, career, and community. MOST is an unprecedented collaboration between the City of Madison, Dane County, Madison Metropolitan School District, and over 45 Madison-area youth-serving organizations.
Core Values
Racial equity and social justice are core principles that inform and guide all MOST decisions, policies, and functions. Consequently, MOST will concentrate its efforts to achieve the MOST vision for youth who are traditionally marginalized based on factors such as their racial/ethnic identities, income, or recent immigrant status.
Program Finder Purpose
MOST’s program finder is a one-stop-shop for families and youth to find quality programs offered before and after school or during summer and holiday breaks for Madison-area youth.
Components
The MOST initiative is working to build and sustain three critical components of an out-of-school time system in the Madison-area:
- Collective Vision and Goals – Develop a common vision and shared goals across Madison-area out-of-school time organizations, schools, local government, families, communities, and funding organizations in order to:
- Facilitate stronger coordination and collaboration
- Support diverse, high-quality youth out-of-school time programming
- Information Collection and Sharing – Develop information systems for sharing data in order to:
- Improve access to existing programs and resources for youth, families and communities
- Identify barriers to program access
- Provide real-time data for better decision-making and support to youth
- Program Quality Improvement – Develop a system that supports out-of-school time program quality improvement in order to:
- Establish collective definitions of effectives practices and program quality
- Build the capacity of organizations that offer out-of-school time programs
- Improve positive outcomes for youth, families, and communities
Structure
- The MOST Coalition consists of a broad array of stakeholders invested in children & youth success and working to create and sustain a city-wide Out-of-School Time system. This includes representatives from Out-of-School Time program organizations, MMSD, the County, the City, and other community stakeholders.
- OST stakeholders serve on several work groups to address issues in the areas of elementary access, program quality and continuous improvement, data and management information systems, communications and strategic planning. It works between Coalition meetings to advance the MOST Initiative. Other subgroups form as needed. It also acts as a liaison between the Coalition and the City of Madison Education Committee.
- The City of Madison Education Committee supports the efforts of MOST as the formal link to elected bodies and local government for policy and resource recommendations.
What is the MOST Effective Practices Guide?
Those of us who work in youth development come from many backgrounds. We call ourselves youth workers, librarians, artists, teachers, coaches, social workers, or maybe something else entirely. We share a belief that the work we do every day positively impacts young people's success.
The OST community in Madison has come together to define what makes our programs great and put together a hands-on guidebook to help our community of providers build research-based best practices into every step. The ideas and practices outlined in this guide are based on research with proven success in guiding the field of out-of-school time towards quality, effective programming.
MOST Effective Practices Guide
Generous Supporters
MOST would like to thank its generous supporters including the Madison Community Foundation, United Way of Dane County 2-1-1, City of Madison and the Madison Metropolitan School District.
