Evaluation of Metro Academy-Early Childhood Education Pilot

The Metro Academy program model, which features the formation of a student learning community, is designed to help students from disadvantaged backgrounds succeed during their first two years of college. Metro Academies started in Fall 2010 and focused on Early Childhood Education (ECE) at SF State and City College of San Francisco. The goal of this small-scale evaluation of the Metro ECE pilot year was to describe how participating students on both campuses view and experience the program.

Funder: Miriam and Peter Haas Fund
Dates: 2011
Staff: Allen LeBlanc, External Evaluator; Contract with SF State Department of Child and Adolescent Development

Highlighted Outcomes:

In spring 2011, the evaluation team facilitated focus group discussions with participating Metro ECE students at SF State and CCSF. The goal of these discussions was to give students an opportunity to describe Metro ECE from their perspectives, providing the program staff and faculty with valuable information for strengthening the program model as it is implemented on each campus. The resulting qualitative data illustrate important differences in the backgrounds and experiences of participating students between SF State and CCSF, and these differences suggest ways in which the program model might be uniquely adapted to meet students' needs in the two program settings.