A project of the Afterschool Alliance.

The Impact of Afterschool STEM: Girlstart After School

Year Published: 2016

Girlstart After School is a free, weekly STEM afterschool program designed as an intensive intervention to increase girls’ interest and engagement in STEM through sequential, informal, hands-on and inquiry-based activities in topics across the STEM acronym. In this selection of evaluation data from the 2015-2016 school year, participants demonstrated gains along three major categories of youth outcomes—interest in STEM, capacity to engage in STEM, and finding value in STEM.

Program Name: Girlstart

Program Description: Girlstart After School is a free, weekly STEM afterschool program designed to increase girls’ interest and engagement in STEM through innovative, informal STEM education programs. This intensive intervention involves sequential, informal, hands-on and inquiry-based activities in topics across the STEM acronym, designed to build girls’ skills in collaboration, creative problem solving, and critical thinking, as well as their STEM knowledge and their interest and confidence in STEM activities, studies, and careers.

Scope of the Evaluation: Statewide, Local

Program Type: Afterschool

Grade level: Elementary School, Middle School

Program Demographics: 100 percent girls; 64 percent Latina, 13 percent Caucasian, 11 percent African American, 4 percent Asian American and 8 percent identified as multiethnic; 74 percent low socio-economic status; 35 percent speak another language at home.

Program Website: http://www.girlstart.org/

Evaluator: Girlstart research staff (prior support from SEDL, now part of the American Institutes for Research)

Evaluation Methods: Pre- and post-surveys are used to assess girls’ STEM skills and knowledge, attitudes toward Girlstart and interest, and confidence in undertaking future STEM activities, courses, majors, and careers. Long-term impact is collected using a framework for tracking alumnae’s academic progress.

Evaluation Type: Non-experimental

Outcomes:
Below is a selection of evaluation data reported by the program around three major categories of youth outcomes—interest in STEM, capacity to productively engage in STEM, and finding value in STEM. These outcomes are an excerpt from a 2016 Afterschool Alliance paper, "The Impact of Afterschool STEM: Examples from the Field."

Interest: I like to do this
  • 85 percent of girls agreed with the statement, “I like science!” and 92 percent reported that they enjoyed building things in order to solve problems at Girlstart After School.
  • Interest in STEM extends past participation—Girlstart girls enroll in advanced 6th and 7th grade science and math courses at significantly higher rates than non-participants and 89 percent want to return to Girlstart After School next school year.

Capacity: I can do this

  • Girlstart girls perform better on the Texas state science and math tests compared to non-participants.
  • All participants engage weekly in iterative design and scientific inquiry to solve problems, resulting in 82 percent of participants correctly identifying all the steps of the engineering design process.
  • Girls demonstrate persistence—92 percent reported a willingness to redesign their activity if it did not work on the first try and 92 percent agreed that, “if I try hard, I can be good at science.”

Value: This is important to me

  • Almost all participants (94 percent) understand that doing well in STEM in school means that they are more likely to get into college and 94 percent understand that doing well in STEM in college can lead to a better job.
  • 73 percent of girls report a strong desire to pursue a STEM career, and 95 percent report at least a moderate desire.