In Pursuit Of Excellence

Quality standards are benchmarks for achieving excellence and are an effective guide to help youth, parents, funders and policy-makers understand what quality and success look like in out-of-school time programs. Standards should be used for continuous quality improvement.

Out-of-school time programs vary so greatly by who operates them, their service schedules, ages of youth served, and the actual activities. Standards must be flexible enough to be used by all providers to achieve high quality.

Currently, Excel Beyond the Bell’s priority is on standards that relate to health and safety and human relationships. However, the Maryland Out-of-School Time Network is working on a comprehensive set of standards to be used statewide.

Excel Beyond the Bell and the Maryland Out-of-School Time network will actively seek input as to what would be the most useful and realistic standards that all types of programs can work toward.