What It Really Takes: The Costs and Commitments Behind a Successful Coaching Model for Afterschool STEM Educators

Out-of-school-time (OST) programs in the United States offer significant opportunities for youth to engage with and develop their identities in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). However, professional learning that supports OST educators in developing identity-affirming STEM facilitation remains chronically underfunded and undervalued. Dominant approaches to measuring program “costs”—often centered on per-participant expenditures or short-term cost-effectiveness—obscure the systemic, relational, and capacity-building investments required to sustain high-quality OST STEM practices. This commentary examines how available cost frameworks shape what is rendered visible as “value” in OST STEM professional learning and where they fall short. To ground this analysis, I draw on the Afterschool Coaching for Reflective Educators in STEM (ACRES) program, a long-running national coaching initiative, as an illustrative case through which to examine how investments unfold over time and across contexts. Using ACRES, I demonstrate how costs are more productively understood as multidimensional investments in infrastructure, human capacity, relationships, and knowledge—forms of value that resist per-participant or short-horizon accounting. I offer an alternative tool, the Capacity-Based Cost Assessment (CBCA), to facilitate reflection on the outcomes of these investments. I include recommendations for how to define, document, and evaluate investments in OST STEM professional learning.