The authors survey the current afterschool landscape and bring to light important issues and practices within the field, explore the challenges and opportunities facing afterschool education programs, and point to future directions for these burgeoning educational ventures.

Afterschool education has grown in recent years into a vast and diverse enterprise. In the United States, young people spend almost a third of their organized time (including school hours) in afterschool and summer programs. Yet there is little clear and conclusive research on afterschool programs research that...