NWREL has been working with out-of-school time (OST) programs since the inception of the 21st Century Community Learning Center grants, when NWREL staff conducted bidders conferences for the northwest region. Relationships established with grantees through that activity led to a variety of evaluation, training, and technical assistance roles for staff from NWREL's Education, Career, and Community Program.

The focus of the 21st Century Community Learning Centers program, re-authorized under Title IV, Part B, of the No Child Left Behind Act, is to provide expanded academic enrichment opportunities for children attending low performing schools. Tutorial services and academic enrichment activities are designed to help students meet local and state academic standards in subjects such as reading and math. In addition 21st CCLC programs provide youth development activities, drug and violence prevention programs, technology education programs, art, music and recreation programs, counseling and character education to enhance the academic component of the program (USDE Web site).

NWREL has been conducting formative, capacity-building evaluations for 116 sites in 12 different programs in Alaska, Idaho, Oregon, and Washington, and from that work has developed and published a resource guide for evaluation of OST programs (Out of School Time Program Evaluation: Tools for Action ).

NWREL is currently a primary partner in the National Partnership for Quality Afterschool Learning, a national project funded by the U.S. Department of Education that began in 2003. The Partnership's goal is to build local capacity to provide rich academic content through engaging and challenging activities in OST programs. Through the Partnership, NWREL is in the process of developing a web-based literacy toolkit, a collection of resources and activities to help OST programs integrate literacy activities into their programming. The interim version of this toolkit is now available online as is the interim version of the math toolkit, developed by our partners at the Mid-continent Research for Education and Learning (McREL). Toolkits for science and the arts are currently being developed and will be available online in the coming year.