To better understand promising practices in the afterschool field, this report is divided into three sections. The first section--Exploring Outcomes--reviews outcomes associated with participation in afterschool programs, synthesizing high-quality evaluations of 10 afterschool programs--a majority of which employ a quasi-experimental or experimental design. Section II--Promising Practices--steps out from the program level and explores research spanning hundreds of programs to present a summary of promising practices of afterschool programs, analyzing and distilling the findings into key components of quality programs. The third section--Promising Practices in Action--brings the focus back to the program level, linking the afterschool programs highlighted in Section I and the promising practices outlined in Section II. This last section provides specific examples of ways in which the afterschool programs employ each promising practice. (author abstract)