The Afterschool Alliance, in partnership with MetLife Foundation, is proud to present the final issue brief in their latest series of four issue briefs examining critical issues facing middle school youth and the vital role afterschool programs play in addressing these issues. This brief explores afterschool and data utilization to improve programming. The afterschool field has made great gains in providing supports and an environment that helps their students succeed in school and beyond. Students are discovering an interest in science, gaining confidence in their speaking abilities, missing school less, connecting with caring adults and more when participating in quality afterschool programs. A distinctive benefit of afterschool programs is that their focus and scope of activities is wide-ranging--they are able to meet the unique needs of their community, which could be to offer a dance program in an area where arts have been scaled back during the regular school day or aligning programming with the Common Core State Standards to serve as an additional source of support for students, teachers and schools. The variety of focus areas also means that there are a number of measures--both inputs and outputs--that can be relevant to their programming. Therefore, it is critical that programs have a clear and focused set of goals, gather and synthesize data that are connected to those goals, and implement a continuous improvement cycle that uses the data in order to build on lessons learned and ensure that they are providing their students with the supports they need. Fortunately, more and more programs are recognizing the critical role of data and more resources and tools are becoming available to help programs put the data to use in order to best meet the needs of their students.