The New York City Department of Youth and Community Development (DYCD) recognizes the role that its Comprehensive After School System (COMPASS) programs can play in supporting the educational success of youth, including literacy development. Since 2011, DYCD has required COMPASS programs to offer at least two hours a week of either literacy or science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) enrichment activities, and to engage an education specialist in designing and supporting the implementation of program activities. Evaluation studies have suggested that DwsYCD's policies requiring academic programming and the support of an education specialist during afterschool hours have helped COMPASS programs to strengthen their efforts to coordinate with school partners and encouraged them to be more intentional in their selection and design of program activities. As a next stage in its evaluation efforts, during the 2014-15 school year, DYCD asked Policy Studies Associates (PSA) to explore approaches to literacy programming in elementary-grades COMPASS programs. The goal of this study is to help DYCD and the community-based organizations that operate COMPASS programs develop and strengthen strategies for planning and implementing literacy programming during the afterschool hours, by documenting promising practices in: (1) Program content; (2) Alignment to school-day instruction; (3) Staffing; (4) Training and professional development; and (5) Assessment of participant needs.