The Program Evaluation Toolkit was developed by Education Development Center (EDC) and SRI International (SRI) to help public media education and engagement professionals and their partners understand, measure, and improve on how PBS KIDS resources are used in out-of-school-time (OST) programs serving young children. It also can enable stations to better share the story of their work with families and other community members and describe their impact to funders. Going beyond selected anecdotes to systematically collect and present data allows public media stations to make and support claims about whether PBS KIDS projects with partners work and why, and to identify which elements of the projects require improvement.

The toolkit has the following main components:

1. A quality framework provides a set of research-based indicators of quality-specific practices, features, and resources associated with high-quality and positive outcomes in OST programming.
2. Five data collection tools designed for gathering data on topics aligned to the quality framework. These tools include surveys and interview guides to use with families and program staff, as well as a worksheet to guide observation of projects in action.
3. Guidance on how to use the data collection tools and analyze report results.