The study is looking at structural and service delivery changes to enhance Job Corps, the nation's largest and most comprehensive residential education and job training program for at-risk youth ages 16 through 24. The review builds on prior rigorous research demonstrating that the Job Corps has promise.
Youth Employment
Ensuring that our nation's young people, particularly those at risk, complete high school and make the transition to productive careers is an important policy concern. We produced evidence on the effectiveness of alternative programs such as Job Corps, which saturates youth with education, training, and other services in a residential setting, and the Quantum Opportunity Program, an intensive intervention targeted toward youth with low grades in schools with high dropout rates. Other studies have examined ways to improve services for youth involved with the criminal justice system and efforts to link at-risk students with educational, mentoring, career, cultural, and financial supports, as well as postsecondary training. We are currently evaluating the summer youth employment programs funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.
Our Work
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Looking to the Future: Job Corps External Review -
Preparing Young People for the Future: Evaluating the Impact of the YouthBuild ProgramWe are designing and implementing surveys of grantees and youth to evaluate impacts, costs, and operation of this program that helps young people learn construction skills to help build affordable housing and other community assets, such as community centers and schools.
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Evaluation of the Job Corps Program
The study was the first nationally representative experimental evaluation of a federal employment and training program for disadvantaged youth. From late 1994 to early 1996, nearly 81,000 eligible applicants nationwide were randomly assigned to either a program or control group.
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Helping At-Risk Youth: Evaluation of the National Guard Youth ChalleNGe ProgramThe National Guard Youth ChalleNGe program aims to improve the education, life skills, and employment potential of these dropouts. In this evaluation, a rigorous random assignment study will determine the program’s effectiveness by measuring changes in participants’ outcomes, and an implementation study...
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Addressing the Critical Needs of Youth Offenders: Evaluating the Impacts of Grant-Funded Programs
This study examines a new Department of Labor (DOL)-funded program that combines promising workforce strategies (career pathways) with promising juvenile justice strategies (expungement and diversion services).
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Summer Youth Employment Initiative Under the Recovery Act
This implementation evaluation drew on two key data sources: (1) state performance data for all youth participating in services funded by the Recovery Act from May-November 2009; and (2) visits to 20 selected sites that implemented summer youth employment initiatives in 2009.
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Youth CareerConnect Evaluation
The Youth CareerConnect program is designed to encourage America’s school districts, institutions of higher education, the workforce investment system, and their partners to scale up evidence-based high school models that will transform the high school experience for America’s youth.