Motivated by a desire to address both education and wage disparities, policymakers, educators, employers, and philanthropists have increasingly begun to invest in new models of career and technical education (CTE) that are based on the premise that all students need postsecondary credentials to adapt to an increasingly complex labor market.
Job Training
Brief
Findings from Three New Studies of Youth Employment Programs
November, 2018
Over four million young people in the United States are “disconnected,” meaning they are not in school and are not working. In the past few months, studies of three programs aimed at such young people have released new findings. This brief discusses these findings and their implications.
Report
Four-Year Results from the National YouthBuild Evaluation
May, 2018
YouthBuild serves more than 10,000 young people each year at 250+ organizations nationwide. In a random assignment study, the effects observed after four years on education and work indicate that the program provides a good starting point for redirecting otherwise disconnected young people, but one that could also be improved upon.
Report
Current Policy, Prominent Programs, and Evidence
September, 2018
This paper reviews the available evidence supporting various types of career and technical education programs, touching on both the amount of evidence available in each area and its level of rigor.
September, 2018
Learn and Earn to Achieve Potential (LEAP) is an initiative to help young people who have been involved in the foster care or juvenile justice systems, or who are homeless. This brief provides details on the models in LEAP and the young people participating, and offers some early implementation findings.
Report
Final Impacts and Costs of New York City’s Young Adult Internship Program
August, 2018
This report presents 30-month impacts from a random assignment evaluation of a program that subsidized employers to offer temporary paid jobs to young people who were disconnected from school and work in New York City. After 30 months, program enrollees and nonenrollees fared similarly, with the former slightly more likely to report employment.
Issue Focus
The Experience of a New Program for Young People Involved in the Juvenile Justice System
June, 2018
STRIVE International engaged MDRC to help the organization improve a new program model aimed at increasing educational attainment and employment of young adults involved in the juvenile justice system. This Issue Focus describes the partnership and offers advice to organizations implementing new programs on how to build evidence of effectiveness.
The U.S. Department of Labor’s Job Corps program provides education and training to disadvantaged young people. It offers high school education services combined with career and technical training in a residential setting.
Report
Findings from the Changing Attitudes and Motivation in Parolees Pilot Study
May, 2018
A training program for parole officers in Dallas, Denver, and Des Moines sought to address the persistently high recidivism rates among individuals leaving prison. This study’s results show that officers generally already knew many of the curriculum’s concepts, and changes to their practices were limited.
The Learn and Earn to Achieve Potential (LEAP) project is a three-year nationwide program that provides education and employment services to young people ages 14-25 who are homeless or “systems-involved” — that is, young people who are aging out of the foster care system or who are otherwise involved in the child welfare, criminal justice, or j