How Place-Based Employment Programs like Jobs Plus Can Help During the COVID-19 Pandemic
Employment programs situated within public housing developments are facing multiple challenges due to the COVID-19 pandemic. With routine operations disrupted by shelter-in-place orders, programs like Jobs Plus can find creative ways to keep their doors open and their clients engaged.
Three Insights from Research
The COVID-19 pandemic means community colleges cannot administer in-person tests to determine whether students must take developmental (remedial) courses. But some colleges were already using multiple pieces of information for course placement, rather than a single test score. This brief offers three relevant insights from research on these placement systems.
Early Findings from an Experimental Study of Multiple Measures Assessment and Placement
This report examines colleges’ use of multiple measures to determine whether students take college-level or developmental education courses, a more accurate method than standardized placement exams. Using additional placement tests, high school transcripts, and student motivation evaluations places more students into credit-bearing courses, improving academic results and college completion rates.
Ongoing Implementation Experiences
Households receiving federal rental subsidies struggle to become self-sufficient. Jobs Plus provides grants to public housing agencies to offer tenants employment-related services, rent-based work incentives, and community support for work. This report examines a second round of Jobs Plus implementation, including evolving program operations, challenges, resident participation, and technical assistance.
Lessons on Adapting Interventions for Young People Experiencing Homelessness or Systems Involvement
Young people who experience homelessness or involvement in foster care or justice systems face unique challenges. The Learn and Earn to Achieve Potential (LEAP)TM initiative aims to help this population reach its full potential. An MDRC evaluation of two programs adapted by 10 LEAP grantees will contribute knowledge to this field.
In the first year after random assignment, welfare recipients who participated in Minnesota’s subsidized employment program were more likely than control group members to have been employed; this modest effect continued after the subsidies ended.
Findings from a Study of the Career Readiness Internship Program
Work-based learning opportunities vary widely across colleges and are rarely evaluated. Through the Career Readiness Internship (CRI) program, 33 colleges provided large numbers of low-income students with valuable career-focused internship experiences, and employers generally viewed the program positively. Nevertheless, CRI was difficult to maintain after its grant period ended.
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.
A Guide to Launching a Multiple Measures Assessment System
To address underplacement, in which students who could succeed in college-level courses are directed into developmental education, community colleges have begun supplementing the typical placement test with measures like high school GPA and noncognitive assessments. This guide walks colleges through the process and pitfalls of undertaking this kind of reform.
College students who place into developmental (remedial) education are substantially less likely to graduate than students who place into college-level courses. Most students are directed into developmental courses based on placement test scores. But large-scale studies have indicated that these test scores misplace substantial numbers of students — in other words, for...
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