Oklahoma

Commentary
April, 2022
Deondre' Jones

In this commentary originally published by WorkShift, Deondre’ Jones describes how the WorkAdvance initiative helped reduce racial employment disparities for Black and Latino adults. He also explains important components that program providers may want to include to better support participants of color.

Issue Focus
June, 2021

Unemployed or underemployed parents have trouble paying child support. In the Families Forward Demonstration, child support agencies sought to help parents get better jobs and increase their earnings by teaching job skills needed by local employers. The questions arising from the project may help other agencies evaluate prospective job training partners.

Report

Findings from a Study of Teach For America’s Handoff Program

September, 2020

This study evaluated TFA’s initiative to better align its regional in-service training during the school year with its national pre-service summer teacher training, which emphasized a productive learning environment and diversity, equity, and inclusiveness. Teachers who received more in-service training in those national components adopted more culturally relevant classroom practices.

Issue Focus

An Interview with Karen Pennington and Dawn Slinkard

July, 2020

Tulsa Community WorkAdvance is a sector-based training and career advancement program that prepares people for jobs in the health care field. Executive Director Karen Pennington talks about the impact of COVID-19 on operations and future opportunities in health care, and graduate Dawn Slinkard describes her experience in the program.

Report

Costs, Benefits, and Impacts from the WorkAdvance Demonstration

March, 2020
Kelsey Schaberg, David H. Greenberg

WorkAdvance goes beyond the previous generation of employment programs, concentrating on demand-driven skills training and identifiable career pathways. Findings show the approach increased earnings and led to advancement gains over time at the most successful study sites. One program, Per Scholas, boosted earnings by 20 percent in the last year of follow-up.

Issue Focus

Using Data to Analyze Enrollment Drop-Off

August, 2019

The August 2019 In Practice blog post offers tips for programs to ensure that the participants they recruit, actually enroll. In this post, we examine some key lessons from MDRC’s evaluation of the WorkAdvance project to help turn program recruits into program success stories.

Brief

Lessons from the BIAS Project

January, 2018

The Behavioral Interventions to Advance Self-Sufficiency (BIAS) project launched interventions in Indiana and Oklahoma aimed at increasing the number of parents who selected child care providers with state quality ratings, improving the child care subsidy renewal process, and increasing the number of parents who renew on time.

Brief

Three-Year Impacts from the WorkAdvance Demonstration

September, 2017

WorkAdvance offers training and placement services to help prepare individuals for quality jobs in sectors that have strong local demand and advancement opportunities. In this update on employment and earnings only, the most experienced provider continued to produce substantial impacts on both; one other provider increased earnings for late enrollees.

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