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.
Sectoral strategies train people for industries with strong local demand. This report summarizes the Year 7 findings of an evaluation of WorkAdvance, a sectoral training initiative launched in 2011. Overall, the results show that sector programs can increase earnings in the longer term and can lead to career advancement gains.
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.
Findings from a Study of Teach For America’s Handoff Program
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.
An Interview with Karen Pennington and Dawn Slinkard
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.
Costs, Benefits, and Impacts from the WorkAdvance Demonstration
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.
Using Data to Analyze Enrollment Drop-Off
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.
Findings from a Study of Teach For America’s Summer Institutes
In summer 2016, TFA piloted a redesigned training model for its teachers that incorporated college- and career-ready standards and methods. This study examined how the new model was implemented at one TFA site and how it compared with the usual TFA training at other sites.
Lessons from the BIAS Project
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.
Three-Year Impacts from the WorkAdvance Demonstration
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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