Center for Employment Training Replication

Project

Overview

Project Overview

Young people without postsecondary education or vocational credentials face an uphill battle in the competition for jobs. Though the economic boom of the 1990s cut youth unemployment by one-quarter, it failed to benefit African-American and Hispanic young people as much as their white counterparts, and youth who lacked a high school diploma were actually more likely to be unemployed in 1999 than in 1992. Improving employment outcomes among disadvantaged youth is notoriously difficult, which is why the Center for Employment Training (CET) — an employment and training organization in San Jose, California — has attracted considerable attention. Two studies conducted in the 1990s, one of them MDRC’s JOBSTART evaluation, found that CET’s blend of vocational training and basic education substantially increased employment and earnings in this population. To find out whether this success can be reproduced elsewhere, MDRC’s CET Replication Study is using a rigorous research design to examine the program’s implementation and effects on youth in 12 sites outside San Jose.

STATUS: Completed

Basics

Issue: At-Risk Young People

Focus Area: Young People Who Leave High School Before Graduation, Youth Employment

Population: Young Adults

Focus Population: Young People Who Leave High School Before Graduation, People Who Are Unemployed or Underemployed

Locations: California, Florida, Illinois, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina

Intervention: Sectoral Training, Job Training, Employment Services

The Challenge of Repeating Success in a Changing World

Final Report on the Center for Employment Training Replication Sites

The Center for Employment Training (CET) in San Jose, California, produced large, positive employment and earnings effects for out-of-school youth in the late 1980s. However, in this replication study, even the highest-fidelity sites did not increase employment or earnings for youth over the 54-month follow-up period, despite short-term positive effects for women.

Overview »

Full

Agenda, Scope, <br> & Goals

Agenda, Scope, and Goals

CET differs from other employment and training programs in key respects:

Intensive participation in services. Most CET enrollees volunteer to participate. Unemployed youth make up a large proportion of enrollees, partly because the program demands a full-time commitment that many older and/or working people cannot make. CET also allows trainees to follow a flexible schedule known as open entry/exit rather than requiring them to follow a fixed schedule of completion.
Employment and training services designed to mirror the workplace. CET’s basic education component complements its vocational training by helping participants build knowledge and skills that are directly relevant to the jobs for which they are preparing. Rather than offering general literacy classes, for example, CET helps people learn to read job-related materials.
Close involvement of industry in the program’s design and operation. CET involves employers in the design and delivery of training and encourages peer instruction.
Organizational capacity and stability. Based on decades of tinkering and experience, CET has developed a smooth system for delivering services in the context of San Jose’s Silicon Valley economy to a largely Hispanic population.
The main purpose of the CET Replication Study is to address two questions:
Can this innovative program, which has a long history in a specific context, be mounted in new settings? How have the replication sites had to adapt the CET model?
Assuming CET can be operated effectively outside San Jose, does it have effects on youth employment outcomes as encouraging as those found in the original site?

STATUS: Completed

Basics

Issue: At-Risk Young People

Focus Area: Young People Who Leave High School Before Graduation, Youth Employment

Population: Young Adults

Focus Population: Young People Who Leave High School Before Graduation, People Who Are Unemployed or Underemployed

Locations: California, Florida, Illinois, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina

Intervention: Sectoral Training, Job Training, Employment Services

The Challenge of Repeating Success in a Changing World

Final Report on the Center for Employment Training Replication Sites

Overview »

Full

Design, Sites, & <br> Data Sources

Design, Sites, and Data Sources

The study is focusing on how CET affects outcomes for people who were 18 to 22 when they applied for the program (though CET serves a broader disadvantaged population) for up to four and a half years.

Between 1995 and 1999, about 1,500 applicants in 12 sites were randomly assigned to CET, which made them eligible for the program’s services, or to the control group, which was barred from receiving CET services for 24 months. Because people were assigned to one or the other group at random, the two groups did not differ at the outset of the study. Therefore, any subsequent differences between them can be taken as effects of CET.

The CET Replication Study includes 12 sites across the country, six in the East or Midwest and six in the West:

Camden, New Jersey
Chicago, Illinois
El Centro, California
New York, New York
Newark, New Jersey
Orlando, Florida
Oxnard, California
Reidsville, North Carolina
Reno, Nevada
Riverside, California
San Francisco, California
Santa Maria, California

The research team is assessing CET’s implementation based on field visits, document review, and program records of enrollees’ characteristics and participation. The team is estimating CET’s effects on young people’s employment and earnings using surveys of program and control group members conducted 30 months and 54 months after random assignment.

STATUS: Completed

Basics

Issue: At-Risk Young People

Focus Area: Young People Who Leave High School Before Graduation, Youth Employment

Population: Young Adults

Focus Population: Young People Who Leave High School Before Graduation, People Who Are Unemployed or Underemployed

Locations: California, Florida, Illinois, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina

Intervention: Sectoral Training, Job Training, Employment Services

The Challenge of Repeating Success in a Changing World

Final Report on the Center for Employment Training Replication Sites

Overview »

Full

Funders & <br />Partners

Funders

U.S. Department of Labor

Partners

Berkeley Policy Associates

MDRC Staff

Fred Doolittle
Senior Adviser and Chair, Institutional Review Board
Doolittle joined MDRC in 1986, initially specializing in studies of employment and training programs for economically disadvantaged, out-of-school young people and adults. As MDRC expanded its work to include education, he focused on evaluations of elementary and secondary school reforms.
More »
Cynthia Miller
Senior Fellow, Economic Mobility, Housing, and Communities
Miller is an economist whose work focuses on policies and programs to increase the employment and earnings of low-wage workers and disadvantaged young adults. She is the project director for the Paycheck Plus evaluation, testing an expanded Earned Income Tax Credit for single workers without dependent children in New York City.
More »

Project Director

Publications & Resources

COMPLETE LIST OF PUBLICATIONS

Working Paper

Helping Low-Wage Workers Persist in Education Programs

Lessons from Research on Welfare Training Programs and Two Promising Community College Strategies

02/2008

Lashawn Richburg-Hayes

This working paper, prepared for a conference sponsored by the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, reviews what is known about education acquisition by low-wage workers and highlights promising strategies being tested at several community colleges.

Overview »

Full

Report

The Challenge of Repeating Success in a Changing World

Final Report on the Center for Employment Training Replication Sites

09/2005

Cynthia Miller, Johannes Bos, Kristin Porter, Fannie M. Tseng, Yasuyo Abe

Overview »

Full

Working Paper

Barriers to Employment for Out-of-School Youth

Evidence from a Sample of Recent CET Applicants

09/2005

Cynthia Miller, Kristin Porter

This working paper examines employment and earnings over a four-year period for a group of disadvantaged out-of-school youth who entered the Evaluation of the Center for Employment Training (CET) Replication Sites between 1995 and 1999. It assesses the importance of three key factors as barriers to employment: lack of a high school diploma, having children, and having an arrest record.

Overview »

Full

Report

Working with Disadvantaged Youth

Thirty-Month Findings from the Evaluation of the Center for Employment Training Replication Sites

06/2003

Cynthia Miller, Johannes Bos, Kristin Porter, Fannie M. Tseng, Fred Doolittle, Deana Goldsmith, Mary P. Vencill

Efforts to replicate the experience of the Center for Employment Training in San Jose, California — a uniquely successful program that helped at-risk youth develop skills needed to compete in today’s labor market — showed mixed results.

Overview »

Full

Report