CEO Library

The brief is based on lessons from an evaluation: a randomized controlled trial (RCT) of a small subset of the 53 TechHire and Strengthening Working Families Initiative (SWFI) programs—three TechHire programs and two SWFI programs—that explored the implementation and short-term impacts of TechHire and SWFI. In particular, this brief focuses on findings from the implementation analysis that was part of the RCT; data sources for the implementation analysis included observations of TechHire and SWFI programs, interviews with staff members, and a review of program participation data.

The report of impact evaluations aimed to assess the effectiveness of behaviorally-informed communications – such as a pop-up alert and emails – in increasing unemployment insurance (UI) claimants’ compliance with work search requirements.

The report presents American Apprenticeship Initiative (AAI) implementation study findings. The primary data source is interviews conducted during in-person site visits to 10 AAI grantees in spring 2019 and follow-up telephone calls with grant staff in fall 2020. The report documents the design and operation of grant activities and identifies potentially promising practices, implementation challenges, and lessons for future initiatives.

The report focuses on implementation of key changes to governance of the workforce system and how state and local workforce boards engage in planning across the core programs. Discussed here are the successes and challenges, promising practices, and possible areas for further technical assistance related to WIOA for workforce system governance and planning.

The report focuses on implementation of key changes to financial and management requirements for the American Job Center (AJC) system in order to seamlessly deliver services to all workforce customers across various partners. Data for this report are drawn primarily from site visit interviews, conducted in early 2019, with administrators, board chairs and members, employer and agency partners, and frontline staff in 14 states and 28 local areas. Other sources of information include administrative data and relevant state and local documents.

The report focuses on the implementation and short-term impacts of TechHire and Strengthening Working Families Initiative (SWFI) — capturing between 7 and 14 months of follow-up—in the five programs that participated in a randomized control trial. The implementation analysis explored broad research questions about how the programs were implemented and what factors facilitated or inhibited implementation.

The brief draws on data collected from virtual site visits with 18 of the 23 America’s Promise Job Driven Training (America’s Promise) grant programs as part of a comprehensive implementation study to explore the development of and services provided by regional grant partnerships involving workforce development agencies, institutions of higher education, economic development agencies, employers, and community based organizations.

The report is the first of three to present findings from the American Apprenticeship Initiative (AAI) Evaluation implementation study. This initial report primarily uses data from an online survey completed by all grantees, which documented the planning and implementation of grant-supported programs, including characteristics of grantees and their partners, strategies to engage employers, registering apprenticeship programs, identifying and recruiting apprentices, and the major components of apprenticeship programs, including related technical instruction and on-the-job learning.

The report presents findings from the National Agricultural Workers Survey (NAWS), collected from face-to-face interviews with 2,586 crop workers interviewed between October 1, 2016, and September 30, 2018. It is organized into nine chapters, each beginning with a summary of the chapter’s key findings.

The Consolidated Appropriation Act of 2014 authorized the Performance Partnership Pilots for Disconnected Youth (P3), which provided awarded pilots the flexibility to use funding from across multiple Federal discretionary programs to support efforts to improve the systems serving youth and youth’s outcomes. The report assesses the 14 awarded pilots’ implementation of the Federal vision for P3. Findings showed that pilots took a variety of approaches to try to improve youth outcomes, which commonly included new or enhanced services.

In the brief, the Partnership Pilots for Disconnected Youth (P3) study team has placed pilots’ efforts to sustain systems change along a continuum. At one end of this continuum, two pilots approached P3 as a platform to facilitate systems change in their communities. Next along the continuum is a pilot that had taken initial steps toward systems change by the end of its P3 grant. Next, two pilots reported that through P3 they had strengthened partnerships and broken down silos but that the systems for serving disconnected youth did not experience much change as a result of P3.

The summary details the research activities and highlights key findings from all components of the five-year Performance Partnership Pilots for Disconnected Youth (P3) evaluation. First, researchers describe the implementation study, and provide an overview of the study’s findings. Then, they describe the evaluation technical assistance activities provided to grantees and their local evaluators and present findings from the synthesis of Cohort 1 pilots’ local evaluation reports. Lastly, they offer brief considerations of how the lessons learned from P3 can inform future efforts.

In 2017, the Chief Evaluation Office (CEO) partnered with the Employment and Training Administration (ETA) to fund contractors Urban Institute, George Washington University, Capital Research Corporation, and the National Association of State Workforce Agencies to conduct an analysis of employer performance measurement approaches required by Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA).

Many youth in America are not on track for labor market success. One factor that increases the risk of poor labor market outcomes among these youth is dropping out of school (Rumberger 2020). Youth who drop out of school are at greater risk for job instability and for lower long-term earnings (Hair et al. 2009). They are also more likely to struggle with mental health and substance abuse issues (Maynard et al. 2015). These challenges are compounded for youth who have early involvement with the juvenile or criminal justice systems.

In 2014, the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) awarded $107 million in four-year grants to 24 applicants for the Youth CareerConnect (YCC) program. At its core, the YCC program was designed to strengthen America’s talent pipeline by putting high school students on a pathway to complete postsecondary education, obtain industry-recognized credentials, and secure a job in middle- to high-skilled fields that often rely on foreign workers.

The Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA) of 2014 included multiple provisions to strengthen service quality, access, accountability, and coordination across many programs. The report describes early WIOA implementation efforts, based on data collected during pilot site visits to four states and eight local areas in fall 2017. The purpose of the site visits was to help inform the design of the WIOA implementation study and to identify key stakeholders’ initial perspectives on WIOA requirements across five domains.

The Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA) of 2014 included multiple provisions to strengthen service quality, access, accountability, and coordination across many programs. The report focuses on implementation of WIOA’s changes to various aspects of performance accountability and in other data-driven areas under the law, as related to the “core” workforce programs for Titles I and III.

The Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA) of 2014 included multiple provisions to strengthen service quality, access, accountability, and coordination across many programs. The report focuses on implementation of key changes to the Title I Adult and Dislocated Worker programs under WIOA. Discussed are the successes and challenges, promising practices, and possible areas for further technical assistance related to WIOA for these two programs.

The Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA) of 2014 included multiple provisions to strengthen service quality, access, accountability, and coordination across many programs. The report focuses on implementation of WIOA’s changes to various aspects of the WIOA Title I Youth program administered by the U.S. Department of Labor. The report covers changes regarding funding, service delivery approaches, performance accountability, and program elements.

The report provides the findings from the impact study of Youth CareerConnect (YCC). The YCC impact study assessed short-term student outcomes with two rigorous components—a quasi-experimental design (QED) study in 16 school districts and a randomized controlled trial (RCT) in four school districts that were also in the QED.

The technical appendix to the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA) Implementation Study that focused on the core workforce programs authorized under WIOA Title I (Adult, Dislocated Worker, and Youth Services) and Title III (Employment Services) and examined integration with programs under Titles II (Adult Education and Family Literacy) and IV (Vocational Rehabilitation), and other partners.

The report provides details on the data, samples, methods, and analyses for the Youth CareerConnect (YCC) impact study. Rigorously evaluating the effects of the YCC program on student outcomes required that multiple technical pieces be put in place, from selecting districts to participate in the evaluation to collecting and processing high-quality data and measuring impacts to conducting rigorous analysis to estimate impacts. This report provides details of these processes.

The brief provides findings from an implementation study of the Evaluation of Community College Interventions for Youth and Young Adults with Disabilities, funded by the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL), Chief Evaluation Office (CEO). In 2014, DOL’s Office of Disability Employment Policy (ODEP) awarded two community colleges with 5-year Pathways to Careers: Community Colleges for Youth and Young Adults with Disabilities (Pathways) grants to increase their capacity to provide inclusive integrated education and career development and training services to young adults with disabilities.

The report presents findings of the Pathways to Careers: Community Colleges for Youth and Young Adults with Disabilities (Pathways) evaluation consisting of an implementation study and a descriptive outcomes study. The evaluation is descriptive only, given the small numbers of participants included in the Pathways project and lack of a comparison group to measure impacts. The evaluation incorporates an overall design based on mixed data collection methods to support two interrelated and interwoven studies focused on implementation processes and programmatic outputs and outcomes.

The report from the Performance Partnership Pilots for Disconnected Youth (P3) evaluation’s implementation study reflects on the early experiences of the nine Cohort 1 pilots. The data primarily come from interviews with pilot stakeholders conducted in spring and summer 2017. Across the nine pilots, the evaluation team interviewed 169 stakeholders, including P3 administrators, staff, and partners. The report begins by describing P3 as envisioned by the Federal government, describes the nine pilots to provide context for the emerging findings, and then presents the early findings.