Resource Library

The brief describes how Job Corps and community colleges serve young people, how Job Corps currently works with colleges, and how partnerships between Job Corps and colleges could benefit students, Job Corps, and the colleges. The brief also describes the evaluation’s methods and shares what the Job Corps centers identified as the core principles and practices undergirding their successful college partnerships. These core principles and practices include shared goals, clear roles and responsibilities, constant communication, and accommodating each organization’s different requirements.

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 brief describes the challenges associated with helping low-income parents with children under the age of 13 pursuing training and employment to access affordable child care. It also proposes solutions that programs may undertake to increase their effectiveness in assisting parents with accessing and paying for appropriate child care. Further, it identifies barriers that remain to be addressed at the systems level.

The report from a Job Corps pilot focused on enrolling students in college to prepare for a career in healthcare or information technology, conducted February 2017 through June 2019 with 488 students from the Pacific Northwest (ages 16-21) with at least a sixth-grade level of competency in reading and math) enrolled in Job Corps’ Cascades College and Career Academy (CCCA).

States participating in the Reemployment Services and Eligibility Assessments (RESEA) program use evaluation evidence to continually improve their RESEA programs. The list is an array of resources that states can draw on to support their efforts to grow their capacity, to use existing evaluation evidence, and to develop new evidence. This list is organized by resource type. Some resources are narrowly targeted to a single topic while others cover a multitude of topics.

The report features findings from an evaluation of EMPOWER that used quantitative pre-post and descriptive analyses to measure changes in the outcomes for adolescent girls and women and qualitative analysis to contextualize findings. The evaluation’s primary objectives were to determine whether EMPOWER increased participants’ skill levels and, in turn, increased adolescent girls’ access to acceptable work and adolescent girls’ and women’s involvement in self-employment and paid work.

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 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.

Graphic highlighting several Career Pathway program milestones and improvements from the 1980's through the 2020's.

The brief summarizes the input on research priorities gathered from stakeholders and experts by the WIOA Research Portfolio project team between November 2020 and April 2021. The timing of these discussions provides important context for the findings. Many discussions were held during a surge in cases of COVID-19, when social distancing measures were widespread. Other discussions were held after the vaccines were becoming widely available and restrictions were being lifted. The conversations also spanned two different presidential administrations.