HIGHLIGHTS
- Effectively meeting the employment and education needs of opportunity youth
- Develop a toolset of systematic evaluation and innovation process frameworks
- Equipped Job Corps with the tools to evaluate, modernize, and strengthen program structures and delivery strategies.
The Challenge
The Jobs Corps program equips low-income US youth with professional and technical training to secure meaningful employment opportunities. Despite rigorous evaluations of the program in the mid-1990s, there is little understanding of the program’s current structure, and of its impact on participants post-enrollment. The goal of this project was to equip the program with the tools to evaluate, strategically modernize and strengthen the program to improve outcomes, and realize scalable innovations that work in-step with the current labor market and economy.
The Approach
Partnering with MDRC, Abt designed a research and evaluation framework for the Job Corps program; conducted pilot implementation studies at three sites and led an impact evaluation feasibility assessment.
The Results
Supporting the strategic modernization and strengthening of Job Corps, Abt equipped the program with a toolset of systematic processes, summarized in a research-based improvement framework, to pilot and test innovative program structures and service delivery strategies. Abt also analyzed administrative data from Job Corps and the National Directory of New Hires to identify how well existing program structures are serving enrolled youth.
Together, the research and evaluation tools developed by Abt demonstrate how federally funded programs can leverage systematic, evidence-based processes to build a comprehensive understanding of program strengths and weaknesses, and strategically refine program models to yield substantial and sustained positive impacts for more youth.