This issue brief is one in a series examining timely topics that are relevant to Black families and children in the United States. The series identifies key information and opportunities for consideration by policymakers, researchers, practitioners, philanthropists, and others interested in supporting the progress of Black families and…

This paper reviews the sections of the Job Training Partnership Act (JTPA) that provide for using competencies gained by youth as evaluation tools. The paper discusses the types of competencies that youths should gain by such programs and how they should be measured, as an alternative to traditional program-based evaluation. The paper is organized…

This executive summary crystallizes the main themes of a study that is intended to help policymakers, advocates, community members, and welfare administrators create a welfare system to do more for children and do it better. The study was prompted by the Family Support Act of 1988. The following programs that have been successful in providing…

The emerging youth service movement has reinforced and built on the foundation of service in traditional organizations and focuses on tapping youth talent and energy. Youth service is a concept that has roots in pre-20th century American society. Service programs today increasingly include training, education, prevention, and employment…

This paper explores the role of public jobs programs in the U.S. economy from the 1930s to the present. It postulates that jobs programs are necessary because they serve four separate but overlapping needs: alleviating joblessness, hardship, and poverty; helping the economy emerge from recession; providing jobs to able-bodied welfare recipients;…

In times of economic recession, dollars for job training and job placement programs grow scarcer, and those that are available tend to go to middle-class workers who are displaced or temporarily unemployed. The structurally unemployed--primarily the poor, the less educated, and minority youth--find it harder to compete for the needed training, and…

Focusing on follow-through, synthesis, dissemination, and application, this Youth Employment and Demonstration Projects Act plan for knowledge development in 1980 is divided into seven key sections. The first section presents projects which will require continued funding and refinement to realize their objectives. Section 2 provides a list of…

This publication is the text of the House of Representatives bill, H.R. 5600 introduced to the U.S. Congress and titled "Children's Initiative." This legislation is designed to promote family preservation and the prevention of foster care with emphasis on families where abuse of alcohol or drugs is present, to improve the quality and…

The Rand Institute on Education and Training, in consultation with the Committee on Education and Labor of the House of Representatives, undertook an analysis of federal policy options to improve education in low-income areas. This analysis focuses on Chapter 1 of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, the federal program for…

In order to study the persistence of poverty across generations with a view to developing or monitoring cross-generational poverty-reduction policies, social indicators to track dependency and deprivation of children are needed. Available data on the dependency and deprivation of children primarily describe the following characteristics of the…

Realities of a multilingual, multiethnic workforce and the services available in the current employment and training system are discussed in this report, which outlines the main Federal programs that provide employment and training for the foreign-born. Also highlighted are issues raised by participants in the Immigrant Policy Project's regional…

The Human Environment Center held a national conference on Youth Conservation Jobs and Service in May, 1981, in Washington, D.C., attended by approximately 100 representatives of minority, employment, youth, environmental, and national service interests. The conferees concurred that the Young Adult Conservation Corps (YACC) and the Youth…

The Youth Employment and Demonstration Projects Act of 1977 (YEDPA) provided the mandate and resources for experimental and demonstration activity to determine the most effective means to alleviate the employment problems of economically disadvantaged youth. An immediate need was to establish plans and priorities for research, evaluation, and…

The passage of Title I of the 1965 Elementary Secondary Education Act embodied not only the high hopes of reformers, but also an implicit challenge. Title I implied that current practices are inadequate, and the schools were given the assignment of self-renewal. However, almost a decade after the passage of Title I, the general verdict is that…

This report of a 1974 conference on child care and public policy provides an overview of an attempt to establish a rational dialogue between public policymakers interested in the problems of child care and researchers who study the problems of child development. In Part I, a description of the historical context of issues relating to public…