The Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation (MDRC) sees a strong connection between the dropout decision and unemployment in the teen years and beyond. It developed JOBSTART, a model of a project giving youths a chance to work and focusing on educational remediation, occupational training strategies, and support services to dropouts. To determine the project's feasibility in the current funding environment, MDRC began a one-year pilot phase to extensively study past research on the problem and to collect information on five current programs. The format of the case study is as follows: (1) an examination of the youth dropout situation; (2) examining prior research on dropouts; (3) highlighting of findings from three national studies on the implementation of the Job Training Partnership Act, a major Federal source of employment and training funds; and (4) describing in detail the five program approaches being studied, with emphasis on relevance to the JOBSTART model. The report concludes with a summary of lessons and observations from the pilot phase. (LHW)