Training Opportunities in the Private Sector (TOPS) was a small-scale, voluntary program operated as one among many employment-related options available to recipients of Aid to Families with Dependent Children in Maine's Work Incentive (WIN) Program. TOPS was distinguished from Maine's other WIN demonstration activities by three program elements. It was a prescribed sequence of activities--prevocational training, unpaid work experience, and subsidized on-the-job training, preferably in the private sector. Second, it was intended to reach harder-to-employ clients. Third, it tended to involve more intensive use of staff time. A comparison of the experiences of an experimental group of TOPS participants with a control group that did not have access to the TOPS sequence indicated that TOPS produced employment and earnings gains that contained throughout the 3-year follow-up period. The combination of earnings gains and no welfare reductions led to substantial increases in the total measured income of TOPS enrollees. Because of the relatively high cost of the program and the absence of welfare savings, however, TOPS did not pay for itself from the perspective of government budgets within a 5-year period. (MN)