Reauthorizing The Workforce Investment Act highlights policies for helping the nation achieve the powerful goals Congress enunciated when it enacted WIA in 1998. Based on interviews conducted with employer organizations by Workforce Innovations Network—WINs—this issue brief suggests ways to strengthen WIA’s attractiveness and relevance to employers.

Launched in 1997, WINs is a collaboration of JFF with the Center for Workforce Preparation of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Center for Workforce Success of the National Association of Manufacturers.

Click here for more information or to download Reauthorizing The Workforce Investment Act

A new WINs flyer helps employers access federal and state programs that can help working people make ends meet. It includes two types of benefits: "Public Benefits for Employees" can yield improvements in attendance, productivity, and job retention. "Public Benefits to Employers for Hiring Certain Workers" covers tax credits for companies that locate in targeted areas or hire targeted workers.

Click here for more information or to download Public Benefits for Employers and Their Employees

"Creating a 21st Century Workforce for Business," with a session by the WINs partners, is a full-day symposium hosted by the U.S. Chamber's Center for Workforce Preparation in partnership with the National Chamber Foundation. Senior industry, government, and media leaders will examine what business needs from a 21st century workforce development system. The May 15th symposium will result in recommendations to policymakers regarding the future of the workforce development system.

Click here for more information on "Creating a 21st Century Workforce"

Even as the economy has cooled, pressure to address problems with U.S. labor markets continues. In many businesses, for instance, many people are approaching retirement. Where will new employees to replace them come from? Meanwhile, more people in low-income neighborhoods are out of work or underemployed, and they will not be able to rely on the reformed welfare system for income. Where will their livelihoods come from?

In Changing Labor Markets, Marlene B. Seltzer and Judith Combes Taylor of Jobs for the Future and Peter Plastrik, CEO of New Urban Learning, describe a systems reform response to these challenges. They offer a dual-customer approach: the objective is to change the labor market system so that low-income people find and hold good-paying jobs and employers efficiently find qualified workers to fill vacant jobs.

Click here for more information or to download Changing Labor Markets

We recently welcomed two new partners to the Early College High School Initiative, which JFF coordinates: Portland Community College Prep and the Foundation for California Community Colleges.

Early College High Schools are small schools where students earn both a high school diploma and two years of college credit toward a Bachelor's degree. They are places for learning, designed to help young people progress toward the education and experience they need to succeed in life and family-supporting careers. With funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, with Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Ford Foundation, and the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, the Early College High School Initiative will establish over 100 schools.

Portland Community College's College Bound targets youth, 16 to 20 years old, who have dropped out of school. It provides students with the opportunity to earn a high school diploma and simultaneously achieve college success through accumulating college credits leading to an Associate's degree or certificate.

The Foundation for California Community Colleges will create 15 Early College High Schools throughout the state. California Community Colleges Chancellor Thomas J. Nussbaum said the effort will enable community colleges to increase access to education for those with limited options.

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Innovative community colleges are invited to apply for the 2004 MetLife Foundation Community College Excellence Awards. The awards will recognize colleges that are breaking ground in helping underserved youth and adults succeed in postsecondary education. Two winning colleges will each receive a $30,000 award and national recognition.

Administered by Jobs for the Future, MetLife Foundation Community College Excellence Awards celebrate and highlight the contributions of leaders in helping underserved youth and adults succeed and advance in college and careers. The award recognizes community colleges that make significant institutional commitments to helping first-time college-goers, new immigrants, working adults, welfare recipients, high school dropouts, and others with limited college experience and success prepare for further education or for a family-supporting career.

Click here for more information or to download the application for the 2004 Award

In recent years, interest has grown in the role of community colleges in helping low-skill and low-income individuals advance toward self-sufficiency. Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation's Opening Doors Project has both recognized that potential and identified obstacles to realizing it. As part of this project, MDRC asked Jobs for the Future to look at curricular and program redesign strategies that community colleges are using to speed advancement from lower skill levels into credential programs and to shorten the time needed to earn a credential.

Changing Courses: Instructional Innovations That Help Low-Income Students Succeed in Community College, by Richard Kazis and Marty Liebowitz, presents a framework for understanding the range of experimentation taking place in community colleges, and it identifies programs that exemplify promising approaches.

Click here for more information or to download Changing Courses

According to JFF's Judith Combes Taylor, "There is a disconnection between the skills that employers need to stay competitive and the skills that workers and job seekers bring to their search for family-sustaining careers." This was her message to the Key Issues Forum in April, sponsored by The Hartford Courant, the MetroHartford Alliance, and the Capitol Region Council of Governments. Taylor and four other experts discussed the workforce challenges facing the Hartford, Connecticut, region, describing how its future quality of life will depend in great measure on regional solutions. Each speaker also prepared a commentary that appeared in The Hartford Courant.

Click here to read Judith Taylor's commentary 

Jobs for the Future is collaborating with the Harvard Civil Rights Project on two events.

MAKING DROPOUTS VISIBLE: ASSESSING THE PROBLEM & CONFRONTING THE CHALLENGE: High school graduation is a key to academic, civic, and economic success, yet at least 25 percent of young people do not complete high school, and many more receive an alternate certificate or GED that has little value in the labor market. Moreover, these statistics hide stark disparities along lines of race and class and an urban crisis of frightening proportions. The Civil Rights Project and JFF are cosponsoring an invitational gathering of policymakers, researchers, practitioners, and advocates to address two key barriers to addressing the dropout issue: the information gap about the scope of the problem; and the lack of knowledge about effective interventions to help students complete their schooling. June 3, 2003, Columbia University, New York City

SCHOOL TO PRISON PIPELINE: For this Civil Rights Project Conference, JFF staff members Lili Allen, Cheryl Almeida, and Adria Steinberg are presenting "From the Prison Track to the College Track," a paper on effective learning environments for the most vulnerable youth. May 16-17, 2003, Cambridge, Massachusetts

Click here for more information on the conferences or to register

The Center for Youth Development and Education—CYDE—is seeking letters of interest from organizations, school districts, and partnerships with the interest and experience to start small schools using the Diploma Plus approach. Diploma Plus combines a competency-based approach, a small personalized learning environment, and transitions to postsecondary opportunities. The Diploma Plus model serves youth who have not experienced success in large comprehensive high schools.

With support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, CYDE will start 10 small high schools across the country, focusing initially on the East.

Letters of interest are due no later than 5:00 p.m., May 19, 2003.

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The Information Technology Association's sixth annual National IT Workforce Convocation will bring together industry, education, and government leaders for one day to focus on collaborative strategies for developing a skilled high-tech workforce. The three conference tracks are: strengthening the IT education/training pipeline; diversity in IT; and e-learning practices. The convocation will be held in Arlington, Virginia, May 5, 2003.

Click here for more information or to register