This MDRC series includes six podcasts that reflect evidence-based programming for education and social programs, at both the design and evaluation stages. Podcast speakers include MDRC researchers and field practitioners and cover: Using Data-Driven Strategies for Program Improvement, Replicating CUNY’s ASAP Model in Ohio, Can Aligned Instruction Prevent Pre-K Fadeout, A Practitioner-Researcher Partnership for the Grameen America Program, Steps to Upward Mobility: Lessons from Three Youth Employment Programs, and How to Improve College Placement Using Multiple Measures.

This Annie E. Casey Foundation blogpost profiles A Place 4 Me, a community-based organization in Cleveland that improves outcomes for housing of youth transitioning out of foster care. The blogpost discusses the organization’s goals for ending youth homelessness and how it integrates support systems and services by offering young peer navigators who have transitioned out of foster care.

The U.S. Department of Labor offers a comprehensive set of resources in celebration of National Mentoring Month. This site includes information on adult mentoring, being a mentor, mentoring as a component of reentry, and workplace mentoring. Also included are materials from four previously held webinars that cover communication strategies for mentoring programs, mentoring youth with disabilities, rural mentoring, and the power of workplace mentoring with youth. There are also references to leading national mentoring organizations.

By March 2020, states are required to submit WIOA Unified and Combined State Plans for the period of 2020-2023. To assist States and their partners, the Departments of Labor, Education, Agriculture, and Health and Human Services hosted a webcast series highlighting content and submission requirements for the State Plans. Topics covered included dislocated workers, the Wagner-Peyser Act, Unemployment Insurance, Adult Education, and Vocational Rehabilitation.

This Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation report assesses the first round of HPOG grantees and reports the impacts of the HPOG model three years after a random controlled test. The report examines the impact that locally implemented HPOG programs have on program participants and their families, the extent of these impacts among selected subpopulations within each grantee programs, and whether employment following HPOG training follows an identified career pathway. HPOG 1.0 covers the first set of grant awards made in 2010 to 32 organizations, including five tribal organizations.

The Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin at Madison will host a webinar on January 15, 2020 from 1:00 p.m. to 2:00 p.m. CT to discuss the Pathways to Prosperity and Well-Being program. This program is a comprehensive systems transformation approach that addresses policy formulation, program management and supervision, and program implementation and practice. The webinar will include presentations from representatives of human services agencies in Olmsted and Dakota counties in Minnesota, as well as discussions by evaluators from the University of Minnesota’s Future Services Institute about the program’s design and initial implementation.

This Lumina Foundation brief offers a synthesis of third-party evaluations that measure and assess the impact of strategies used by two-year colleges to improve adult completion of non-degree credential programs. Strategies include the use of academic and non-academic student supports, the creation and implementation of career pathways, and the deployment of prior learning assessments. The brief also offers data pointing to the limited labor market opportunities for the more than half of Americans ages 25 to 64 who do not hold a postsecondary credential.

This Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation report is a feasibility evaluation of the Bridges to Pathways (Bridges) program. The Bridges program addressed youth ages 17 to 21 exiting the criminal or juvenile justice system. Through the program, participants who did not have a high school diploma earned this credential. They also engaged in social-emotional learning workshops, and participated in a subsidized internship. The Bridges evaluation is included in OPRE’s Subsidized and Transitional Employment Demonstration and assessed the Bridges program’s impact on 480 participants and their outcomes for employment, earnings, and decreased criminal activity.