Examining federal, state, and institutional programs, the paper presents a framework for understanding challenges to securing comprehensive financial assistance for low-income working students. The paper identifies promising approaches for…

This paper looks at curricular and program redesign strategies being used in community colleges today to speed nontraditional students' advancement from lower levels of skill into credential programs and to shorten the time commitment that…

Efforts to replicate the experience of the Center for Employment Training (CET) in San Jose, California -- a uniquely successful program that helped at-risk youth develop skills needed to compete in today's labor market -- showed mixed results.…

Because meaningful improvements in literacy require more hours of instruction than most adult learners receive, low student persistence is a critical issue for providers of adult education. This interim report from the Literacy in Libraries…

Phased in during a time of strong economic expansion, welfare reform and the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program have been associated P with an unprecedented drop in the welfare rolls and commensurate increases in employment.…

Exceptional for its large scale, long follow-up period, and rigorous research design, the National Evaluation of Welfare-to-Work Strategies (NEWWS) has yielded a trove of hard evidence about how best to help people get off welfare and into jobs.…

After-school programs can play an important positive role in the academic and personal development of young people, especially in an era when many parents work full time. Launched in 1997, the Extended-Service Schools (ESS) Initiative helped…

This report, co-authored by the National Governors Association (NGA) Center for Best Practices and Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation (MDRC) is based largely on a roundtable meeting conducted in April 2000 by both organizations to…

The enactment of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act in 1996 signaled a dramatic shift in the nation’s approach to providing assistance to those among the country’s neediest populations. The concept of welfare in the United…