This report from the Office of Career, Technical, and Adult Education (OCTAE) examines the implementation of OCTAE's correctional education reentry model at three demonstration sites: Barton Community College in Kansas, Lancaster Lebanon Intermediate Unit 13 in Pennsylvania, and Western Technical College in Wisconsin. It also identifies lessons for linking facility-based and community-based reentry education programs. The study showed that focusing on transitions in and out of correctional facilities and providing career pathways programs may significantly enable incarcerated individuals to continue their education and prepare for better jobs.

Disadvantaged U.S. workers with limited work experience often have difficulty finding and keeping gainful employment. Targeted employment and training interventions can help this population rise up in the labor market and improve their employment and earning potential. The Employment Strategies for Low-Income Adults Evidence Review (ESER) is a review of research on employment and training programs for low-income individuals. The review aims to identify programs and services that help low-income adults get and keep jobs and become self-sufficient.

The Maryland Administrative Office of the Courts has released this report, which presents the results of a study of three geographically diverse teen courts in Maryland. The study found that youth in each jurisdiction who completed a teen court program had fewer instances of recidivism than youth who did not complete the program.

This blog post was written by an employee at the Office of Child Support Enforcement (OCSE) and describes her childhood experience with child support. She highlights the work of OCSE, including their recent Child Support Report newsletter, and how the agency has improved exponentially throughout the past decades.

This report from the Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation describes the programmatic factors within the current TANF environment that may influence the numbers of work-eligible individuals or families with zero reported hours of participation. Additionally, the report highlights promising strategies used by state and local TANF agencies to encourage client engagement.

The Office of Family Assistance (OFA) has posted Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) caseload and application data for the fiscal year and current year of 2014. Also posted are the caseload and application data for the first quarter of fiscal year 2015.

In this “Dear Colleague” letter, the Department of Education clarifies important information about student eligibility for Pell Grants and student financial aid. Through the Higher Education Act’s “Ability to Benefit” provision, federal aid will be provided to students without a high school diploma (or equivalent) if they participate in career pathways programs that meet certain criteria, which are described in the guidance letter.

In the latest issue of the Office of Child Support Enforcement's Child Support Report, practitioners can learn about programs and initiatives that help fathers deepen their financial and emotional commitments to their children. Topics include temporary custody, the Responsible Fatherhood Toolkit, Medicaid, collaborative partnerships, and more.

On July 1, 2015, the National Skills Coalition (NSC) hosted this webinar focused on opportunities for integration between the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) and Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA) systems. The Webinar featured national and local experts to address key principles for aligning human capital investments to produce better outcomes for individuals and local economies.

This report describes some prominent career and college pathways programs and models, as well as identifies localities where this type of approach has gained the most traction. The authors discuss overall principles that characterize the most promising programs and provide recommendations for future investment to strengthen these types of initiatives.