Education – Page 5

Cynthia Juniper and Heath Prince have report published to Online Journal for Workforce Education and Development

August 24, 2016 Leave a Comment

RMC researchers Cynthia Juniper and Heath Prince co-authored a report that has recently been added to the Southern Illinois University-Carbondale’s Online Journal for Workforce Education and Development (OJWED). The report, Behavioral Economics and Workforce Development: A Review of the Literature from Labor Economics and the Broader Field, is intended to explore the strengths and limitations of applying tools of behavioral sciences to increase the participation and completion rate of training for lower-wage, front-line incumbent workers in ways that benefit both workers and sponsoring firms. You can view OJWED’s publication here.

This review and associated research on behavioral economics and workforce development were generously funded by the Hitachi Foundation.

Evaluation of English@Work Employer Benefits and Costs

August 16, 2016 Leave a Comment

Principal Investigator:	Christopher T. King, Ph.D
Sponsor(s):	Literacy Coalition of Central Texas and Houston Center for Literacy
Project Duration:	July 2016 -September 2017
Description:	The Ray Marshall Center (RMC), with support from the Literacy Coalition of Central Texas (LCCT), will conduct an evaluation of English@Work’s benefits and costs for participating employers, a required component of LCCT’s grant from the Houston Center for Literacy-English@Work which was launched as a small nonprofit in Austin in 2005 and was subsumed by the LCCT in January 2014, is a unique approach to teaching English-language skills by contextualizing, customizing, and providing them in the workplace. Early results indicated that this approach substantially outperformed more traditional approaches that rely heavily on classroom instruction, provide few hours of actual instruction per week, and/or fail to contextualize and tailor instruction in the setting and language of the workplace. Students made larger gains on various literacy measure more quickly than these more traditional approaches. And, students indicated that they felt more motivated to learn in a cohort of their peers that was situated within their workplace. After three years evolving and growing under the auspices of the LCCT, the Texas Workforce Commission’s (TWC) Site-based Workplace Literacy Project has provided grant funding to scale up English@Work in Austin and expand it to the Houston area over the period from May 2016 to June 2017. The grant from TWC will support literacy and career services for more than 700 participants and plans to provide credentials or certificates of completion for around 490 of these participants over the grant period. The RMC evaluation will address two questions, as follows: What are the impacts of English@Work instruction on employers? What is the return-on-investment (ROI) of English@Work instruction for participating employers? This evaluation strives to capture near-term outcomes and ROI for employers whose employees receive English@Work services within the resources available to the grant. Outcomes will largely be based on employer perceptions of the results within a relatively immediate timeframe. A more comprehensive evaluation is planned for the future if additional funding can be secured.
Reports Available:	Employer Benefits and Costs of English@Work Participation Authors: Christopher T. King and Cynthia Juniper Date: September 2017 Publication Type: Report, 48pp.

An Evaluation of Austin Community College’s Title III SIP Proposal

October 29, 2015 Leave a Comment

Principal Investigator:	Greg Cumpton, PhD
Sponsor:	Austin Community College
Project Duration:	October 2015 to September 2021
Description:	ACC proposes to establish an Office of Student Money Management (ACC-OSMM) – the office’s mission would be to give a stronger foundation to students’ academic and career goals and successes by helping them take charge of their financial futures.Two of the inaugural activities of ACC-OSMM will be: to establish a system of sending text message reminders regarding annual Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) renewal to first-year college students who are already receiving financial aid, and to enhance the main tool (Degree Map Online) that ACC counselors use to advise students to include ‘real time’ personalized financial aid information. This will improve integration of financial aid and loan awareness into student conversations with academic advisors and counselors. ACC hopes to demonstrate that the activities of ACC-OSMM would be linked to improvements in measures of student success such as: graduation rate, time to completion, retention/persistence, and cohort loan default rate (CDR). ACC will partner with the Ray Marshall Center (RMC) to perform an evaluation, both formative and summative, on the effectiveness of these efforts on the student outcome measures of interest. Both types of evaluations provide actionable information about the success of the intervention while each successive cohort of recipients is in the process of receiving services, allowing for relatively rapid reflection and program modification as needed by ACC staff. Both evaluations are intended to measure the implementation, aggregate outcomes, and the impact of these efforts on Full Time First Time in College (FTFIC) loan or Pell grant receiving students’ graduation rates, 3-year Cohort Default Rates (CDR), retention rates, and fall to fall persistence for those who are Pell eligible. A host of intermediate steps related to these outcomes will also be measured.
Reports Available:	Evaluation of Austin Community College’s Strengthening Institutions Program Grant: Implementation Evaluation Report Through July 2021 Authors: Cynthia Juniper, Greg Cumpton, and Ashweeta Patnaik Date: September 2021 Publication Type: Report, 20pp. Evaluation of Austin Community College’s Strengthening Institutions Program Grant: Annual Outcomes and Impacts Report Authors: Ashweeta Patnaik, Greg Cumpton, and Cynthia Juniper Date: September 2021 Publication Type: Report, 35pp. Evaluation of Austin Community College’s Strengthening Institutions Program Grant: Implementation Evaluation Report Through July 2020 Authors: Cynthia Juniper, Greg Cumpton, and Ashweeta Patnaik Date: August 2020 Publication Type: Report, 33pp. Evaluation of Austin Community College’s Strengthening Institutions Program Grant: Annual Outcomes and Impacts Report Authors: Ashweeta Patnaik and Greg Cumpton Date: August 2020 Publication Type: Report, 38pp. Evaluation of Austin Community College’s Strengthening Institutions Program Grant: Implementation Evaluation Findings Through July 2019 Authors: Cynthia Juniper and Greg Cumpton Date: August 2019 Publication Type: Report, 32pp. Evaluation of Austin Community College’s Strengthening Institutions Program Grant: Annual Outcomes and Impact Report Authors: Ashweeta Patnaik and Greg Cumpton Date: August 2019 Publication Type: Report, 25pp. Evaluation of Austin Community College’s Strengthening Institutions Program Grant: Implementation Evaluation Findings Through July 2018 Authors: Cynthia Juniper and Greg Cumpton Date: November 2018 Publication Type: Report, 41pp. Evaluation of Austin Community College’s Strengthening Institutions Program Grant: Annual Outcomes and Impact Report Authors: Ashweeta Patnaik and Greg Cumpton Date: August 2018 Publication Type: Report, 26pp. Austin Community College Student Money Management – Implementation Evaluation: Program Description and Timeline Authors: Cynthia Juniper, Greg Cumpton, and Ashweeta Patnaik Date: June 2017 Publication Type: Report, 18pp. Evaluation of ACC-SIP Initiatives: Baseline Assessment Date: June 2017 Publication Type: Report, 18pp.

Mid-South Community College-led Trade Adjustment Assistance Community College Career Training (TAACCCT) Grant

October 7, 2015 Leave a Comment

Principal Investigator: Co-Principal Investigator:	Heath J. Prince, PhD Ashweeta Patnaik, MPH
Sponsor:	Corporation for a Skilled Workforce and US Department of Labor
Project Duration:	June 2015 – September 2018
Description:	The Ray Marshall Center (RMC), in collaboration with the Corporation for a Skilled Workforce (CSW), will be evaluating the efforts of the Mid-South Community College-led Trade Adjustment Assistance Community College Career Training (TAACCCT) grant for the Greater Memphis Alliance for a Competitive Workforce (GMACW). GMACW’s mission is to help solve Greater Memphis’ skills gap by: aligning training and education programs with employers’ skill requirements, and with each other; connecting employers to cost-effective training and hiring support, and; driving coordination and improved outcomes among providers that serve job candidates. While CSW is conducting the implementation (formative) evaluation, RMC is carrying out a quasi-experimental comparison cohort (summative) evaluation to measure the impact of these strategies. The impact evaluation conducted by RMC will seek to gauge the “value-added” from these enhanced training pathways.
Reports Available:	Greater Memphis Alliance for a Competitive Workforce (GMACW) TAACCCT Round 4 Grant: Impact Evaluation Final Report Author: Ashweeta Patnaik Date: September 2018 Publication Type: Report, 60pp. Greater Memphis Alliance for a Competitive Workforce (GMACWorkforce) TAACCCT Round 4 Grant: Implementation Evaluation Final Report Author: Cynthia Juniper Date: September 2018 Publication Type: Report, 55pp. Greater Memphis Alliance for a Competitive Workforce TAACCCT Round 4 Grant: Interim Impact Evaluation Report Authors: Ashweeta Patnaik and Heath Prince Date: March 2017 Publication Type: Report, 53pp. Greater Memphis Alliance for a Competitive Workforce TAACCCT Round 4 Grant: Final Impact Evaluation Plan Date: March 2016 Publication Type: Report, 30pp.

Greg Cumpton Attends Big Data Charrette in North Carolina

April 17, 2015 Leave a Comment

On April 13th, the Center’s Associate Director, Greg Cumpton, traveled to Durham, North Carolina to participate in the convening of a Big Data charrette with leading academics, industry leaders, and non-profits from across the South. The National Science Foundation convened the meeting in an effort to develop a Big Data Innovation Ecosystem for the region, where public and private data may be shared securely and accurately across organizations in an effort to drive more effective solutions in education, healthcare, and emergency planning.

TPR Quotes RMC Study on Lack of, and Need for, School Counselors

March 11, 2015 Leave a Comment

The Source on Texas Public Radio (TPR) recently spotlighted the overwhelming need for school counselors, and related legislation being introduced via House Bill 18 authored by Jimmy Don Aycock (R-Killeen) that addresses college and career readiness training for certain public school counselors. The program included details from our recent study published in December 2014, Texas School Counselor Study: Exploring the Supply, Demand, and Evolving Roles of School Counselors, authored by Greg Cumpton and Matt Giani. You can listen to the program here.

Heath Prince and Chris King Co-Author SWEAP Papers with National Skills Coalition

March 3, 2015 Leave a Comment

Heath Prince and Chris King co-authored a set of State Workforce and Education Alignment Project (SWEAP) papers just issued by the National Skills Coalition. The two reports present new tools that provide policymakers the information they need to improve the effectiveness of states’ workforce and education programs to create career pathways for people with a diversity of needs. They also explain how states can create web-based and interactive dashboards to evaluate their ability to help residents get jobs requiring postsecondary training while providing employers with skilled workers. The two papers can be found below.

Using Pathway Evaluators for State Workforce Planning

Using Dashboards for State Workforce Planning

Behavioral Economics and Workforce Development

February 11, 2015 Leave a Comment

Principal Investigator:	Heath J. Prince, PhD
Sponsor(s):	The Hitachi Foundation
Project Duration:	August 2014 – August 2016
Description:	The Ray Marshall Center, with support and guidance from the Hitachi Foundation, will act on the following activities. Conduct a review of the existing literature as it relates to behavioral sciences and improvements in the workplace, including accessing education and training services. Organize and manage a convening of participants from the workforce development, business, and academic communities to: explore options for a research design that would determine whether and to what extent digital media/social technology can facilitate deeper engagement on the part of workers and employers in education and training; and work with the Hitachi Foundation to design an implementation plan for a second phase of the work, building on the findings and recommendations from the convening.
Reports Available:	Behavioral Economics and Workforce Development: A Review of the Literature from Labor Economics and the Broader Field Authors: Cynthia J. Juniper and Heath Prince Date: February 2016 Publication Type: Report, 16pp

Working Paper from the Texas Workforce Data Quality Initiative Released by the National Bureau of Economic Research

January 16, 2015 Leave a Comment

Researchers involved in the Workforce Data Quality Initiative are pleased to announce the release of a working paper titled Efficacy vs. Equity: What Happens When States Tinker With College Admissions in a Race-blind Era? via the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER). Discussions in various media outlets are taking place. Diverse: Issues in Higher Education‘s article can be found here. The Washington Post also featured an article about the study. There are certain to be more as the study progresses.

PLEASE NOTE: NBER working papers are circulated for discussion and comment purposes. They have not been peer-reviewed or been subject to the review by the NBER Board of Directors that accompanies official NBER publications.

Efficacy vs Equity: What Happens When States Tinker With College Admissions in a Race-blind Era

Authors: Sandra E. Black, Kalena E. Cortes, and Jane Arnold Lincove
Date: December 2014
Publication Type: Working Paper, 47pp

Abstract: College admissions officers face a rapidly changing policy environment where court decisions have limited the use of affirmative action. At the same time, there is mounting evidence that commonly used signals of college readiness, such as the SAT/ACTs, are subject to race and socioeconomic bias. Our study investigates the efficacy and equity of college admissions criteria by estimating the effect of multiple measures of college readiness on freshman college grade point average and four-year graduation.
Importantly, we take advantage of a unique institutional feature of the Texas higher education system to control for selection into admissions and enrollment. We find that SAT/ACT scores, high school exit exams, and advanced coursework are predictors of student success in college. However, when we simulate changes in college enrollment and college outcomes with additional admissions criteria, we find that adding SAT/ACT or high school exit exam criteria to a rank-based admissions policy
significantly decreases enrollment among minorities and other groups, with the most negative effects generated by the SAT/ACT, while inducing only minimal gains in college GPA and four-year graduation rates.