Family and Social Policy

RMC presence at APPAM’s annual fall research conference

December 20, 2016 Leave a Comment

Several RMC researchers attended the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management’s (APPAM) 2016 Fall Research Conference, The Role of Research in Making Government More Effective, held at the Washington Hilton in DC from Nov. 3-5. Dr. Heath Prince along with Dr. Chris King, Dr. Daniel Schroeder, Ashweeta Patnaik, and Sam Storey were all in attendance, with Chris, Daniel, and Ashweeta presenting some of their work as detailed below.

Social Science Research Associate Ashweeta Patnaik presented two posters. The first poster, presented on Nov. 3rd, highlighted the findings from the Center’s impact evaluation of the Gulf Coast IT Pathways project. In addition to sharing findings regarding the program’s impacts on participants’ education and labor market outcomes, she also focused on the challenges associated with evaluating a large multi-state consortium initiative. Her second poster, presented on Nov. 5th, highlighted the findings from the Center’s impact evaluation of Project GROW. Ms. Patnaik shared how the complex design of the demonstration project (which included multiple sites, differentiated service delivery and multiple program offerings) influenced the impact evaluation design and analysis, along with the evaluation’s findings regarding the program’s impacts on participants’ education and labor market outcomes.

Research Scientist Dr. Daniel Schroeder presented a paper on Nov. 4th demonstrating the success of a near-universal child support system known as the Texas Integrated Child Support System (ICSS). His presentation was part of a panel discussion “Noncustodial Fathers’ Contributions: Recent Trends and Consequences of Child Support Policy in the United States.”

Senior Research Scientist Dr. Chris King organized and chaired a roundtable on “Global Perspectives on Policies to Protect Workers” on Nov. 5th. Professors Hastings and Heyes from Sheffield University’s WOERRC, as well as Karen Livingston with the U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division and Ludek Rychly with the International Labour Office in Geneva, presented at the roundtable. Ms. Livingston is an LBJ alum (Class of ’02) and a past president of the LBJ School Alumni Association.

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.

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Principal Investigator:	Heath J. Prince, PhD
Sponsor(s):	Nuru International
Project Duration:	September 2016 – September 2017
Description:	The Ray Marshall Center (RMC), with support from Nuru International (NI), will assist NI Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) with the methodology, tools, and data analysis of its integrated programming model in Ethiopia and Kenya. RMC will provide technical guidance on measurement and data collection for the Multidimensional Poverty Index along with quantitative data analysis of NI’s Multidimensional Poverty Survey (MPI). The key questions being asked this first year are: Trends Analysis: To what extent is NI having an effect on Multidimensional Poverty through an analysis of trends? Methodological rigor: How can NI M&E improve its methodology and/or tools in order to better capture the impact of the integrated model on poverty?
Reports Available: