Dr. Christopher King traveled to Chicago, IL, to present his research basis for two-generation strategies to the Working Poor Families Project Policy Academy held at The Joyce Foundation on June 27, 2014.  Click here to view the slideshow of his presentation.

Dr. Christopher King traveled to Washington, DC, to participate in the launch of the new book Connecting People to Work: Workforce Intermediaries and Sector Strategies sponsored by the Aspen Institute’s Workforce Strategies Initiative and published by The American Assembly at Columbia University for the Institute’s Economic Opportunities Program.  Dr. King authored the chapter titled “Sectoral Workforce and Related Strategies: What We Know…and What We Need to Know.”  Click here to view a recording of the event, which was held at the Aspen Institute on June 12, 2014.  Click here to read the Introduction, see the Table of Contents, and view interviews with the editors and other collaborators.

About the book: “The past decade has seen substantial economic change and tremendous innovation within organizations seeking to help workers navigate these changes.  Ten years after the release of Workforce Intermediaries for the 21st Century, the sector-based workforce development field has made a demonstrable difference for struggling workers seeking to connect to employment.  Challenges still remain, but much has been learned.  This robust collection brings together perspectives from philanthropy, policy, research, and practice, and sets out how sector-based workforce development has evolved over thirty years, with a special focus on the past ten.  The book brings together the thinking of some of these leaders in the field about how the sector strategy can evolve and inform public and private investments and policy decisions.  This volume is sure to provoke timely reflection among practitioners, policy makers, investors, and researchers, as well as lay readers.”

Dr. Chris King traveled to Washington, DC, to participate in the 17th Annual Administration for Children and Families’ (ACF) Welfare Research and Evaluation Conference (WREC) held at the Grand Hyatt Hotel from May 28-30, 2014.  Click here to view the slideshow to his presentation.

Dr. Chris King travelled to Aspen, Colorado, to present at Ascend’s Early Childhood, Health and Beyond convening on May 30, 2014.  Click here to see the slideshow from his presentation.

This morning, Dr. King appeared on the Morning Edition radio show on NPR to discuss the benefits of the CareerAdvance® Program, a two-generation approach to simultaneously helping their parents and their children achieve success in Tulsa, OK.  The program is spearheaded by the Tulsa Community Action Project of Tulsa.  The broadcast also features comments by CAP-Tulsa director Steven Dow.  Dr. King and Mr. Dow are both inaugural fellows in the Aspen Institute’s Ascend Program that serves as a hub for information about 2-generation strategies.  You can listen to the broadcast, or you can download the transcript from the website.

NPR’s Eric Westervelt’s follow-up on Saturday 4/26/14 was the headline story on All Things Considered.  You can listen to the broadcast, or you can download the transcript from the website.

Ascend at The Aspen Institute was featured in the The Washington Post on 5/7/14 in an article detailing their two-generation approach.  You can read the article here.

Professor Dylan Conger of George Washington University presented her paper Gender Imbalance in Higher Education: Evidence from the Texas Top Ten Percent to the LBJ School community on March 17, 2014. The female advantage in college enrollment has generated concern among university officials and sparked new debate about gender-conscious college admissions.  Her paper uses unique data from the University of Texas at Austin to demonstrate that the Texas Top 10 Percent Plan, which guarantees university admission to students who graduate in the top decile of their high school class, significantly increased the number of females admitted to the university.  We find no evidence, however, that the university attempted to restore gender balance by lowering the admissions standards for males who were ineligible for guaranteed admission.

Dylan Conger is Associate Professor at the Trachtenberg School of Public Policy and Public Administration at the George Washington University, Director of the Masters in Public Policy Program, and a research affiliate at the George Washington Institute of Public Policy and New York University’s Institute for Education and Social Policy.  Dr. Conger’s research concerns disadvantaged, immigrant, and minority youth with a focus on education policies and urban areas. Current projects include examining the effects of public policies and programs on the educational outcomes of undocumented immigrant and English Language Learners; estimating the effect of Advanced Placement courses on educational outcomes; and identifying the sources of gender disparities in secondary and post-secondary educational outcomes.  Dr. Conger currently serves on the Board of Directors of the Association for Education Finance and Policy, the Technical Advisory Panel of the National Center for Education Statistics’ National Assessment of Educational Progress High School Transcript Study, and the Editorial Boards of Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis and Educational Researcher. Before joining George Washington University, Dr. Conger held research positions at the Vera Institute of Justice and Abt Associates, Inc. where she conducted implementation and impact evaluations of large and small-scale social and education programs.  Dr. Conger received her BA in Ethnic Studies from the University of California at Berkeley, her MPP from the University of Michigan, and her PhD in public policy from New York University.

Ray Marshall Center Associate Director, Dr. Heath Prince, presented a paper at the African Evaluation Association’s bi-annual conference in Yaounde, Cameroon, held March 3rd-7th. Dr. Prince’s paper, Macro-level Drivers of Multidimensional Poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa: Measuring Change in the Human Poverty Index, examines the role that pro-poor policy has had on non-income-based metrics of deprivation. The conference was sponsored by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the United Nations Development Program, the World Bank, USAID, UNICEF, UN Women, and several other bi-lateral aid agencies and NGOs active in Sub-Saharan Africa.

On Friday, November 22^nd, Director Dr. Chris King introduced Ruth Ellen Wasem, guest speaker at an LBJ School’s Brown Bag series event sponsored by the Ray Marshall Center.   Ms. Wasem is a Specialist in the Domestic Social Policy Division of the Congressional Research Service and Adjunct Professor of Public Policy at the LBJ School of Public Affairs, Washington Program.  Wasem’s talk, “ Tackling Unemployment: Lessons for Today from the Employment Act of 1946”, drew from her recently published a book titled, “Tackling Unemployment; the Legislative Dynamics of the Employment Act of 1946.”

In her presentation, Wasem spoke to how the sweeping legislation that resulted from a post-war consensus surrounding the belief that full-employment was the central piece to achieving the American dream was passed through congress and signed by the president. She then went on to tie comparisons between the issues that American society grappled with then to those that we face today.

Over the past week, three articles in the Austin American-Statesman have highlighted the work produced by the Center’s Student Futures Project. The first article, titled “Little Progress in Effort to get more Austin-Area students to College,” speaks to the challenges that Central Texas faces in trying to increase college enrollment. In this article, the Center’s Greg Cumpton explains that Central Texas has experienced a surge in the number and share of lower-income students who are typically not as inclined to go to college.

The second article, published on the 18^th, places special emphasis on the fact that college enrollment for lower-income groups is on the rise, increasing by six percentage points in the last four years. Finally, an editorial piece was published. Citing RMC data and analysis, the piece praises the Austin Chamber of Commerce for its role in supporting education in the area. “The Austin chamber has the right idea in using its own resources to help Central Texas schools. In all, the chamber has steered $1.5 million to schools to help boost graduation and college enrollment rates. It has paid for the new Counselors Portal program for area districts that help counselors track high school students in a similar way as Austin’s Project Advance program does. The chamber’s funding also goes toward tutoring graduating students who are not college-ready and last summer’s pilot, Summer Melt, which paid high school counselors through the summer to help students, particularly those who are first-generation college-goers, to finish the application process.”

Increasing interest in the Student Futures Project points to the fact that Central Texas and other parts of the country are taking a closer look at how they can mold policies that will help high school students in their transition from high school to college.