"In 2000, the Employment and Training Administration awarded grants to 36 communities to provide services – including education, employment, support, and leadership development – to youth ages 14 to 21 in high poverty areas. The grants ranged from $3 million to $44 million over five years (2000 to 2005). The objective of the Youth Opportunity Grants Initiative (YO) was to concentrate a sufficient level of funds in high poverty areas to improve the long-term educational and employment outcomes of youth living in these areas and to serve a high enough proportion of those youth to positively affect peer pressure. The study concluded that YO succeeded in concentrating large amounts of resources in high poverty areas and reaching a large proportion of the youth in those areas. The study also concluded that positive community-level impacts are achievable for communities such as those served by YO, especially with regard to educational outcomes"(Abstract).
The evaluation included four distinct components--an ethnography, impact analysis, Management Information System evaluation, and a process evaluation; a separate report exists for each component. The URL links to a DOL page from which each report can be accessed, as well as an Executive Summary of all four. (Abstractor: Author and Website Staff)
Major Findings & Recommendations
- "YO increased the labor-force participation rate overall and specifically for teens (ages 16 to19), women, native-born residents, Blacks, and ISY. YO also increased the employment rate among Blacks, teens, OSY, and native-born youths and had a positive effect on the hourly wages of women and teens" (p.20). - "YO reduced full-time employment among the employed overall and for many subgroups, most notably ISY and OSY, females, older youths, and whites. YO also appeared to decrease significantly the full-time employment rate for ISY" (p.20). - "YO had a positive impact overall on increasing the percentage of the youths with at least an eleventh-grade education, reducing the percentage of youths who were not in school, and increasing the percentage in secondary school" (p.21). - "YO also had a significantly positive effect on reducing the number of OSY and out-of-work (disconnected) youths overall and for males and females, 20- to 21-year-olds, Blacks, Hispanics, native-born youths, and foreign-born youths" (p.21).(Abstractor: Author)