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Recognizing the workforce and education challenges facing the energy and advanced manufacturing industries in the tri-state Appalachia region of southwestern Pennsylvania, northern West Virginia, and eastern Ohio, the Social Investment Team of the Chevron North American Appalachian Mountain Business Unit launched the Appalachia Partnership Initiative (API) in 2014 and committed to investing
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RAND researchers assess the Appalachia Partnership Initiative (API)'s progress toward its goals in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education for grades K–12; energy and advanced manufacturing workforce development; and community building from 2014 through 2019. This report should interest (1) Appalachian regional education, business, and community leaders concerned with STEM education and career readiness of workers in the energy and advanced manufacturing sectors; (2) policymakers elsewhere in the United States interested in promoting STEM education and workforce development through public-private partnerships; and (3) policy analysts interested in how program evaluation can help to advance regional innovation. The authors found that API set an ambitious, next-generation vision to improve the region's energy and manufacturing education and employment ecosystem in support of broader economic development through investing in particular programs and catalyzing a community of likeminded stakeholders to work toward these goals. The initiative made progress in improving awareness, skills acquisition, professional development, and industry engagement and skills alignment. Programs engaged with employers in many ways, including through advising and collaboration in training. Our analyses also found that gaps remained. Negative perceptions and lack of awareness of jobs in energy and advanced manufacturing persisted in the region, and programs struggled to keep up with evolving industry demands. To support and sustain regional K–12 STEM education and workforce development systems, it is vital to continue to support programs' continual evolution, build awareness about STEM education and employment opportunities, and leverage connections among the private sector, education institutions, and government entities.
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The authors of this report aim to understand the health of the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education and labor market in the Appalachia region — defined as the intersection of Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia — with a focus on the mining and extraction industry. This report is the third in a three-part series. The first two reports provided initial examinations of STEM education and the labor market in the Appalachia Partnership Initiative (API) region. In this report, the authors address the same questions as the first two reports but devote more attention to examining whether and how any of the indicators have changed over time. The authors also tighten the analysis specifically to the API region and introduces a few new measures, such as participation in career and technical education (CTE).
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Tools for Life®: Relationship-Building Solutions (TFL) is a program designed to improve school climate and safety through the proactive development of elementary and middle school students' interpersonal skills (relationship-building and communication) and intrapersonal skills (self-regulation and resiliency). In the 2016–2017 and 2017–2018 school years, the Jackson (Mississippi) Public School District (JPSD) implemented TFL in grades 1 through 8. RAND researchers conducted a randomized controlled trial to determine whether TFL, integrated into existing school practices, positively affected school climate and safety in the district. In this report, they describe the implementation of TFL in JPSD, calculate its costs, and evaluate the program's effectiveness. TFL is designed to improve whole-school change in relationships among staff and students, but the authors found that implementation of TFL in JPSD schools was generally shallow, and the program was rarely, if at all, implemented across a whole school as it was designed. TFL had little impact: After one year of implementation, there were no practically or statistically significant differences between schools that implemented TFL and those that did not in measures of students' social and emotional, school climate, behavioral, or achievement outcomes. In addition to the uneven implementation of the program, the authors discuss how methodological limitations of the study and contextual factors in JPSD may have contributed to these findings.
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Previous research has found that, compared with their civilian counterparts, military spouses are more likely to be unemployed or underemployed. This work is the second phase of a two-phase study to evaluate data on the Military Spouse Employment Partnership (MSEP) program for the Military Community and Family Policy (MCFP) office. The authors conducted a new query of job postings in 2016 from the online MSEP Career Portal to analyze the types of jobs that employers were posting on this portal and compared the geographic distribution of these jobs with the locations of spouses. Next, the authors conducted interviews with employers in 2016 who post these jobs on the portal and fielded a survey of spouses in 2019 who had recently used the MSEP Career Portal. Finally, they interviewed a subsample of these respondents in 2019 over the phone. Results showed that the MSEP Career Portal lists a range of jobs, but a limited percentage of them are telecommuting positions, which are often desirable for military spouses, and there are more jobs in the Northeast than in the other regions, which are home to more military spouses. The employers interviewed expressed a desire for more and better communication among MSEP stakeholders, and the spouses surveyed expressed some dissatisfaction with the quality of jobs available via the portal. The authors recommend that MCFP attend to increasing the number of jobs on the MSEP Career Portal that would be of interest to military spouses within their specific labor markets.
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Lower-skilled workers in the United States face a shrinking pool of employment opportunities. To combat this, the city of New Orleans' Office of Workforce Development (OWD) developed a job training program with a grant, awarded in 2014, from the U.S. Department of Labor Workforce Innovation Fund. The program, Career Pathways, was designed to help lower-skilled, unemployed, and underemployed individuals train for and find skilled jobs in the fields of advanced manufacturing and energy, medical care, and information technology. The authors of this report examine that program's implementation and effectiveness and perform a cost-benefit analysis using a randomized controlled trial design. They found that the program created strong, valuable partnerships among OWD, training providers, and employers. Of all screening mechanisms used to select trainees, the Test of Adult Basic Education was most likely to identify applicants who were likely to complete the training program, whereas screening by community partners was least successful. Some aspects of program implementation needed strengthening, such as the provision of hands-on work experience and the distribution of supplementary benefits to trainees. The team found that the Career Pathways program produced meaningful, positive results in several areas. These included individuals' wage growth, job satisfaction, and the program's return on investment. There were also areas that had no significant change, such as arrest rates, likelihood of employment, and the duration of trainees' employment.
Occupational training --- Government policy --- Evaluation. --- New Orleans (La.) --- Economic conditions$y21st century.
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Recovery of the Puerto Rico economy in the aftermath of Hurricanes Irma and Maria means not only rebuilding the public and private infrastructure, supply chains, human capital, and other contributors to economic output but also reversing negative economic trends that existed and presented major challenges to growth even before the storms hit. In their report, the authors explain the history of economic development and policy in Puerto Rico and discuss the state of the prestorm economy, including key economic challenges. They use the historical data on overall economic activity (unrelated to the hurricanes) to construct a counterfactual to assess the net causal effect of Hurricanes Irma and Maria on Puerto Rico's economy. The counterfactual examines what would have happened to employment, labor, population, and tourism, as well as the government of Puerto Rico's fiscal position, had the hurricanes not occurred. Observed economic indicators following the storms are then compared to this counterfactual to estimate the real net economic consequences of the hurricanes, including overall damage from the storms and the effect of the recovery effort. The analysis provides considerable detail on the conditions in Puerto Rico before and after the 2017 hurricane season so that decisionmakers can adopt better policies in rebuilding a sustainable and healthy economic sector and, more broadly, the whole of Puerto Rico. The authors recommend a set of principles based on economic theory and provide courses of action included in the recovery plan compiled from their findings about prestorm conditions and trends and the input/observations of on-the-ground partners and stakeholders in the recovery effort.
Hurricane Irma, 2017. --- Hurricane Maria, 2017. --- Hurricane damage --- 2000-2099 --- Puerto Rico --- Puerto Rico. --- Economic conditions
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