Nearly four decades have passed since the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) ensured access to public education for students with disabilities in the United States. During the years following its introduction, there was a growing recognition that helping students, especially students with disabilities, in their transitions from…

This publication is part of a toolkit that examines systemic barriers to achieving economic self-sufficiency for court-involved adolescents. It introduces the issue of workforce and youth development for juvenile offenders, discussing exemplary programs and policy initiatives that help court-involved youth become economically self-sufficient. To…

This paper provides a historical overview of sheltered workshops and presents information about service innovations and mission expansion. The first workshop in the United States was the Perkins Institute, opened in 1837 for individuals with visual handicaps. This workshop was typical of "categorical" workshops that were established during this…

Using data from a study of the work experience of 12 pre-16-year-old students, argues that work experience has expanded rapidly without proper debate about its purposes, potential or structure. As experience-based learning, it relies heavily upon debriefing to maximize its learning potential. Although difficult to accomplish, and surrounded by…

The Job Training Partnership Act (JTPA) represents a 6-year experiment in the privatization of public responsibilities that demonstrates that enlisting private energies to serve the public purpose is an appealing but deceptively elusive goal. Although contractors are evaluated and paid by reference to output standards, accountability is difficult…

Britain has attempted over the past decade to develop German-style youth apprenticeships through its Youth Training Scheme (YTS). YTS has the basic attributes considered essential to bridging school and work. The greatest achievement of YTS is that large numbers of employers were persuaded to provide work experience positions on short notice, and…

Two studies tested the feasibility of a national school-to-work transition venture. One study involved focus groups of employers in eight cities to identify incentives encouraging employers to take part in youth work-based learning programs. The second involved a telephone survey of employers in seven cities who had participated in local…

Apprenticeship is primarily a training activity, is administered by the United States Department of Labor, and is probably the oldest systematic form of employment preparation for youth in this country. Cooperative education (CWE), on the other hand, has as its focus an education (versus "training") philosophy, is administered by the…

Contextual learning--also known as "learning by doing, experiential learning, real-world education, or active learning"--has long been advocated for students. In practice, however, schools often offer the opposite: individual learning, independent of tools, dependent upon symbols, and theoretical. Today the school-to-work movement has…

This publication, one of a series designed to help policymakers and TANF [Temporary Assistance for Needy Families] agency personnel, offers an overview of programs providing publicly funded paid jobs in the public or nonprofit sector to TANF recipients, as well as of work experience programs in which recipients receive welfare payment in return…

This primer provides resources for individuals seeking exemplary programs and effective policy in the field of experiential education. The first of three parts presents a descriptive overview of programs catalogued under the rubric of experiential learning. These include cooperative vocational education; employment, training, and education…

The United States has no coherent strategy for helping noncollege-bound students develop the competence for middle-level jobs. The need for more emphasis on the needs of noncollege-bound students became apparent during the 1980s as less-educated workers began encountering more wage and employment difficulties and as occupations requiring…

This document presents five winning entries in the second annual competition for papers reporting research and policy studies on the topic of youth employability. In their paper entitled "The Impact of Employment and Training Programs on the Work Attitudes of Disadvantaged Youth," Michael Forcier and Andrew Hahn review and synthesize the…

The paper discusses some of the issues involved in the transition of students from school to work in Australia. First, there is an overview of the Schools Commission's views on school-work transition as expressed in its reports. The reports draw attention to the necessity for recurrent education to allow every member of society to have access to…

This document profiles programs in the fields of health and medicine that are offered through the European Commission's Leonardo da Vinci program. The following programs are profiled: (1) CYTOTRAIN (a transnational vocational training program in cervical cancer screening); (2) Apollo (a program of open and distance learning for paramedical…