A growing portion of Minneapolis youth are dropping out of school before they are prepared for a job. At the same time employers face a growing labor shortage. The city must identify the at-risk youth and intervene early in preparing them for the work world. The common denominator of all factors that increase a youth's risk of chronic unemployment…

For most Americans the pursuit of happiness begins with the simple fact of a good job. Manpower policy is aimed at improving job opportunities and earning for the American people. To help young people bridge the gap from school to work we must assist them not only to acquire vocational information and job skills, but we must also help them to…

Information on training and remediation activities for unemployed and underemployed persons is described and analyzed with emphasis on programs authorized by the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act (CETA). Chapter 1 overviews the dilemma of persons with employment and earnings problems and approaches to dealing with the problem. CETA, its…

Educational and occupational training programs initiated in times of high unemployment are actually designed to maintain social control of the unemployed. Current efforts by the Australian government to educate young, unemployed school leavers wrongfully shift the blame for unemployment away from the economy and onto the work force itself.…

Global competition, coupled with the United States' loss of its competitive economic edge and its failure to sustain and develop a highly skilled work force, has created a new and serious challenge. To meet this challenge, the State Employment and Training Commission has developed a series of recommendations, called the Unified State Plan for New…

The employability of secondary-level youth is considered by a youth employment company official in testimony to the National Commission on Excellence in Education. Attention is directed to ways in which young people, and particularly the economically disadvantaged, can acquire the necessary reading, writing, and math skills for on-the-job success.…

This book examines the effectiveness and distributive ramifications of the institutions of German skill provision as they functioned at home in the 1990s and as they served as a template for reform in other industrialized countries. The volume relies on multiple sources of data, including in-firm case studies, larger-scale surveys of companies,…

In order to maintain and improve its residents' standard of living, Colorado must develop an internationally competitive work force for the 21st century. To achieve this goal, a fully integrated, improved, and updated work force development system must be established. This system will require an ongoing partnership among business and industry,…

This report contains program evaluations of Washington state agencies represented on the Workforce Training and Education Coordinating Board: Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI), State Board for Community and Technical Colleges (SBCTC), and Employment Security Department (ESD). OSPI's report uses data from the graduate…

A review of Florida's work force development (WD) system focuses on state-level entities and programs involved in providing job training services, workforce education services, and other services to help persons obtain and retain jobs. State-level WD entities consist of 10 state agencies and public-private partnerships, 2 primary state-level…

This monograph describes the Transition to Work Simulator (TWS) so that the National Institute of Education can evaluate its capability in helping recommend policy suggestions to the United States Congress on the future of vocational education in America. (The TWS is a pre-implementation laboratory for testing economic and lifestyle impacts of…

This report stresses the need for a broad and substantial upgrading of the quality of the U.S. work force and outlines seven critical policy areas that require coordinated action to meet the challenge. Chapter 1 discusses the Workforce 2000 Project, a major Department of Labor effort designed to ensure that the work force has the skills and…

Two approaches to private sector participation in employment and training programs for economically disadvantaged out-of-school youth (16-21 years old) are discussed in this report. The two approaches are: (1) subsidized work experience in the private sector, which tries to foster good work habits leading to employment; and (2) occupational…

Because of a perceived lack in the development and use of evaluation procedures for vocational education in Illinois, a new evaluation system was begun in 1984. It required that at least 20 percent of funded vocational programs be evaluated annually, in compliance with requirements of the Carl D. Perkins Vocational Education Act. The evaluation…

These 19 papers from the second annual Policy Forum on Employability Development explore the responsiveness of various educational and training institutions to changing labor market demands. The first three papers provide an overview of the forum. They summarize the proceedings and policy considerations and address how vocational education and…