The purpose of this paper is to increase awareness and understanding of the California Work Opportunity and Responsibility to Kids (CalWORKs) Program. The Academic Senate holds the view that welfare reform that focuses on "work first" tends to push participants into below-subsistence-level jobs and eclipses an emphasis on long-term…

This document provides background for those looking to establish workplace mentoring or buddy systems. It touches briefly on the other two legs of an effective workplace preparation program, which are orientation and on-the-job training. These six steps for setting up a mentoring system are described: recruitment, flexibility, training, written…

The General Accounting Office assessed the extent to which states were coordinating their Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) services with their one-stop centers. Data were gathered through the following activities: (1) an autumn 2001 survey of workforce development agency officials in all 50 states and a similar survey conducted in…

The traditional economic development strategy of the South--concentrating on low-skill, low-wage labor--no longer works; the region cannot compete with other areas of the world that offer low-cost, high-skill labor. The challenges facing rural and central-city communities in the South are immense, and only a comprehensive approach to economic…

Northern Virginia Community College (NVCC), the third largest community college in the nation, is tackling the area's need for skilled workers. The number of jobs available in the northern Virginia region increased 103% in the last year. But there are substantial numbers of students at NVCC who are lacking the skills necessary to obtain employment…

This Working Paper contains three sections: the background to existing User Choice resourcing principles and their interrelationships as of March 2004; analysis of the existing arrangements, including their consistency with each other and with the User Choice principles agreed by Ministers; and concluding comments. The author found a considerable…

Five issues of an adult basic education newsletter were developed and disseminated to more than 4,000 adult educators in Pennsylvania. The newsletters contained information appropriate to their professional development in a format and by a delivery method that would reach the large rural area of Pennsylvania and the large number of part-time adult…

The 15 chapters in this book deal with varying institutional characteristics of educational systems and their effects on occupational outcomes. "The Institutional Embeddedness of the Stratification Process: A Comparative Study of Qualifications and Occupations in Thirteen Countries" (Walter Mueller, Yossi Shavit) discusses results of a comparative…

The impact of 1996 federal welfare reform legislation on state work force development programs was examined through a study of work force development programs and policies in 13 states: Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Wisconsin. The study focused on…

To assist workers dislocated as Hungary and Poland move to market economies, the governments of both countries provide their labor force with unemployment compensation and various active labor programs (ALPs). ALP impacts were examined by surveying four randomly selected samples: 7,228 ALP participants from 10 counties in Hungary; 4,414 Hungarians…

In 10 papers by independent experts, this volume explores the trends in and prospects for research training in member nations of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. "Problems and Prospects of Research Training in the 1990s" (Stuart Blume) looks at trends in national policy toward research training and issues of…

This handbook, which is intended for educators, managers, and union leaders responsible for workplace development, outlines a four-phase collaborative approach to assessing a work organization's overall education needs and specifying a range of activities to meet the identified needs. Discussed in the introduction are the purposes of the handbook,…

The effectiveness of the Jobs Plus Community Revitalization Initiative for Public Housing Families, which seeks to increase employment among people living in public housing, was examined through an in-depth study of the experiences of the interagency and resident Jobs Plus partnerships that were formed in seven cities across the United States in…

This working paper lays groundwork for a Network for New Approaches to Lifelong Learning study on informal learning by people displaced from the labor market or chronically unemployed, in the context of community organizations. Section 1 examines the context and two particularly significant features--wider changes in the nature of work and related…

This is the first of what is expected to be a regular series of reports from Arizona's community colleges to the citizens of Arizona regarding the effectiveness with which community colleges are achieving their goals. Initially the Task Force on Institutional Effectiveness Measures worked for most of an academic year and recommended the measures…