Citation
Burghardt, J. & Schochet, P. (2001). National Job Corps Study: Impacts by center characteristics. Princeton, NJ: Mathematica Policy Research, Inc.
Highlights
- The National Job Corps Study produced several reports, including a main impact report (see CLEAR profile of Schochet et al. 2001 ) that found positive impacts of Job Corps—a national vocationally focused education and training program for disadvantaged youth ages 16 to 24—on participants’ employment, earnings, and education and training outcomes measured after four years. In this report, the authors examined whether these impacts were related to center characteristics, including the type of center operator, capacity of the center, region of the country, and performance ranking.
- The authors used data collected as part of the National Job Corps Study, which consisted of 9,400 program participants and 6,000 nonparticipants randomly selected from 81,000 first-time Job Corps applicants nationwide. Data included Job Corps center characteristics and student outcomes in the areas of educational services and attainment, earnings, and arrests.
- The authors used Job Corps counselors’ predictions of which Job Corps center applicants would attend before random assignment to compare outcomes of treatment youth with those of comparison youth who would have attended the same centers, had they been randomly assigned a slot in the program.
- The authors found few impacts that varied by center characteristics. The impacts of Job Corps were similar across operators; large, medium, and small centers; most regions of the United States; and across high-, medium-, and low-performing centers, as determined by the Job Corps performance measurement system.
Intervention Examined
Job Corps
Additional Sources
Schochet, P., & Burghardt, J. (2008). Do Job Corps performance measures track program impacts? Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, 27(3), 556-576.
Reviewed by CLEAR
April 2014