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Chris King, along with P. Linsday Chase-Lansdale and Terri Sabol from the Northwestern University Institute for Policy Research, presented their research at the 2015 Winter Leadership Institute hosted by the National Head Start Association and sponsored by various early learning collaborators (see event site for full list). The conference, held from January 26-29 at the DuPont Circle Hotel in Washington, DC, assembled early learning professionals to address policy questions that have recently emerged. King, Chase-Lansdale, and Sabol presented their findings from their Tulsa research during the Two Generations Together Institute during the first day. The Institute, which was made possible by funding from Ascend at the Aspen Institute, featured stories and strategies from program leaders highlighted in the NHSA report Two Generations Together: Case Studies from Head Start, along with insights from local program leaders and national experts. You can view the conference publication here. Pictures from the TGT Institute can be found here via the NHSA Facebook page.
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Christopher King, LBJ School lecturer and Ray Marshall Center senior research scientist, gave two invited lectures on two-generation strategies in Missouri on Wednesday, January 14, 2015. The first was to the 3rd Annual Missouri Family Impact Seminar held in the state capitol building in Jefferson City. The Family Impact Seminars are operating in nearly thirty states. Seminar topics are chosen by state lawmakers. More than two dozen state senators, representatives, and staff attended the morning talk. In the afternoon, Dr. King presented a version of the lecture to a seminar of academics and practitioners at Washington University's Brown School of Social Work. You can view the presentation here: The Promise of Two-Generation Anti-poverty Strategies: Existing and Emerging Evidence.
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In December 2014, Associate Director Greg Cumpton and Research Scientist Matt Giani published their final report from a study of Texas school counselors and Texas education policy titled Texas School Counselor Study: Exploring the Supply, Demand, and Evolving Roles of School Counselors. After funding reductions from the Texas legislature in the spring of 2011, many school districts across Texas reduced the number of counselors available to students, increasing the number of students the remaining counselors serve by an average of 24 students. In 2013, the implementation of graduation and curricular changes mandated by House Bill 5 (HB5) increased the responsibilities of middle and high school counselors. The purpose of this report is to begin to understand how specific changes in Texas education policy have influenced counseling in the state by considering these issues. |
In December 2014, Dr. King and Dr. Prince traveled to Miami, FL, to participate in the National Skills Coalition's first leadership forum of it's State Workforce and Education Alignment Project (SWEAP). This project is helping to develop system-wide information about workforce education and training programs for state policy leaders. Drs. King and Prince led the discussions where state teams talked about their states' skill gaps and what they are currently doing to close those gaps. You can read about the forum here. |
Dr. Chris King traveled to New Brunswick, NJ, to participate in the Transforming US Workforce Development Policies for the 21st Century conference from October 15-17, 2014. The conference was sponsored by the John J. Heldrich Center for Workforce Development at Rutgers University and the Federal Reserve Banks of Atlanta and Kansas City. He participated in a panel discussion on effective strategies for engaging employers in workforce development programs moderated by Bob Giloth of the Annie E. Casey Foundation. The session titled "Aligning Employers and Workforce Development Strategies" was held on the second day of the conference, and other panelists for the session included Dr. Burt Barnow of George Washington University and Dr. Kevin Hollenbeck of the Upjohn Institute. Other RMC researchers attending this conference include Dr. Heath Prince. Photos courtesy of Patrick Rodio. |
This article from the Tulsa World profiles the first two Registered Nursing (RN) graduates of CareerAdvance�, a program within the Community Action Project of Tulsa that the Ray Marshall Center has been involved with since the design phase in 2008. You can find out more about CareerAdvance� and access the latest evaluation reports on the project page. |
Heath Prince's article, "Macro-level Drivers of Multidimensional Poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa: Explaining Change in the Human Poverty Index," was recently published in the African Evaluation Journal. Dr. Prince's article builds on a paper he presented in March 2014 in Yaounde, Cameroon, at the African Evaluation Association's bi-annual conference. In the article, Dr. Prince presents findings from panel data analyses of economic growth and human development interventions on multidimensional poverty metrics over a 20 year period in 47 Sub-Saharan countries. You can read the article here via the AEJ website. |
 Several researchers from the Center traveled to Albuquerque, New Mexico, for the annual Association of Public Policy Analysis and Management (APPAM) Fall Research Conference held at the Hyatt Regency Albuquerque and the Albuquerque Convention Center from November 6-8, 2014. This year's theme was Global Challenges, New Perspectives . Center staff in attendance included Heath Prince, Christopher King, Daniel Schroeder, Greg Cumpton, Kristin Christensen, and Carinne Deeds. Of those staff, Christopher King presented a working paper on Nov. 7th during the session Big Data and Policy: Use of Administrative Data to Guide Workforce Development Program Planning and Research, Heath Prince was a discussant for two papers during the session Low-Skilled Workers: Employment Experiences and Attempts at Workforce Integration on November 7th, and Greg Cumpton presented two papers taking a look at High School Strategies and Texas's Top Ten Percent Policy. You can read more about their presentations and find their papers here. |
Research Associate Tara Smith traveled to Segovia, Spain, for the Association of Public Policy Analysis and Management's (APPAM) annual International Conference The Decline of the Middle Classes Around the World? held from September 28-30, 2014 (co-sponsored with the National University of Distance Education, Faculty of Law, and the University of Maryland School of Public Policy). She presented an original paper, co-authored with Rheagan Coffey, on September 29th titled Two-Generation Strategies for Expanding the Middle Class. Using the two-generation framework, the authors examine the current policy and economic environments in the United States and the European Union, focusing particularly on Ireland, and highlight innovative and promising two-generation strategies. You can read her paper here.
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Dr. King is now a blog contributor to The Huffington Post. His first blog, published on September 25, 2014, relates to the Workforce Investment Opportunities Act (WIOA) programs that are focused on specific employment sectors and career pathways alongside "bridge" programs providing training and support services designed to help lower-skilled workers find jobs. Dr. King's work can also be found in the book, Connecting People to Work: Workforce Intermediaries and Sector Strategies, published by the Aspen Institute, from Amazon. If you'd like to learn more about this blog, click here.
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Ms. Patnaik traveled to Denver, CO to attend the 28th annual conference of the American Evaluation Association "Visionary Evaluation: For a Sustainable, Equitable Future - Evaluation 2014 held at the Hyatt Regency Denver at Colorado Convention Center from October 15-18, 2014. She connected with fellow evaluators as well as funders in the education, workforce, and international development fields. The conference is a community of evaluators and promises to be a good venue for future presentations of RMC's work in program evaluation. Ms. Patnaik also attended a full-day workshop on propensity score matching prior to the start of the conference. |
Since 2013, the Ray Marshall Center has worked with national leaders addressing the challenges college-seeking high school seniors face during the summer after graduation. Dr. Lindsay Page, a professor at the University of Pittsburgh and a researcher on the Summer Melt:IES project, along with colleague Ben Castleman, were featured on the weekly series discussing "summer melt," which describes high school graduates that are accepted to college but decide in the summer before their freshman year that going to college is not for them. You can listen to their discussion from September 3, 2014 here. |
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