Reports & Analyses

• Apr 16, 2013  |  Vickie Choitz and Patrick Reimherr Mind the Gap: High Unmet Financial Need Threatens Persistence and Completion for Low-Income Community College Students Over the last three decades, college tuition and fees have increased nearly four times faster than median income and four-and-a-half times faster than inflation. The rapid increase in college costs and flat or reduced funding in student aid has resulted in sizable unmet need and has forced students -- particularly low-income students -- to borrow more, work more hours, take fewer courses, or in some cases, drop out altogether. Unmet need and student loan debt for students at high-cost institutions have attracted widespread public attention. Less attention has been paid to unmet need at community colleges, where 41 percent of all undergraduates living in poverty are enrolled, according to the most recent data available (2007-2008). Download PDF
• Apr 08, 2013  |  Child Care and Early Education Early Childhood Education Update - April 2013 CLASP's Early Childhood Education Update is a monthly roundup of news, legislative developments, research, and other developments of interest to the early care and education community. Read Online
• Apr 03, 2013  |  Rhonda Tsoi-A-Fatt Bryant Taking Aim at Gun Violence: Rebuilding Community Education and Employment Pathways In a single generation, our nation is faced with the prospect of losing over 132,000 black men and boys to gun violence. Moreover, for every black male who dies from gun violence, there are another 24 others who suffer non-fatal injuries - making the impacts of such violence even greater. In black communities, gun violence is about far more than reforming gun control laws and empowering law enforcement. Gun violence for young black males predominates in communities where residents live in concentrated disadvantage with high rates of unemployment, school dropout, and poverty. The absence of opportunities in these communities gives rise to criminal activity and the loss of too many young lives. Solving the crisis of gun violence in communities requires that America address the issue of concentrated poverty and geography. The rebuilding and strengthening of these communities through creating infrastructure to provide improved education and employment opportunities for black youth will significantly reduce issues of gun violence. Read Online   |   Download PDF   |   Additional PDF
• Apr 02, 2013  |  Jodie Levin-Epstein Getting Down to Business Newsletter - April 2013 Getting Down to Business is a CLASP monthly update on the latest news about business and paid leave. Read Online
• Mar 29, 2013  |  Lavanya Mohan CLASP Work Supports Newsletter - March 2013 The Work Supports Newsletter is a monthly update that summarizes CLASP's work on safety net programs that include cash assistance (TANF), nutrition supports (SNAP), refundable tax credits, health insurance, child support enforcement and child care subsidies. Read Online
• Mar 26, 2013  |  Andrea Lindemann Gilliam and Liz Ben-Ishai Implementing Earned Sick Day Laws: First Out of the Gate: San Francisco's Sick Days Law Implementing a new law is always a complex process. But what happens when you are the first jurisdiction in the country to pass such a law? This was the unique challenge facing San Francisco when it passed the nation's first earned sick days law in 2006. The City and County government took on the challenge admirably, employing a variety of creative strategies to conduct outreach to the public, write meaningful rules, and ensure the law would be properly enforced. Download PDF
• Mar 25, 2013  |  Allegra Baider, Vickie Choitz, Amy Ellen Duke-Benfield, Marcie W.M. Foster, Linda Harris, Elizabeth Lower-Basch, Neil Ridley, Julie Strawn Funding Career Pathways and Career Pathway Bridges: A Federal Policy Toolkit for States This toolkit is designed to help interagency state teams identify and facilitate "braiding" of federal resources to design and develop career pathways and bridges into them for adults and out-of-school youth. The toolkit also will help state teams identify state policy barriers to using federal resources for career pathways and bridges and, ideally, address them. Read Online   |   Download PDF
• Mar 19, 2013  |  Chris Warland and Melissa Young, National Transitional Jobs Network and Elizabeth Lower-Basch, CLASP Innovative City and State Funding Approaches to Supporting Subsidized Employment and Transitional Jobs A new paper from the National Transitional Jobs Network and CLASP provides strategies and makes recommendations on leveraging and blending multiple sources of funding to support subsidized employment programs. In addition to highlighting the opportunities to use block grant funding, from both TANF and Community Services Block Grant (CSBG), the paper identifies efforts to fund these jobs by averting future expenses associated with prisons and other corrections measures and by leveraging public contracting and bidding opportunities. The webinar is also available. Read Online   |   Download PDF   |   Additional PDF
• Mar 15, 2013  |  Elizabeth Lower-Basch and Neil Ridley Navigating Federal Programs to Build Sustainable Career Pathways in the Health Professions: A Guide for HPOG Programs Healthcare is one of the fastest growing sectors in our economy, and there are many jobs in this sector that require fewer than 4 years of college education, have high demand, and offer good pay. However, low-income workers often face barriers to accessing the education and training they need to enter these jobs, including lack of information, poor basic skills, confusing and poorly aligned training programs, cost of training, and need for supportive services, such as child care and transportation. The Heath Profession Opportunity Grants (HPOG), authorized by section 5507 of the Affordable Care Act (ACA; Public Law 111-148), address this issue by supporting models for providing education, training, and support services to enable recipients of cash assistance under Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) and other low-income individuals to obtain well-paying jobs in high-demand healthcare occupations. The HPOG program is one of several provisions of ACA aimed at supporting training for the healthcare workforce of the future. Download PDF
• Mar 13, 2013  |  Patrick Reimherr, Tim Harmon, Julie Strawn, Vickie Choitz Executive Summary: Reforming Student Aid: How to Simplify Tax Aid and Use Performance Metrics to Improve College Choices and Completion Funded as part of the Gates Foundation's Reimagining Aid Design and Delivery project, our paper focuses on two areas that have received scant attention from federal policymakers: tax-based student aid and the use of performance metrics in aid policy. IOur paper offers a range of policy options for consolidating the various tax-based aid provisions and better targeting this aid toward low- and modest-income families. We also propose piloting “real-time payment” of the American Opportunity Tax Credit to deliver this aid to students when they enroll, not just at tax time. Our ideas are backed by ten-year revenue estimates and distributional estimates from the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center. Download PDF
• Mar 12, 2013  |  Child Care and Early Education Early Childhood Education Update - March 2013 CLASP's Early Childhood Education Update is a monthly roundup of news, legislative developments, research, and other developments of interest to the early care and education community. Read Online
• Mar 08, 2013  |  Patrick Reimherr, Tim Harmon, Julie Strawn, Vickie Choitz Reforming Student Aid: How to Simplify Tax Aid and Use Performance Metrics to Improve College Choices and Completion Our paper offers a range of policy options for consolidating the various tax-based aid provisions and better targeting this aid toward low- and modest-income families. We also propose piloting "real-time payment" of the American Opportunity Tax Credit to deliver this aid to students when they enroll, not just at tax time. Our ideas are backed by ten-year revenue estimates and distributional estimates from the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center. We've crafted our recommendations to be revenue neutral or modestly positive to respond to current budget realities, and we believe these proposals are timely, given the potential for tax reform in this Congress. Download PDF
• Mar 04, 2013  |  Lavanya Mohan CLASP Work Supports Newsletter - February 2013 CLASP is inaugurating this Work Supports e-newsletter to highlight the efforts of CLASP and our colleague organizations to help ensure low-income families get the support they need to stay employed and provide for their families. Read Online
• Mar 04, 2013  |  Liz Ben-Ishai Getting Down to Business Newsletter - March 2013 Getting Down to Business is a CLASP monthly update on the latest news about business and paid leave. Read Online
• Mar 01, 2013  |  CLASP and ASBC Better Businesses and Better Workplaces: The Role of Comprehensive Business Certification Increasingly, businesses are seeking out certifications as tools to assess their impact and verify that their practices are consistent with their values. For job quality advocates, who are increasingly recognizing the crucial role of business support in successful campaigns, both certifying organizations and certified businesses can be valuable partners. This issue brief provides job quality advocates with a primer on the nuts and bolts of the certification movement and suggests ways advocates can foster fruitful relationships between the movements. Download PDF
• Feb 27, 2013  |  Liz Ben-Ishai Implementing Earned Sick Days Laws: Learning from Seattle's Experience This issue brief draws upon Seattle's experience implementing its Paid Sick and Safe Time Ordinance to delineate best practices for implementing such laws. Seattle passed its earned sick days law in September 2011. The task of implementation in Seattle fell to the city's Office for Civil Rights (SOCR). CLASP spoke with SOCR staff to learn about their innovative approaches to outreach, implementation, and enforcement. Download PDF
• Feb 22, 2013  |  CLASP's Youth Policy Team "Keeping Connected" eUpdate This periodic update for the field is a part of CLASP's ongoing work to advance policy and practice that will dramatically improve the education, employment, and life outcomes for youth in communities of high youth distress. It highlights policy happenings in education, training and youth development that impact black male achievement. Read Online
• Feb 19, 2013  |  Rhonda Tsoi-A-Fatt Bryant, Linda Harris, Kisha Bird Investing in Boys and Young Men of Color: The Promise and Opportunity Boys and young men of color in the United States face challenges in the areas of education, employment, and health. In the last several years, there has been greater focus on understanding these challenges and identifying potential solutions. While we know more about effective programmatic solutions, we still have much to learn about the systemic barriers that impede the success of males of color. Effecting policy changes in these areas will produce sustainable gains for boys and young men of color. The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation commissioned CLASP to conduct a scan of these policy opportunities to inform the development of their Forward Promise Initiative. Read Online   |   Download PDF
• Feb 14, 2013 A Framework for Measuring Career Pathways Innovation This working paper examines three elements of career pathway metrics development and provides an overview of what state and local/regional career pathway systems have done in relation to those elements. Our scan provides an impression of current practices but not a systematic description. Download PDF
• Feb 14, 2013 The Alliance for Quality Career Pathways Approach: Developing Criteria and Metrics for Quality Career Pathways The Alliance for Quality Career Pathways is a two-year, state driven, CLASP-led effort to identify criteria that define high quality career pathway systems and a set of shared performance metrics for measuring and managing their success. CLASP will work with 10 states that are leading the nation in experience with developing and taking to scale career pathways, using a consensus process, to create this framework of criteria and metrics. These leading states participating in the Alliance are Arkansas, California, Illinois, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Oregon, Virginia, Washington, and Wisconsin. Download PDF