Issues Affecting At-Risk and Out-of-School Youth

Seminar I:  "A History and Overview of Federal, State and Local Programs Targeting At-Risk and Out-of-School Youth:   Evolving Perspectives on Youth Employment and Development and the Role of Public and Private Institutions
A Forum — January 27, 1999

This seminar was the first in a series of learning activities organized by AYPF to explore and discuss issues affecting a specific population of young people and the public policy response to their needs. These are young people who are largely undereducated and unskilled, who are not currently in school or in jobs and are seeking opportunities to further their education and prepare for the workforce. They are the "The Forgotten Half," those approximately ten million 18 - 24 year-olds who neither complete high school nor continue their formal education beyond high school graduation (Halperin, The Forgotten Half Revisited, 1998).

Speakers Alan Zuckerman, executive director, National Youth Employment Coalition, and Elton Jolly, former president of Opportunities Industrialization Centers of America (retired) provided a historical accounting of the public policy response to the employment and training needs of this group of youth and the role of community institutions in shaping policy and providing services from the 1960s to the present day.

A Historical Account

Zuckerman began with an accounting of the past 30 years of youth employment policy with attendant changes in programs and their impetus. He characterized the policy trends over this period as: the Formative Years of the early 1960s; the period of Coordination and Control between the federal funding sources and the local providers of services; the ‘70s, the advent of the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act of 1973 and a rising focus on public service employment, job creation and work experience; the Youth Demonstration Era; the 1980s--a time of less money, less time, and less impact; and the ‘90s--a period of tinkering, leading to the current Workforce Investment Act.

Formative Years

In the Formative Years of the 1960s, training programs were initially created to address the threat of automation (e.g., the Manpower Development and Training Act of 1962). Though primarily an adult training program, MDTA authorized a youth training allowance for individuals who had been out of school for six months. Programs were short-term with a 16-week limit, occupation specific, and participants generally received the same course of study as offered in vocational schools.

With the advent of the Civil Rights Movement, the U.S. Department of Labor was pressed to fund programs that addressed equity. Employment training became a part of the "War on Poverty" and a tool for compensating people for past discrimination in hiring and preparing them for new opportunities in the work place. The research and writing of sociologists, such as Kenneth Clark, focusing on the lack of economic opportunity and "pathologies" that confronted communities, helped to shape many programs of the era.

The inadequacies of traditional vocational approaches became evident as the "poverty programs" created during that period focused more federal and community interest on the multiple and complex needs of poor and urban young people (e.g., health, transportation, housing, education). Through Experimental and Demonstration projects, DOL sought new and different strategies to prepare people for employment, especially those from poor neighborhoods or with special barriers to employment.

Jolly recounted this same period from the perspective of a training provider in a community-based organized, OIC. According to Jolly, desegregation legislation and the recognition of the need for social change fueled the "selective patronage" movement lead by Rev. Leon Sullivan in Philadelphia. He and others believed that if "Negroes" were customers and purchasers of products, they should be represented in the company’s workforce. With this as a premise, they began boycotting companies whose hiring practices did not reflect a diverse workforce. The success of this effort led Sullivan to the conclusion that "Integration without preparation is frustration," and to the development of mechanisms to get people prepared for these new opportunities.

OIC began modestly and continued with private donations--some from the collateral on Sullivan’s home. Soon there was federal legislation for New Careers for the Poor. Education, job training and job creation were considered investments for keeping inner city inhabitants calm and engaged. The Economic Opportunity Act (EOC) of 1964 contained funding focused on the special needs of youth. The first Job Corps Center soon opened. In 1965, in response to urban unrest, the summer jobs program was created.

Many of these early approaches resulted in more comprehensive approaches to preparing young people for work, such as the use of diagnostic techniques for identifying basic skills deficiencies, paid work experiences such as work crews to provide young people with real work experiences, and on-the-job training. These efforts also made community-based organizations key players in the provision of services. By and large, however, these efforts continued to focus on youth deficits and components of youth development were not generally part of the practice or the rhetoric of the period.

The need for training and capacity building to help replicate the Philadelphia model in other cities was evident as requests mounted from other communities to develop similar employment and training programs. The U.S. DOL provided funding to OIC for replication efforts. These were not OIC franchises, but were incorporated entities belonging to the cities that helped create them.

The Coordination and Control Period

According to Zuckerman, "The inevitable conflicts and competition of the mid-sixties led to the age of coordination that preoccupied ‘Manpower’ policies from the late sixties through the 1970s." With the proliferation of programs and services and the involvement of other community-based organizations came a concern for better coordination and control of federal funds. There was also competition among federal agencies at the national level over which had the lead role and competition for funds among public agencies and community-based organizations at the local level.

Added to this were conflicts created by different funding streams; for example, EOA (poverty funds) circumvented the states, going directly to the community level, whereas education funds were dispersed through the states. Sullivan had proposed a national contract to enable the funding of 75 organizations at $100,000 each out of new funds, and 25 more out of at-hand funds. However, the states wanted to get into the funding stream; and thereafter, the funds were routed through the states. The Concentrated Employment Program (CEP) was an attempt to coordinate and focus Manpower planning activities in 19 cities, resulting in the appointment of a coordinator in each city to oversee funds and efforts. The focus shifted from the provision of specific services to issues of governance and control.

In the 1970s, the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act of 1973 (CETA), a block grant provided by formula to the states, lead to decisions about who and how to serve, and who would deliver the services to the states. Although CETA had a focus on skills training, on-the-job training and Job Corps, income generation and job creation were clearly the priorities, with education and skill training only secondary. The tension between serving a maximum number of adults and youth versus the quality of the services was especially evident during this period. Except for programs provided by youth serving organizations, there was little focus on youth development activities in employment and training programs of the period.

Youth Demonstration Era

The CETA amendments of 1977, the Youth Employment Demonstration Project Act (YEDPA), made youth employment a major focus and funded the Young Adult Conservation Corps, the Youth Community Conservation Improvement Program and the Youth Incentive Entitlement Pilot Projects. Each used job creation as a way of keeping young people in school. Most efforts were short-term and not focused on education, training or other youth development activities. The large federal financial expenditure during this period for youth employment programs (e.g., appropriations of $6 billion in 1979) also supported research about what works--much of which was ignored in policy and practice and much of which was focused on outcomes, not methods, techniques, materials or youth employment practices.

During this period, OIC demonstrations included alternative schools and summer youth activities. OIC pioneered the use of diagnostic tests to help trainees focus on what they needed to learn, not as a barrier to program entrance. As the pool of providers began to experiment with different approaches, youth development strategies began to be ingrained in many programs.

The 1980s and less

With the election of President Reagan and a Republican controlled Senate in 1980, there were severe cuts in funds for federal job training programs and CETA was targeted for extinction. Funding for job creation (public service employment) was eliminated at a time of high unemployment.

JTPA emerged as a bipartisan bill and incorporated many changes from the old CETA. There was greater state authority over funds, an increased role for businesses through Private Industry Councils and the use of performance contracts and standards for participant placement rates, earnings and training costs. Attempts to eliminate the Summer Youth Employment Program and Job Corps were thwarted by grass roots campaigns in support of these programs.

These changes helped to shift the provider and the client base. Greater emphasis was placed on quick, inexpensive approaches such as job search assistance. The availability of Pell Grants for use at for-profit training schools became more prevalent. As the Act was implemented, there was evidence that performance contracting lead to creaming--the tendency to serve clients who were easily trained and placed into jobs, not the most disadvantaged or hardest to place. These changes had a negative impact on community-based organizations that wanted to provide more comprehensive services to disadvantaged young adults and changed the pool of eligible participants.

The '90s

By the 1990s, the results of JTPA evaluations, suggesting limited positive benefits for out-of-school youth and limited long-range impact of summer youth training programs, led to large cuts in funding for out-of-school youth. The lack of success of many past approaches as well as a greater recognition of "what works" in youth programming has led to more openness to the documented needs of young people and the inclusion of stronger youth development approaches in employment and training programs. According to Zuckerman, "Effective youth programs develop the resources of youth and understand the principles of youth development. The challenge is to make these long-term services and relationships intentional planned components of youth employment programs."

The Workforce Investment Act of 1998 reflects an attempt to address this challenge through a youth funding stream to support a range of activities for youth with challenges to successful workforce entry. Eligible activities include preparation for postsecondary education opportunities or employment, efforts that lead to completion of secondary school (including tutoring, study skills training and dropout prevention), alternative school services, mentoring, paid and unpaid work experience, occupational skills training, leadership development and appropriate support services.

Questions and Answers

Following the presentation, a series of questions forced a more indepth discussion of the context of the development of youth employment and training policy and how we got to the present state of affairs. Participants asked:

1. How do we move from serving at-risk youth to a model that is systemic and sustainable in all communities?

2. Will we continue to do demonstration programs and hope that they are able to respond to the needs of localities?

3. Do we know how to bring good programs to scale and successful strategies to common use?

4. Do we have the right models or need to do something different?

5. Have things gotten worse regarding the ability to coordinate funds and efforts?

6. How has the mission of OIC changed in the intervening years?

According to Joan Wills of the Center for Workforce Development, the Civil Rights Movement of the ‘60s set free the leadership of community people like Elton Jolly and Rev. Sullivan. In the ‘60s and the ‘70s, many community organizations developed, were nurtured and looked to to provide employment training and youth services. A cadre of federal monitors and administrators were spawned who attempted to rationalize and create a policy response to the dynamic activities of the period. What resulted was a medley of short-term programs for the at-risk population, the erection of silos around employment and training and a failure to build bridges to the education community. The program model for serving youth was not changed until 1998 with the change brought by the Workforce Investment Act legislation.

Zuckerman provided further insight regarding the politics of the era. He indicated that at the initiation of the EOA, there was debate about how the funds would flow. The use of strong, existing community institutions, such as the United Way, was considered but this notion was outflanked by the Civil Rights community. A number of battles such as this were fought at the upper political levels and policy decisions were not always based on the needs of young people.

According to Zuckerman, we are not building on what we know, and what we know has not necessarily been focused on programs serving older youth. He noted that traditionally youth development strategies have been implemented for youth under the age of 14. However, youth-serving organizations that infuse youth development strategies into their programs seldom focus on the value of work or developing work experiences as part of total youth development. The same can be said of the education system. In much the same way, employment and training is on its own track. We know that providing services and experiences necessary for young people to succeed in the workplace requires more time and support and than we are willing to provide within the present policy framework. To be effective, services must continue after work is obtained and include follow-up supports. There is no silver bullet, but policies must support what we know leads to good outcomes.

One participant observed that where there are isolated pockets of success, it is often in spite of policy. Also, community entities do not have the capacity to successfully integrate fragmented funding streams targeted to different youth problems. Another participant indicated that even when we have a good policy or program, too often biases are built into the implementation and serve to negate the benefit of the effort.

It was stressed that federal funds alone are not nearly enough to address the need and that the WIA did not go nearly as far as it should have. It was a way of pushing a commitment to youth without going to a block grant. There is still the need to push for more youth development in efforts to prepare young people for employment.

Another continuing dilemma involves quality vs. scale. The more quality you infuse into a program, the fewer young people you can serve. The political strategy pursued has been to sacrifice a focus on quality in the interests of maximizing the number of individuals (and communities) to be served.

According to one participant, service strategies will always be deficient. The challenge is to figure how to make them work better. We will never have the behavioral norms and community supports we need to focus narrowly on employment skills training or education alone, but we must learn to energize the "unfunded" part of youth development--those things that other institutions do that help round out our efforts and support the other competencies that successful young people require.

According to Jolly, time has not forced changes in the mission of organizations like OIC. What has changed is the process and the context in which the organization operates. Over time OIC has learned what has worked and what makes sense. It has developed a model that only provides training for jobs that exist in the community, uses open entry/open exit points, and provides individualized training and case management. He noted that program participants do not have all the economic barriers that existed in the 1960s, but new challenges have been brought on by drugs and black market activity in the community. The opportunities that community job training can provide are often in direct competition with these activities. Also, this is now a credential-focused, computerized society and new skills are required for success.

He further noted that the role of education institutions must be radically changed to address these needs and community-based organizations must continue to be flexible in order to offset and fill in gaps that schools fail to address. Also, the nature of corporate involvement has changed. Whereas the Civil Rights movement forced a certain amount of corporate involvement, that focus has been lost to a broader set of concerns.

According to Jolly, as a nation, we don’t want to bite the bullet and do what is necessary. Another participant indicated that "Where there is a will, there is a way. At the national and state level, the lack of will is evident. Local youth-serving organizations have the will and are creating the way."

Conclusions

Following are conclusions drawn from the presentations and the discussion period.

1. Traditionally, policy decisions affecting youth employment and training have not been always based on the needs of young people. Absence the federal will and a broad commitment to young people, we will continue to have a muddled policy effort.
2. The federal commitment to youth employment and training entered the national policy agenda almost as an after thought, beginning initially in the context of training opportunities for dropouts and later as a strategy for keeping communities and youth occupied during the long, hot summers during the unrest of the civil rights movement.
3. Federal support helped build the infrastructure of many new community-based organizations needed to provide employment preparation services to help address the discrimination effects of previous hiring policies. The need to replicate efforts nationwide led to a period of capacity building among these organizations and the development of affiliates.
4. The increase in federal funds and support for employment training led to the need for better coordination of funds and efforts across public agencies at the federal, state and local level. In time, issues of turf and governance superseded concerns of quality and effectiveness of programming. This is a problem that continues today.
5. We have learned from the failures of past strategies and the lessons from providers in the field that disadvantaged young people need programming that is comprehensive and focused on the whole individual. The adult model of employment training, involving short-term, occupationally specific learning and job search experiences is not appropriate. Youth development strategies used traditionally by youth-serving organizations should be integral parts of youth employment and training activities.
6. The employment and training, education and youth-serving communities have found little common ground in the past, but each can benefit from the knowledge base and successes of the other. Strategies for a more successful youth policy will include a common vision, their combined resources and efforts, and the "un-funded" sources of youth programming inherent in community, faith-based and volunteer efforts.

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