40,742 research outputs found
Reinvesting in America’s Youth: Lessons from the 2009 Recovery Act Summer Youth Employment Initiative
Get PDFOn February 17, 2009, President Barack Obama signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act into law. Passed in response to the 2008 recession, the Act’s purpose was to create jobs, pump money into the economy, and encourage spending. Through the Act, states received $1.2 billion in funding for the workforce investment system to provide employment and training activities targeted to disadvantaged youth. Congress and the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) encouraged states and local workforce investment areas charged with implementing these youth activities to use the funds to create employment opportunities for these youth in the summer of 2009.
To gain insights into these summer initiatives, DOL’s Employment and Training Administration contracted with Mathematica Policy Research to conduct an implementation evaluation of the summer youth employment activities funded by the Recovery Act. As part of the evaluation, Mathematica analyzed (1) monthly performance data submitted to ETA by the states, and (2) qualitative data collected through in-depth site visits to 20 local areas. This report describes the national context for implementation, provides an in-depth description of the experience of selected local areas, and presents lessons on implementation practices that may inform future summer youth employment efforts
Public Policy in Urban Development: The Privatization of Public Goods in Ciudad Juárez
No full textIn this research paper, the author explores public policy issues related to the increasing elite involvement in urban development and privatization in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico
Final Codebook (Public Use) and Technical Documentation: Survey Administration for the Summer 2000 Bureau of Transportation Statistics Omnibus Survey
No full textDTTS59-99-D-00489he Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS) has a requirement to conduct a national survey about satisfaction with transportation across all transportation modes. The information derived from this survey will be used as a primary source of data on satisfaction with travel and transportation, with a particular emphasis on highway-related travel. This survey also will serve as an information source for the modal administrators, both to support congressional requests, and to provide performance indicators for internal use by the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT). This study collected data for the Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS) Omnibus Survey during the summer of 2000. Data were collected from households in the U.S. using a random-digit-dialed telephone survey. The final completed sample size is 2,030 cases, and the total number of variables in the data set is 207. The data were collected by Battelle with assistance from Mathematica Policy Research, Inc. (MPR), under contract with the BTS. This codebook provides technical documentation for this BTS Omnibus survey. Its primary goal is to document background information, sampling procedures, data collection, data elements and survey variables, response rates, and final weights. It also provides guidance on the selection of Form A and Form B versions of the questionnaire and the appropriate use of weights (also referred to as Survey A and Survey B)
Beyond closing the gap: valuing diversity in Indigenous Australia
Get PDFIn his Apology speech the Prime Minister attempted to balance the symbolic with the practical while emphasising that ‘business as usual’ is not working. Ultimately though, the \u27Closing the Gap\u27 approach is business as usual that fails to value Indigenous difference and fails to accommodate Indigenous aspirations in all their diversity. Unless we get beyond CTG, the next phase in Indigenous policy making and program investments is as ‘destined to fail’ as previous approaches. This paper advocates for the pendulum to swing back, to accommodate and value diversity and difference rather than just statistical equality. In doing so, the author provides some reflexive comment as an academic on these policy swings. In 2005, Tim Rowse and Jon Altman wrote a piece on Indigenous policy that contrasted the contending approaches of economics and anthropology to Indigenous affairs policy: the first emphasising equality of socioeconomic outcomes, the second the facilitation of choice and self-determination. The former implies integration, the latter adherence to different and diverse life worlds. Over time, the author has used economics and official statistics to highlight socioeconomic disadvantage and neglect, while at the same time using anthropology to critique any approach that uses mainstream social indicators that only reflect the dominant society’s social norms. This paper will continue in the same vein using a dual disciplinary approach. However, without being over-reflexive, as an anthropologist of development he is clearly uncomfortable with the current dominance of the \u27Closing the Gap\u27 framework. This paper was presented at the Centre for Public Policy\u27s \u27Values & Public Policy\u27 conference in February 2009. Jon Altman is Professor and the inaugural Director of the Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research established in 1990. He is currently researching Indigenous development and economic hybridity as ARC Australian Professorial Fellow. 
Access to Effective Teaching for Disadvantaged Students
Get PDFRecent federal initiatives in education, such as Race to the Top, the Teacher Incentive Fund, and the flexibility policy for the Elementary and Secondary Education Act are designed in part to ensure that disadvantaged students have equal access to effective teaching. The initiatives respond to the concern that disadvantaged students may be taught by less effective teachers and that this could contribute to the achievement gap between disadvantaged students and other students. To address the need for evidence on this issue, the Institute of Education Sciences at the U.S. Department of Education initiated a study to examine access to effective teaching for disadvantaged students in 29 diverse school districts. Mathematica Policy Research and its partner, the American Institutes for Research, conducted the study, which focused on English/ language arts (ELA) and math teachers in grades 4 through 8 from the 2008 -- 2009 to the 2010 -- 2011 school year
Native title and taxation reform
Get PDFThis paper is adapted from a submission in response to the Australian Government’s Consultation Paper ‘Native Title, Indigenous Economic Development and Tax’. The Consultation Paper mainly canvasses options for income taxation reforms with very little actually said about Indigenous economic development.
This paper raises four key issues and ends with a brief conclusion and five recommendations. The key issues are:
1. What is motivating the native title taxation reform process given that the recently completed (Henry) Review of Australia’s Future Tax System made no mention of taxation of native title? 2. What are the intersections between native title payments and the income tax system? 3. What are the lessons to be learnt from the operations of the Mining Withholding Tax? 4. What are the lessons to be drawn for tax policy making from the 2010 Resources Super Profits Tax debate?
Commentary in this paper draws largely on the author\u27s research on these issues from 1982 to the present.
Image: Milkwooders / flick
Urban CDEPs as Indigenous Employment Centres: Policy and community implications
Get PDFThis paper explores the federal government's continued development of its Indigenous Employment Policy (IEP) with the launch of additional Indigenous-specific welfare reform initiatives flagged in the May 2001 Budget. One of these new initiatives focuses in particular on 'urban' Community Development Employment Projects (CDEP) schemes and policy initiatives aimed at encouraging them to take on the additional role of Indigenous Employment Centres (IECs). The key function of IECs will be to move CDEP participants into mainstream employment. The paper presents a description of the policy background to this recent government initiative, and describes the proposed function and objectives of IECs. The then Department of Employment, Workplace Relations and Small Business (DEWRSB) initiated a CDEP Work Preparation and Employment Trial, to test out the new initiative. The possible effects of the IEC initiative on CDEP organisations is examined through a preliminary study of Redfern CDEP in Sydney, which has agreed to participate in an IEC trial. Because the trial had only recently been implemented at the time the field visit was conducted by the author in 2001, the paper is not a comprehensive evaluation of the Redfern trial. Rather, the Redfern case study provides an important preliminary ground-testing of the proposed objectives and implementation of IECs. In conclusion the paper raises some preliminary practical and policy implications for the CDEP scheme in general, and for specific CDEP organisations that may be considering undertaking an IEC role
Survey and research instruments that address the health effects of caregiving : final report
Get PDFRobert Weathers, Allison Hedley Dodd, Krista Harrison ; submitted to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities ; submitted by Mathematica Policy Research, Inc. "Contract no.: 200-2001-00122(08).""MPR Reference no.: 6290-300."Includes bibliographical references (p. 37-39).2008200-2001-00122(08)1125
Policy Learning and Policy Failure: Definitions, Dimensions and Intersections (chapter)
Get PDFThis is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Policy Press via the link in this recordPolicy failures present a valuable opportunity for policy learning, but public
officials often fail to learn valuable lessons from these experiences. The studies in this volume
investigate this broken link. This introduction defines policy learning and failure, and then
organises the main studies in these fields along the key dimensions of: processes, products and
analytical levels. We continue with an overview of the special issue articles, outlining where
they sit in the wider literature and how they link learning and failure. We conclude sketching a
research agenda linking policy scholars with policy practice.European CommissionBritish Counci
Whither policy innovation? Mapping conceptual engagement with public policy in energy transitions research
No full textA transition to sustainable energy will require not only technological diffusion and behavioral change, but also policy innovation. While research on energy transitions has generated an extensive literature, the extent to which it has used the policy innovation perspective – entailing policy entrepreneurship or invention, policy diffusion, and policy success – remains unclear. This study analyzes over 8000 publications on energy transitions through a bibliometric review and computational text analysis to create an overview of the scholarship, map conceptual engagement with public policy, and identify the use of the policy innovation lens in the literature. We find that: (i) though the importance of public policy is frequently highlighted in the research, the public policy itself is analyzed only occasionally; (ii) studies focusing on public policy have primarily engaged with the concepts of policy mixes, policy change, and policy process; and (iii) the notions of policy entrepreneurship or invention, policy diffusion, and policy success are hardly employed to understand the sources, speed, spread, or successes of energy transitions. We conclude that the value of the policy innovation lens for energy transitions research remains untapped and propose avenues for scholars to harness this potential.Organisation & Governanc
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