JFF in the News

Cover Story: Year in Review- Closing the Curtains On 2011

December 26, 2011, Community College Week (cover story)

Meanwhile, Jobs for the Future, a Boston-based think tank and education advocacy group, launched an initiative that will mine, aggregate and analyze realtime job market data available on the World Wide Web data and identify important employment trends. JFF has enlisted ten community colleges into a “Credentials That Work" network and given the schools the technological tools...

Ticket to Work: Why Certificates Build Careers and Boost Economic Success

December 2011/January 2012, Community College Journal

10 community colleges...use Credentials that Work, a new workforce data tool from Boston-based Jobs for the Future (JFF). The initiative collects real-time labor market information to better align postsecondary education offerings with workforce needs.

Grant to help City Colleges bridge skills gap

December 14, 2011, Chicago Tribune

Eight community colleges around the state...will share a $1.6 million grant aimed at developing industry-based education and training programs for low-skilled and unemployed adults. The program, known as the Accelerating Opportunity Initiative, is designed to change the way adult basic education is delivered by shortening the time it takes students to earn a post-secondary credential, targeting those without a high school diploma or GED.

Q&A: Nancy Hoffman On Vocational Education

December 7, 2011, Getting Smart

This November, Getting Smart reviewed Nancy Hoffman’s book Schooling in the Workplace: How Six of the World’s Best Vocational Education Systems Prepare Young People for Jobs and Life, a book that explores best practice examples of vocational education practices around the world.

Hoffman is a Vice President and Senior Advisor at Jobs for the Future, a national non-profit in Boston, the mission of which is to improve educational and workforce outcomes for low-income young people and adults. She works on early college designs, and the transition to and through postsecondary credentials.

Guest Post: Coordinating State Policy for Completion

December 6, 2011, Accelerating Opportunity (DEI blog)

Today’s post comes from Michael Collins, associate vice president of postsecondary state policy at Jobs for the Future. JFF leads DEI’s state policy initiative by supporting policy teams in CT, FL, NC, OH, TX, and VA, who are implementing the three-pronged Developmental Education Initiative State Policy strategy. The first of Michael’s three-part series showed how collecting the right data can inform state policy to accelerate dev ed innovation across a system...

Middle Schoolers Getting Prepped for College

November 29, 2011, Education Week

The Early College High School Initiative, started in 2002 with funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, among other sources, helps low-income, underrepresented, and first-generation high school students prepare for college, as well as earn up to two years of college credit or an associate degree, tuition free. There are about 230 of these schools to date across the country. A number of them have started programs in their feeder middle schools, said Joel Vargas, the vice president of Jobs for the Future, an organization that works with the initiative and other projects that support youth and adult career-readiness efforts.

Championing green job development, by Gloria Mwase

November 9, 2011, Community College Times

He has also helped marshal Wake Tech’s involvement in the Greenforce Initiative, a partnership between the National Wildlife Federation and Jobs for the Future to strengthen the capacity of community colleges to develop, enhance or refine green career pathway programs in North Carolina and five other regions.

Designing Policies to Encourage Early High School Graduation

November 7, 2011, Education Week

As states craft policies, researchers at Jobs for the Future, a Boston-based national nonprofit, looked into the best way to encourage this education fast-track. Incentives for Early Graduation: How Can State Policies Encourage Students to Complete High School in Less Than Four Years? by Diane Ward and Joel Vargas notes that a growing number of states are offering financial rewards for students who graduate early from high school.

Helping high school dropouts get on a college, career track

November 4, 2011, Community College Times

It’s that kind of coordination that underlies the Back on Track model, said YouthBuild President Dorothy Stoneman, who spoke at a Nov. 2 briefing in Washington, D.C., convened by Jobs for the Future (JFF). Back on Track integrates college-readiness instruction with academic and social supports, provides transition counseling and offers support in the first year of college. It is a collaboration of JFF, YouthBuild USA, the National Youth Employment Coalition (NYEC), and the Corps Network, with support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Open Society Foundations

Donnell-Kay Projects: Jobs for the Future & Denver Public Schools Team Up For Alt Ed

November 3, 2011, Donnell Kay Foundation Blog

Denver Public Schools (DPS) now has a clearer road map for reducing the number of potential high school dropouts. The Boston-based nonprofit Jobs for the Future (JFF) partnered with the school district to figure out how to help students reach graduation.

JFF’s experts know of some of the best ways to address the off-track population, and officials there say that national efforts to help these students are already showing promising outcomes.

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