From the Penn IUR and Penn GSE sponsored conference: “Preparing Today’s Students for Tomorrow’s Jobs in Metropolitan America: The Policy, Practice and Research Issues" May 25-26, 2011 Organized by Laura Perna, a professor in Penn GSE, and Susan Wachter, a professor in Penn’s Wharton School, “Preparing Today’s Students for Tomorrow’s Jobs” explores the most effective institutional and public-policy strategies to be sure high school and college students and adult learners have the knowledge and skills required for future employment. “The conference addresses such critical questions as: How do we define success with regard to the role of education in preparing students for work?” Perna said. “How well are different educational providers preparing future workers? What is the role of public policy in improving connections between education and work? “It seeks to improve our understanding of several fundamental dimensions of this issue through insights from federal, state and local policy leaders, college administrators and researchers.” Guest speakers include Eduardo Ochoa, assistant secretary of the U.S. Department of Education; former Pennsylvania Gov. Edward Rendell; Lori Shorr, chief education officer to Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter; Charles Kolb from the Committee for Economic Development in Washington, D.C.; Claudia Neuhauser from the University of Minnesota; Bethany Krom from the Mayo Clinic; and Harry Holzer from Georgetown University. “Much recent attention focuses on the need to improve high school graduation and college degree completion. But, relatively less attention has focused on whether graduates and degree recipients have the skills and education required by employers,” Perna said. The event is sponsored by the Penn’s Pre-Doctoral Training Program in Interdisciplinary Methods for Field-Based Research in Education, with funding from the U.S. Department of Education’s Institute for Education Sciences in collaboration with Penn’s Institute for Urban Research.

1. Aligning Education with Employment: What Role for Economic Development Policy? Dr. Laura Wolf-Powers and Stuart Andreason Department of City and Regional Planning, School of Design University of Pennsylvania May 25-26 Preparing Today’s Students for Tomorrow’s Jobs in Metropolitan America

2. “…it is important to recognize that schools are essentially failing particular students. Those left behind by the system are mainly minority children in inner-city schools who become the youths who are not college ready (2008, 348).” Goldin, C., & Katz, L. F. (2010). The Race between Education and Technology. Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.

3. Educational Attainment and Poverty Measures in Ten Largest U.S. Cities by Population 1 Data from US Census American Community Survey, 2005-2009 Averages 2 Graduation Rates are percent on-time, 4 year graduations, with no GED, in 2005, derived from NCES data using the Urban Institute Cumulative Promotion Index, by the Learning to Finish Calculator by Pew Partnership for Civic Change (2008) 3 NYC Graduation Rate from NYC DOE, “Mayor Bloomberg and Chancellor Klein Announce That High School Graduation Rate Rises to All-Time High of 63 Percent, Marking the Eighth Consecutive Year of Gains.” 4 Universe for Educational Attainment is Population Ages 25 Years and Older

4. Saiz and Glaeser 2003 Glaeser, E. L., & Saiz, A. (2003). The Rise of the Skilled City. National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series, No. 10191.

5. Income and Education

6. Children in Poverty and HS Graduation

7. Glaeser and Saiz, TheRise of the Skilled City Educational attainment appears to be important to growth. Possible explanations: Consumer city (skilled people seek cities for their amenity value) Information city (ideas are important and skilled people generate ideas) Adaptive city (external changes are met with ingenuity, not paralysis/hideboundness) Skilled people attracted to cities Skills endowments induce growth/ prevent decline

8. “New work” (Lin 2009) New work is a benchmark indicator of: Catalyzation of technological change Adaptation to technological change Uses new occupational titles as a proxy for “new work” -- identifies worker selection into new occupations in locations across the U.S. (county aggregates based on IPUMs data)

9. “Upon inspection, newer detailed occupations seem to reflect changes in labor demands that result from actual innovation. Consider…detailed occupation 111 in 2000, network systems and data communication analysts. Examples of new occupation titles within this detailed occupation are chat room host/monitor, computer networks consultant, network engineer, Internet developer, and web designer.”

10. “In 1980, locations in the southern and western U.S. are most concentrated in new work; in 1990 and 2000, urban concentrations are more pronounced.” Darker shading indicates greater share of “new work” New work, 1990-2000

11. National Skills Coalition. (2011). Training Policy in Brief: Workforce Investment Act, Title I: Workforce Investment Systems for Adults, Dislocated Workers, and Youth (pp. 1-16). Washington, D.C.: National Skills Coalition.

12. WIA Funding Trends National Skills Coalition. (2011). Training Policy in Brief: Workforce Investment Act, Title I: Workforce Investment Systems for Adults, Dislocated Workers, and Youth (pp. 1-16). Washington, D.C.: National Skills Coalition.

13. One Stop Career Centers Philadelphia CareerLink One Stop Center (Source: Google Maps)

15. Rigorously designed studies routinely have shown only modest earnings gains for individuals participating in training programs when compared with control groups who received only job search assistance.

16. Local and metropolitan economic development policy Consists of efforts to enhance the competitiveness of locales for business activity Local officials’ twin motivations are revenue and jobs Tools tax abatements, targeted infrastructure investments, financial incentives (business attraction) support and training for entrepreneurs, business incubators, venture capital, and technical assistance to small and medium-sized enterprises (business development)

17. Labor-centered regional development strategy Industry partnerships Regional analysis/strategy centered on occupations in addition to industries “Talent pipeline” initiatives

19. Integrated skills training

20. Individualized services to support training completion and success on the job

21. Close connection to industry allowing for shifts in occupational/industry focusSource: Leavitt 2011

23. Experimental design/random assignment

24. Follow-up interview period began 24 months after baseline and could occur up to 30 months. Source: Leavitt 2011

26. Earnings gains were particularly strong during the second year, about $4,000.Source: Leavitt 2011

27. The vast majority of successful sector-based initiatives operate apart from the public workforce system Sector initiatives are also tenuously linked to secondary school curricula in most cases.

28. Recommendations (overview) 1) Convert second chance workforce development into a truly joint effort between federal and state labor and education departments 2) Make sector-based initiatives central to the post-secondary education and training proposition 3) Use economic development incentives to maximize the hysteresis effect of workforce investment 1 and 2 are about transforming the workforce system; 3 is an adaptation of traditional economic development policy

29. Convert second chance workforce development into a truly joint effort between federal and state labor and education departments Centrality of post-secondary learning to employment + poor access to mainstream education institutions among disadvantaged adults paradigm shift needed State programs can be a guide Obama Administration’s Workforce Innovation Fund is a important start, but not bold enough –

30. Make sector-based initiatives central to the post-secondary education and training proposition Evidence suggests that philanthropic investments in sector-based occupational training programs are paying significant dividends for disadvantaged workers and for employers A comprehensive policy to improve post-secondary educational opportunities for this population can draw on the successes of philanthropically funded programs.

31. Use Economic Development Incentives to Maximize the Hysteresis Effect of Workforce Investment Officials offering subsidy to a firm to locate or remain in a city would accompany location incentives with incentives to create on-the-job learning opportunities for incumbent workers and to employ, train and promote entry-level workers more aggressively. A policy linked to a financial incentives (e.g. workforce development participation clauses in a tax abatement agreements) could yield benefits for a locality’s low-paid and unemployed workers