Blog

February is National Career and Technical Education (CTE) Month®, an opportunity to celebrate and strengthen CTE programs that currently serve 12.8 million American students at the secondary and post-secondary levels. ...

In December in Anchorage, Alaska, there are only five hours of daylight, the average nighttime temperature is below 15 degrees, and over a thousand people experience homelessness on any given night. Like other cities throughout the country, homelessness is a persistent, devastating challenge. But local leaders are determined to meet the moment by launching the largest scale-up of permanent supportive housing ever in Alaska, through a project called Home for Good Anchorage....

There has been an urgent need to reimagine and rebuild our current systems of education and training. For years, Americans have been taking big risks to pursue postsecondary education and accumulating massive debt with no guarantees of employment prospects. We believe that reforming our system of postsecondary education and training—including the way we finance such education—is one of the keys to our nation’s economic recovery and resilience....

As I reflect on 2020, our team, our partners, and our work have kept me hopeful. And impatient. There’s never been a more urgent time to reshape the future we want to see for our country. Together, we must quicken the pace, rebuilding our systems and mobilizing capital so that everyone can have the opportunity to thrive....

On Nov. 18, 2020, JVS hosted an economic forum “Pay for Success: Working Toward Economic Advancement” to celebrate results from the Massachusetts Pathways to Economic Advancement Project, a workforce development partnership launched in 2017 with the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and Social Finance. The virtual forum convened more than 200 attendees and featured panelists Jim Peyser, Secretary of Education for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts; Tracy Palandjian, CEO and Co-Founder of Social Finance; Mark Elliott, Founder and President of Economic Mobility Corporation; and Jerry Rubin, President and CEO of JVS....

Boston—Today, a distinguished panel shared results of an innovative Pay for Success program to build skills and wages in the Commonwealth. A new study from evaluator Economic Mobility documented significant wage gains and job retention from the project’s English for Advancement (EfA) program, which engaged more than 1,000 residents in Boston, Lynn, Lowell, and Lawrence. The evaluation, which includes an ongoing randomized control trial, showed that EfA demonstrates a substantial impact on earnings in the second year after project enrollment, averaging $3,505 over the first two years. Participants who were unemployed at enrollment realized earning gains of more than $7,100 compared to members of the control group during the second year after enrollment. The project is the first Pay for Success project in the nation to focus on workforce development....

This essay by Tracy Palandjian first appeared in the Milken Institute’s Power of Ideas collection focused on navigating the new health, financial, and social uncertainties wrought by the ongoing pandemic and a reckoning of racial injustice. The essay series features insights from thought leaders across industries. Read the full collection here....

Jewish Vocational Services...

Here, we focus on the final stage in the project development process: managing a PFS project.

Here, we focus on the next stage in the project development process: launching a PFS project.