C2C Research Assistant - Scaling Summer Jobs Programs

Project Title

Scaling Summer Jobs Programs

Faculty / Project Lead

Alicia Modestino

Project Description

Roughly 30 cities across the United States provide Summer Youth Employment Programs (SYEPs) to connect low-income youth living in marginalized communities to positions where they learn valuable skills that set them up for future success. Rigorous research evidence from Boston, Chicago and New York has shown that summer jobs programs are a cost-effective way of improving a wide range of youth outcomes related to employment, education, and criminal justice involvement. Compared to other cities, the Boston SYEP operates as a coordinated ecosystem of workforce intermediaries that proved highly resilient during COVID, leading to an additional $4.1 million investment during summer 2020 to support four new tracks of programming, including a new Learn and Earn program. Since then, the City of Boston and the other SYEP intermediaries have recognized the importance of increasing coordination and alignment across the ecosystem to “build back better” post-COVID. To lead this effort, the City deepened its partnership with Northeastern University under a new multi-year project funded by the William T. Grant Foundation to address both the efficiency and equity challenges that the program has faced. Over the past two years, the research team has analyzed youth application and hiring records; interviewed youth, parents, employer-partners, and staff; and evaluated several pilot interventions, including a job matching algorithm, to increase both the number of jobs filled and the diversity of youth served. This project will build on both the research evidence as well as the technical assistance that the Northeastern team has provided as both a research and an employer partner to the City of Boston. This long-standing research-practice partnership makes the Northeastern team uniquely qualified to drawn on both our research findings as well the City’s experience in its implementation efforts. These efforts include expanding the number and type of summer opportunities, increasing access by streamlining application and hiring processes, and improving coordination across SYEP intermediaries to provide a range of high quality, skill building opportunities. As a result of our work, the City of Boston made an unprecedented $18.7M investment in summer jobs in summer 2023, successfully employing over 9,000 young people ages 14 to 24, which was then expanded into a Mayor’s Youth Jobs Guarantee in 2024 to ensure all Boston Public Students who want a summer job can have one. This initial project that we will undertake with support from Arnold Ventures has two parts to it: • SYEP White Paper of SYEP Model And Manual – this document will provide a model for Summer Youth Employment Programs that can be replicated across other cities and adapted to different local contexts. We will also develop an SYEP manual that can be used to scale up summer jobs programs in other jurisdictions. We will solicit regular feedback from the AV team and submit a final white paper and manual materials in preparation for the May board meeting. • SYEP Scaling and Technical Assistance Proposal – this document will develop a proposal for SYEP scaling and technical assistance to be implemented in upwards of 20 cities over a two year period using a franchise model while also supporting the AV policy team to advocate for additional public funding at city, state, and federal levels. We will solicit regular feedback from the AV team and submit a final proposal in preparation for the August board meeting. The implications of this project will be the following: • Policy – The research evidence and best practices from the white paper will provide a model that can be adapted to each local context to guide other jurisdictions interested in implementing these programs. The manual will also lay the groundwork for the technical assistance needed to ensure that these efforts are successful. • Practice – The 25 case studies from the proposal development phase will assess the feasibility of scaling up summer jobs programs across different local contexts in terms of the youth population to be served, the employer partners to be engaged, the political coordination needed, and the funding capacity of each city. This work will also inform Arnold Ventures’ efforts to conduct advocacy for city, state and federal entities to expand funding for SYEPs. • Future research – The development of the proposal will also include a process and impact evaluation plan to will track progress and ensure model fidelity in different local contexts. This will lead to future research and evaluation projects to improve program efficiency, efficacy, and equity.

Qualifications Necessary

The ideal candidate will possess all of the required qualifications listed below plus one or two of the additional qualifications. Required Qualifications: • Excellent verbal and communication skills to facilitate team and stakeholder interactions • Attention to detail and organization are essential to ensure data integrity • Expert knowledge of excel and experience programming in STATA to analyze data and create visualizations • Experience conducting social science research in economics, sociology, or a related field • Ability to meet deadlines and work as a team with project management tools. Additional Qualifications: • Knowledge of survey methodology • Understanding of workforce development programs Experience working with public agencies

Hours per Week