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Youth Opportunity Grants: Lessons Can Be Learned from Program, but Labor Needs to Make Data Available

GAO-06-53 Published: Dec 09, 2005. Publicly Released: Dec 09, 2005.
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Highlights

The Youth Opportunity Grant program (YO) represented an innovative approach to improving education and employment opportunities for at-risk youth by targeting resources in high poverty areas and incorporating strategies that experts have identified as effective for serving this population. The Department of Labor (the Department) awarded 36 grants in 2000, and the program continued for 5 years. The Department had used a similar approach on a smaller scale in previous programs, but little information is available on the impact of these other programs. In order to understand what can be learned from the Youth Opportunity Grant program, GAO examined the grantees' implementation of the program, challenges they faced, and what is known about the program's outcomes and impact. To view selected results from GAO's Web-based survey of the Program Directors, go to GAO-06-56SP (http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-06-56SP).

Recommendations

Recommendations for Executive Action

Agency Affected Recommendation Status
Department of Labor To continue to improve efforts to serve at-risk youth and in order that researchers can evaluate the quality of information and determine possible impact of the program, the Secretary of Labor should take the actions necessary to complete the impact analysis of the Youth Opportunity Grant program and release the data and all related research reports from the program's evaluation.
Closed – Implemented
In 2008, Labor posted to its Web site the final Youth Opportunity Grant Impact and Evaluation report, as well as the data used to generate the report.

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Topics

Educational grantsEmployment assistance programsFederal grantsProgram evaluationProgram managementYouthYouth employment programsManagement information systemsLabor forceInformation systems