Postsecondary education mostly focuses on the four-year BA degree. Community colleges are often promoted as the first step toward the ultimate goal of a four-year degree. However, community colleges have extremely poor degree completion rates. There is evidence suggesting better results for...

Reviewing prior studies of two residential mobility programs, the <italic>Gautreaux</italic> and Moving to Opportunity (MTO) programs, this paper examines whether program design elements may explain differences in neighborhood placements, which in turn may explain the programs' different individual outcomes....

Lake Parc Place is an innovative mixed-income housing project administered by the Chicago Housing Authority. The central component of the project is the fifty-fifty composition of low-income and working-class residents. This paper examines the success of the program in terms of the recruitment...

What information do employers use in hiring entry-level workers? In contrast with the expectations of economic theory, research finds that employers make hiring decisions without using information about high school students' skills. From interviews with a sample of 51 urban and suburban...

This paper examines whether youth understand what is required to attain their college plans. An analysis of a survey of 2000 high school seniors finds that many youth believe they can attain their plans even if they do poorly in high school, and these beliefs strongly predict lower effort in...

This paper describes Japan's efforts to reform its high schools by eliminating the hierarchy among high schools, and we identify some unintended consequences of these reforms. We find that these reforms are associated with the defection of the most able students from the public schools and with...

Most policy proposals addressing the school-to-work transition have focused on broad, national strategies for change. However, forging successful connections between youth and the labor market depends upon the individual actions and interactions of employers, students, and schools. In...