Research and Evaluation Projects
CANDO
The CAN DO Partnership is addressing the Pioneer Valley nursing workforce shortage by developing a unique collaboration between academic institutions, healthcare service providers, workforce development agencies and local foundations. Collectively these institutions are working together to redesign the region's nursing education system. Funded in part by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the partnership is one of ten selected for the Partners Investing in Nursing program based on demonstrated institutional commitment and the use of promising practices.
Commonwealth Corporation is conducting a qualitative evaluation of the three components of the work of the partnership: 1) a plan to redesign the nursing education system in the region, 2) the STAR pilot program, which provides financial, academic and employer support for graduate nursing students studying to become nursing faculty, and 3) the Nurses Succeed pilot program, which provides employer-based academic and other support for entry-level long-term care workers seeking to pursue nursing degrees.
The partnership is lead by the Davis foundation, with support from the Regional Employment board of Hamden County, and includes American International College, Greenfield Community College, Holyoke Community College, Our Lady of Elms College, Springfield Technical Community College, University of Massachusetts Amherst, Baystate Health System, Cooley Dickinson Hospital, Genesis/Heritage Hall Mercy Hospital, MA Longterm Care Federation, and Noble Hospital.
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Critical Vacancies
Click here to find out more on Occupations meeting "critical" vacancy criteria for the 2007-Q2 Massachusetts Job Vacancy Survey
Data Resources
Census Files: Commonwealth Corporation and the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University partnered in early spring 2003 to analyze U.S. 2000 Census data and produce reports to meet the planning and other needs of workforce development professionals in the state and its sixteen regions.
Postsecondary Education Needs and Participation: Commonwealth Corportation and Northeastern University's Center for Labor Market Studied partnered to make available the Assessment of Postsecondary Education Needs and Participation by Working Adults. The data are available by the five Regional Competitiveness Council Areas and by the 16 Local Workforce Investment Areas.
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HomeWork
HomeWork is a five-year project to provide chronically homeless people in Boston with coordinated services so they can find and retain both jobs and stable housing. The project is funded jointly by the U.S. Department of Labor, Office of Disability Employment Policy, and the US Department of Housing and Urban Development. It is administered by the Boston Private Industry Council in collaboration with the Massachusetts Department of Mental Health and a variety of community-based organizations.
As the local evaluator of HomeWork, Commonwealth Corporation has engaged in a series of activities to analyze project benchmarks and outcomes and to document the project's implementation. Evaluation activities to date have included:
Year 1: Formative evaluation of the planning and implementation process
Year 2: Formative evaluation of the processes of interagency coordination
Year 3: Preliminary outcomes analysis; series of case studies and comparative analysis
Year 4: Outcomes update and a comparative analysis of outcomes achieved by different program models (housing focus, employment focus, and concurrent services model).
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Hotel Teach
Hotel TEACH is a two-year project that prepares workers with limited English proficiency for well-paying jobs in the hotel industry. The project is funded by the US Department of Labor and is administered by the Center for Immigrant Education and Training at LaGuardia Community College in New York City. It has two phases: first, to prepare a group of low-level employees of the Sheraton Hotels of New York City for positions that require significant interaction with hotel guests and higher levels of responsibility; and, second, to prepare limited English speakers who are not currently employed in hotel jobs for employment in area hotels.
The Center for Immigrant Education and Training has contracted with Commonwealth Corporation to conduct a third-party evaluation of the Hotel TEACH project. The evaluation includes an analysis of the characteristics of the program's participants, changes in their skill levels (English language, computer, and "soft skills"), and employment outcomes; a formative evaluation of the project's first phase; and a summative evaluation of final outcomes and lessons learned.
Regional Workforce Profiles
The Regional Workforce Investment Profiles is an annual publication that is part of a series of Regional Workforce Profiles publications. The Regional Workforce Investment Profiles are produced by an interagency workgroup of state agencies, facilitated by Commonwealth Corporation, under the auspices of the State Workforce Investment Board and the Department of Workforce Development.
Regional Workforce Profiles: FY2006 Current Workforce Investment Profile [PDF]
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The Skills Gap Project
The Skills Gap Project is a comprehensive research project which looked at various data sources to determine whether Massachusetts is, or soon could be, experiencing gaps between the labor needs of businesses and the availability of skilled workers. CommCorp partnered up with several research organizations and an advisory team of public and private sector leaders.
CommCorp, in partnership with the Executive Office of Labor and Workforce Development, has developed industry chartbooks which provide a snapshot of a particular industry, including employment, occupational distribution, salaray, regional and other data. The first in the series is the Massachusetts Healthcare Chartbook.
United Way of Massachusetts Bay/Training, Inc. Post-Employment Services Project
As part of its Sustainable Employment Initiative, the United Way of Massachusetts Bay has awarded a grant to Boston's YMCA/Training, Inc. to provide post-employment retention and advancement services to graduates of its computerized office skills training program. Commonwealth Corporation is evaluating this program to determine whether program graduates who receive post-employment services achieve higher levels of job retention and advancement than other program graduates who do not receive those services. "Treatment" and comparison groups have been selected for this purpose. The CommCorp evaluators will analyze the services provided and the outcomes achieved, extract the key lessons learned, and suggest what implications those lessons may have for the further development of the United Way Sustainable Employment Initiative.
Women Offenders Reentry Collaborative (WORC)
WORC is a Boston-based program that provides job readiness, job placement and support services to woman offenders, both while they are in prison and after their release from prison. The program is a three-year project funded by the US Department of Labor and administered by The Work Place, a One-Stop Career Center operated by Boston's Jewish Vocational Services. The goal of the project is to reduce the recidivism rate of woman offenders.
Commonwealth Corporation is conducting both a quantitative and qualitative evaluation of the WORC project. This includes a baseline quantitative report; a series of interim updates examining participant characteristics, services received and outcomes; a formative evaluation of the project's first year; an interim process evaluation update; and a summative evaluation of the project and its outcomes.
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