Current Projects

The University of Texas at Austin

Talent Metric Evaluation (Oregon Talent Council)

August 8, 2017 Leave a Comment

Principal Investigator:	Heath J. Prince, PhD
Sponsor(s):	TIP Strategies
Project Duration:	May 2017 – August 2017
Description:	The Ray Marshall Center (RMC) will partner with TIP Strategies in the creation of an evaluation methodology for the Oregon Talent Council (OTC) that relies on new and innovative ways to measure the impact of talent investment in Oregon, and that can accurately and consistently track outcomes of interest. The project is composed of the following activities, divided into two phases: Phase 1 will develop a metrics methodology for OTC-related investments—how to measure investments in the niches that the Talent Council has identified as gaps. While the methodology will show how OTC metrics applies to an overall talent development framework, it will not develop detailed metrics for education and workforce investments controlled by other state agencies. Phase 2 will seek to develop a methodology for identifying key measures (approximately 5-7) by which aspects or desired outcomes of talent development could be benchmarked against other states. The primary purpose of the methodology for this phase is to establish a baseline to understand Oregon’s relative position in desired talent outcomes and be able to track the relative state’s progress over time.
Reports Available:

Regional Hiring Survey

May 8, 2017 Leave a Comment

Principal Investigator:	Heath J. Prince, PhD
Sponsor(s):	Austin Regional Manufacturers Association
Project Duration:	April 2017 – September 2017
Description:	The Ray Marshall Center (RMC) will partner with the Austin Regional Manufacturers Association (ARMA) to conduct a survey of manufacturing employers operating within the Austin-Round Rock Metropolitan Statistical Area in order to learn more about their workforce needs. RMC will work with ARMA to develop a customized survey that would provide new insights on a range of manufacturing workforce issues, e.g.: What strategies are local manufacturers using to recruit qualified workers? Which occupations are currently most difficult to recruit for? Currently, what are the most in-demand skills and credentials that local manufacturers are seeking? Which occupations do local manufacturers anticipate experiencing growing demand over the next 2-3 years? What skills do local manufacturers anticipate needing over the next 5-10 years? How are local manufacturers investing in upskilling their current workforce? Which occupations are experiencing the highest turnover? Our aim with this study is to provide ARMA with a clear understanding of the current and emerging skill needs of area manufacturers, as well as a more complete picture of the resources available locally to help manufacturers meet their skill needs.
Reports Available:

Pre-K 4 San Antonio Impact Study

April 19, 2017 Leave a Comment

Principal Investigators:	Greg Cumpton, PhD and Michael Villarreal, MPP (Co-Principal Investigator)
Sponsor(s):	City of San Antonio
Project Duration:	March 2017 – December 2017
Description:	Since the start of Texas’ public prekindergarten program, policymakers and education leaders have attempted to raise its quality. A recent survey of public prekindergarten programs found that 49 percent of local school districts offered students a full-day of prekindergarten; while 59 percent of districts adopted policies that limit class size, staff-to-student ratios, or both (Children at Risk, 2014). More recently, Governor Abbott has successfully advocated for funding to demonstrate and evaluate the effects of higher quality prekindergarten on student outcomes. At the local level, the City of San Antonio initiated an ambitious plan to demonstrate the value of high-quality prekindergarten by funding four demonstration centers, professional development for public school prekindergarten teachers, and grants to school districts to increase the quality of their programs. Pre-K for SA (PK4SA) is the city agency leading the implementation of San Antonio’s prekindergarten investment. PK4SA has hired the Ray Marshall Center to be its research and evaluation partner to provide its first study of the effects of its high-quality prekindergarten on near and long-terms student outcomes. Moreover, PK4SA is engaging Ray Marshall Center to conduct its evaluation of PK4SA within a larger study of Texas’ public prekindergarten program with the goal of determining how the quality of public prekindergarten programs can be incrementally improved to have longer lasting positive effects on student outcomes. High-quality early childhood education has proven to be a cost-efficient strategy for increasing the cognitive and non-cognitive abilities of participating students. This study extends the current research on early education by investigating heterogeneous effects on long-term student outcomes. This study will explore if certain programmatic aspects of prekindergarten have a greater effect on student outcomes than others. It will also explore if all student subgroups benefit from public prekindergarten and if certain groups benefit more than others. This study uses data from the state’s student longitudinal data system, which includes student outcomes from prekindergarten through their postsecondary education and employment. This study also benefits from the cooperation of local school districts in Bexar County who have agreed to share district tests of prekindergarten and kindergarten students. This supplemental data will be used in a regression discontinuity analysis to check the robustness of statewide results that are produced from a regression analysis using propensity score matching and fixed effect techniques.
Reports Available:

Strategic Planning for San Antonio Works

February 21, 2017 Leave a Comment

Principal Investigator:	Greg Cumpton, PhD
Sponsor(s):	San Antonio Works and San Antonio Economic Development Foundation
Project Duration:	November 2016 – August 2017
Description:	The Ray Marshall Center (RMC) along with consulting partner Jobs for the Future (JFF) will work with SA Works to develop an action plan for future work. The primary steps in developing the plan include: A needs assessment involving stakeholder surveys, focus groups, and interviews Development of a draft action plan including a defined process for review and revision—leads to mapping presentation Aid in an initial convening of stakeholders providing guidance in development and feasibility of metrics guided by a collective impact process Development of processes and sources to obtain and manage regular, meaningful data collection and reporting mechanisms for the collective impact group or groups Provide recommendations for sustainability, including to ensure the continued participation of stakeholders in the continuing collective action process and guide stakeholders in seeking core and supplemental funding sources to support the regional effort Create two final action plans, one related to the collective impact efforts, and another, reflecting lessons learned through the development of the former, for future implementation by SA Works staff.
Reports Available:

Evaluation of English@Work Employer Benefits and Costs

August 16, 2016 Leave a Comment

Principal Investigator:	Christopher T. King, Ph.D
Sponsor(s):	Literacy Coalition of Central Texas and Houston Center for Literacy
Project Duration:	July 2016 -July 2017
Description:	The Ray Marshall Center (RMC), with support from the Literacy Coalition of Central Texas (LCCT), will conduct an evaluation of English@Work’s benefits and costs for participating employers, a required component of LCCT’s grant from the Houston Center for Literacy-English@Work which was launched as a small nonprofit in Austin in 2005 and was subsumed by the LCCT in January 2014, is a unique approach to teaching English-language skills by contextualizing, customizing, and providing them in the workplace. Early results indicated that this approach substantially outperformed more traditional approaches that rely heavily on classroom instruction, provide few hours of actual instruction per week, and/or fail to contextualize and tailor instruction in the setting and language of the workplace. Students made larger gains on various literacy measure more quickly than these more traditional approaches. And, students indicated that they felt more motivated to learn in a cohort of their peers that was situated within their workplace. After three years evolving and growing under the auspices of the LCCT, the Texas Workforce Commission’s (TWC) Site-based Workplace Literacy Project has provided grant funding to scale up English@Work in Austin and expand it to the Houston area over the period from May 2016 to June 2017. The grant from TWC will support literacy and career services for more than 700 participants and plans to provide credentials or certificates of completion for around 490 of these participants over the grant period. The RMC evaluation will address two questions, as follows: What are the impacts of English@Work instruction on employers? What is the return-on-investment (ROI) of English@Work instruction for participating employers? This evaluation strives to capture near-term outcomes and ROI for employers whose employees receive English@Work services within the resources available to the grant. Outcomes will largely be based on employer perceptions of the results within a relatively immediate timeframe. A more comprehensive evaluation is planned for the future if additional funding can be secured.
Reports Available:

An Evaluation of Austin Community College’s Title III SIP Proposal

October 29, 2015 Leave a Comment

Principal Investigator:	Greg Cumpton, PhD
Sponsor:	Austin Community College
Project Duration:	October 2015 to August 2020
Description:	ACC proposes to establish an Office of Student Money Management (ACC-OSMM) – the office’s mission would be to give a stronger foundation to students’ academic and career goals and successes by helping them take charge of their financial futures.Two of the inaugural activities of ACC-OSMM will be: to establish a system of sending text message reminders regarding annual Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) renewal to first-year college students who are already receiving financial aid, and to enhance the main tool (Degree Map Online) that ACC counselors use to advise students to include ‘real time’ personalized financial aid information. This will improve integration of financial aid and loan awareness into student conversations with academic advisors and counselors. ACC hopes to demonstrate that the activities of ACC-OSMM would be linked to improvements in measures of student success such as: graduation rate, time to completion, retention/persistence, and cohort loan default rate (CDR). ACC will partner with the Ray Marshall Center (RMC) to perform an evaluation, both formative and summative, on the effectiveness of these efforts on the student outcome measures of interest. Both types of evaluations provide actionable information about the success of the intervention while each successive cohort of recipients is in the process of receiving services, allowing for relatively rapid reflection and program modification as needed by ACC staff. Both evaluations are intended to measure the implementation, aggregate outcomes, and the impact of these efforts on Full Time First Time in College (FTFIC) loan or Pell grant receiving students’ graduation rates, 3-year Cohort Default Rates (CDR), retention rates, and fall to fall persistence for those who are Pell eligible. A host of intermediate steps related to these outcomes will also be measured.
Reports Available:

Mid-South Community College-led Trade Adjustment Assistance Community College Career Training (TAACCCT) Grant

October 7, 2015 Leave a Comment

Principal Investigator: Co-Principal Investigator:	Heath J. Prince, PhD Ashweeta Patnaik, MPH
Sponsor:	Corporation for a Skilled Workforce and US Department of Labor
Project Duration:	June 2015 – September 2018
Description:	The Ray Marshall Center (RMC), in collaboration with the Corporation for a Skilled Workforce (CSW), will be evaluating the efforts of the Mid-South Community College-led Trade Adjustment Assistance Community College Career Training (TAACCCT) grant for the Greater Memphis Alliance for a Competitive Workforce (GMACW). GMACW’s mission is to help solve Greater Memphis’ skills gap by: aligning training and education programs with employers’ skill requirements, and with each other; connecting employers to cost-effective training and hiring support, and; driving coordination and improved outcomes among providers that serve job candidates. While CSW is conducting the implementation (formative) evaluation, RMC is carrying out a quasi-experimental comparison cohort (summative) evaluation to measure the impact of these strategies. The impact evaluation conducted by RMC will seek to gauge the “value-added” from these enhanced training pathways.
Reports Available:	Greater Memphis Alliance for a Competitive Workforce TAACCCT Round 4 Grant: Interim Impact Evaluation Report Authors: Ashweeta Patnaik and Heath Prince Date: March 2017 Publication Type: Report, 53pp. Greater Memphis Alliance for a Competitive Workforce TAACCCT Round 4 Grant: Final Impact Evaluation Plan Date: March 2016 Publication Type: Report, 30pp.