Carson Hicks, Ph.D., Deputy Director of Evaluation at the NYC Center for Economic Opportunity (CEO) will provide an overview of programs that address the needs of disconnected youth and young men of color in New York City. CEO, located within the NYC Mayor’s Office, partners with various City agencies to develop, implement, and evaluate the City’s anti-poverty programs. CEO’s programs touch on areas of education, employment, health, and prevention. The success of these programs has had national implications—CEO was recently awarded a federal Social Innovation Fund grant to replicate five programs to multiple cities, including Project Rise which works directly with young adults. CEO is also responsible for the implementation and evaluation of most of the programs being expanded and created through the Young Men’s Initiative, a $127 million investment of public and private funds to assist NYC’s young men of color. This presentation will share CEO’s approach to developing and evaluating programs that assist disconnected young people with examples of specific programs and investments in New York City.

1. Engaging Disconnected
Youth in NYC
Carson C. Hicks, Ph.D.
US Department of Labor/ETA
Young Adult Conference
Boston, MA | November 15, 2011
www.nyc.gov/ceo

2. About the Center
 Center for Economic Opportunity
• Established by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg to
develop, implement, monitor, and evaluate the
City’s new anti-poverty programs.
 Innovation Fund
• $100 million public-private partnership.
• Supports the implementation of CEO’s anti-
poverty initiatives and pilot programs.
• Funds the monitoring and evaluation of
programs.
 Commitment to Evaluation
• All program outcomes tracked.
• Program-specific evaluation strategies CEO releases annual reports on
program and policy initiatives.
developed.
• Shares lessons learned and best practices to
partners, policy makers, funders and
practitioners.
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3. How CEO Works
 Center for Economic Opportunity
• Funding, program design Non-Profit/Community
Based Organizations
and development, implementation,
evaluation, and policy NYC Government
Agencies
 Agencies
• Management of contracts and Mayor’s Office
NYC Center for
Economic
providers, and program Opportunity
implementation
 Providers
• Provide direct service, recruit participants,
and offer other services
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4. CEO Objectives and Approach
 Identify Successful Anti-Poverty Programs
• Implement new programs in collaboration with multiple City agencies.
• Utilize strong internal and external evaluation teams to review
programs, identify best practices, and gauge success.
• Base future funding decisions on program results.
 Build a National Body of Evidence and Share Results
• CEO pilots to be replicated nationwide through the Social Innovation Fund.
• Share best practices and lessons learned.
 Expand High Impact Programs
• Graduate CEO’s successful pilots.
• Expand promising programs through the Young Men’s Initiative.
 Develop New Measures & Policies
• Pursue an alternative to the outdated federal poverty measure.
• Use lessons learned to inform future policy recommendations.
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5. CEO Youth Program Overview
Education programs and other support services, as well as new work opportunities &
internships
 Education
• Expanded model GED-to-college program.
• Supports community college student graduate in 3 years.
• Pre-GED literacy program for low-level readers.
 Employment
• Paid internship and job/employment placement.
• Service learning and job training for court-involved youth.
• Green collar-job training.
 Prevention
• An afterschool service learning program.
• Financial literacy & asset development for foster care youth.
• High School based health centers.
 New Initiatives
• Social Innovation Fund: In July 2010, CEO, in partnership with the Mayor’s Fund to Advance
NYC, was awarded an annual $5.7 million Social Innovation Fund (SIF) grant to replicate five
innovative anti-programs in 8 cities nationwide, including Project Rise.
• Young Men’s Initiative
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6. Social Innovation Fund: Project Rise
STRATEGY CEO PROGRAMS EVALUATION RESULTS SIF PROGRAMS
Young Adult Internship Young Adult Internship
Program (DYCD) provides Program. An analysis of
short-term paid internships, administrative data suggested
placement into jobs, that the program is effective in
education or advanced re-engaging disconnected
Youth Development
training, and follow-up youth; approximately half of the
services to disconnected youth who entered the program
Project Rise is an
youth ages 16 to 24 years remained engaged in
Education old. employment or education nine education-conditioned
programs and months after completing the internship program. This
other support internship, including young twelve-month
services, as adults with significant barriers.
well as work
intervention targets
opportunities disconnected young
Young Adult Literacy Young Adult Literacy
and Program (DYCD and Program. An evaluation adults 18-24 years old in
internships Libraries) offers targeted showed that adding paid New York City, Kansas
literacy and math instruction, internships-conditioned on City (MO), and Newark.
work readiness, support attendance in the education
services, and paid services led to increased
internships. attendance and program
retention, as well as an increase
in participants’ math gains.
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7. Young Men’s Initiative
 About the Initiative
• The Young Men’s Initiative (YMI) is the Mayoral
response to an 18 month process of evaluation
and research by a commission co-chaired by
David Banks of Eagle Academy Foundation, and
Ana Oliveira of the New York Women’s
Foundation.
• YMI is a comprehensive effort to tackle the broad
disparities slowing the advancement of young men
of color in NYC.
 Investment
• Three-year action plan will invest $127 million to
support new programs and policies designed to
breakdown barriers to success. The Chairs of Young Men’s Initiative
released their recommendations in
 Issue Areas August 2011
• The plan advances four areas where the
disparities are greatest and the consequences
most harmful: Education; Employment; Justice;
7 Health.

8. Disconnected Youth in NYC
 In New York City, one in five persons
between the ages of 17 and 24—an
estimated 173,000 young people—is
neither in school nor in jobs.
 One-third of New York City’s
disconnected youth lack a high school
diploma.
 Most disconnected youth have grown
up in economically disadvantaged
households, and often find
themselves in financial crises of their
own as they transition into adulthood.
Source: Community Service Society, (June, 2011)
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9. YMI: Education
 The Challenges
• Black and Latino youth have a
graduation rate of 47% compared to
70% of their white peers.
• The black-white achievement gap is
26% in math and 19% in English.
• The Latino-white achievement gap is
22% in math and 19% in English.
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10. YMI: Education
 Programs
• New investment of $24 million will launch the Expanded Success Initiative, the
first effort in the country to focus on erasing the gap in college and career
readiness by determining which strategies work best to graduate black and Latino
males.
• $3 million expansion of CEO’s Young Adult Literacy Program, a program
operated by DYCD and Public Library Systems that offers targeted literacy and
math instruction, work readiness, support services, and paid internships.
• Fund the Community Education Pathway to Success (CEPS) a pre-GED
program developed by the Youth Development Institute, a $3 million investment.
• $1 million investment in mentoring for elementary and middle school students
implemented by DYCD afterschool programs.
 Policy Recommendations
• Prevent unnecessary referrals of boys of color to special education.
• Improve school climate and academic outcomes for suspended students.
• Expand efforts to attract men of color to teaching profession.
• Hold schools accountable for achievement gap.
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11. YMI: Employment
 The Challenges
• NYC has roughly half the national
average of teen employment.
• In 2010, NYC had over 100,000 more
applicants for summer youth
employment than they were able to
fill.
• Nearly twice as many black 16-24
year old black males are unemployed
compared to their white peers.
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12. YMI: Employment
 Programs
• Expand CEO’s Jobs-Plus program by $24 million, which removes
barriers to work for residents in public housing and helps connect them to
jobs.
• Expand CEO’s Young Adult Internship Program by $9 million, which
provides short-term paid internships, placement into jobs, education or
advanced training, and follow-up services to disconnected youth ages 16
to 24 years old.
• Expand training slots in existing Small Business Services (SBS)
programs.
 Policy Recommendations
• Expand the City’s summer youth employment program.
• Reducing barriers to employment by helping young people access official
ID’s.
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13. YMI: Justice
 The Challenges
• 84% of Juvenile Justice admissions in NYC are of black or Latino young
men.
• Three out of four young men who leave Department of Correction custody
return to jail within one year.
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14. YMI: Justice
 Programs
• $6 million expansion of CEO’s NYC Justice Corps, which helps young adults
involved with the criminal justice system to reintegrate into their communities
through community benefit projects, paid internships, educational opportunities
and support.
• $6.3 million will support Department of Probation’s Justice Scholars and
Justice Community programs to help court-involved youth explore career and
education options.
• $13.6 million will help establish intensive mentoring programs in Department of
Probation Neighborhood Opportunity Networks (NeONs) for youth on probation.
• $9 million will be invested in providing cognitive behavioral therapy for
adolescents on Riker’s Island.
 Policy Recommendations
• Ease young people’s access to obtain and correct mistakes on RAP sheets.
• Allow parolees to vote upon completion of their custody.
• Eliminate barriers that employers use to discriminate against hiring young people
with backgrounds.
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15. YMI: Health
 The Challenges
• Teens living in high-poverty
neighborhoods are three times as
likely to get pregnant compared to
their peers in more affluent
neighborhoods.
• 51% of black and 46% of Latino
children grow up in a father-absent
household.
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16. YMI: Health
 Programs
• The City University of New York (CUNY) will receive about $1.1 million to support
Project REDRESS, an initiative that engages student fathers in parenting skills while
connecting them to college education and employment opportunities.
• Project Ceasefire is a public health violence prevention model that focuses on the
highest-risk communities and youth and will expand with a $2.4 million investment.
• The City launched the Fatherhood Initiative to establish new programs in multiple
agencies that will strengthen relationships of fathers with their children.
• $1.5 million is allocated for the creation of a training program through City Health
and Hospitals Corporation to better prepare physicians, nurses, and other providers to
work with adolescents.
 Policy Recommendations
• Ease the process for young people to access the Family Benefit Planning Program.
• Increase school-based mental health clinics.
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17. CEO Evaluation Strategies
 All Programs Assessed with Evaluation Strategies
Based on
• Availability of data • General knowledge of intervention
• Implementation status • Strength of program model
• Timing of expected outcomes • Level of investment
 Examples of Assessment
Program Evaluation
CEPS Program Evaluate long term outcomes and dosage. How long do participants remain
engaged? How long does it take for educational gains to occur?
Young Adult Randomized assignment evaluation implemented with existing and new YMI
Internship Program providers to compare the participants’ outcomes with a control group.
Justice Community Analysis of recidivism rates, employment and educational outcomes, and
community impact. Outcomes will be compared to baseline data for court-
involved youth. Implementation study will look at how various providers
implement model.
Project REDRESS Evaluation will examine whether fathers participating in program improve
educational and familial outcomes relative to fathers at CUNY who are not in
program.
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18. For More Information, visit nyc.gov/ceo
Carson C. Hicks, Ph.D.
Deputy Director of Evaluation
NYC Center for Economic Opportunity
212-788-2148 | Chicks@cityhall.nyc.gov
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