Overview

Launched in 2020, New York City’s Advance & Earn program provides education, training, and employment for young people ages 16-24 who are not working or enrolled in school. The program’s goal is to provide participants with the skills and credentials to secure a job or pursue higher education.

The program offers three tracks: pre–high school equivalency (Pre-HSE), HSE Prep, and Advanced Training. It is designed to advance participants from their starting track to the subsequent track; young people enroll in a group in one of those tracks and move through that track together. The Pre-HSE track provides literacy and math instruction for young people with a ninth-grade reading level or below. Following that, HSE Prep track participants work toward an HSE credential with additional academic instruction and participation in a paid internship. Finally, the Advanced Training track allows participants with HSEs to work in paid internships while receiving additional occupational and work-readiness training relevant to the sector of the labor market they are interested in.

MDRC and its New York City partners are conducting a descriptive study and an outcomes study of this model. MDRC has worked with DYCD and other city agencies before on studies focused on improving education and work outcomes for young people in New York City, and these studies build on that shared past work, including evaluations of WorkAdvance, the Summer Youth Employment Program (SYEP), the Young Adult Internship Program (YAIP), and the Young Adult Literacy Program (YALP). The studies will describe program implementation and participant experiences and will incorporate participatory methods, giving young people and program staff members opportunities to weigh in on the studies’ design and the interpretation of the findings.