Long-Term Impact of Jobs for Maine's Graduates on Employment Outcomes of Students With Disabilities

• In Event: Programs With Emerging Evidence for Improving School Completion and Post-School Employment for Students With Disabilities

Abstract

School to work programs for students with disabilities have shown positive correlations with post-school outcomes. Among these programs, studies have shown varied relationships with employment – specifically, studies have shown that career development and vocational activities in school are more highly associated with stable jobs (Benz, Lindstrom, & Yovanoff, 2000). Understanding what works for employment stability is also important as being employed for a longer duration increases the likelihood of accessing more formal jobs that also provide employee benefits for individuals with disabilities.
School-to-work programs often involve collaboration with other state program or agencies, like the Division of Vocation Rehabilitation (VR). This presentation will focus on one such program – the Jobs for Maine’s Graduates (JMG) – through the lens of the Maine Vocational Rehabilitation agency. The previous study in this session showed that JMG had a significant positive impact on school completion for students with disabilities. However, in addition to providing basic mentoring on academic and personal skills, JMG also focuses on providing mentoring on work-related skills to junior and senior year students to make them employment ready and to put them on a career path. Work-related activities are included in the JMG core curriculum, offered as a for-credit course in high school, which includes competencies related to work experience, interview training, job shadowing, and informational interviews with prospective employers.
This presentation will discuss the longer-term impact of JMG for youth with disabilities when compared to general VR services in Maine. Specifically, using administrative data from JMG, RSA 911, and Maine Department of Labor, from years 2005 to 2015, this study identifies JMG students with disabilities who enroll in VR services, and analyzes their characteristics and outcomes compared to VR youth with similar educational levels but who did not participate in JMG during high school. In addition, the study examines individual employment and wages for up to five quarters after VR case closure – thus narrowing down on all youth with disabilities who had a successful VR closure (employed at closure) and then examining whether individuals who had participated in JMG during school hold their jobs for longer duration or earn higher wages compared to other VR successful closure cases. Using survival analyses and propensity score matching, the study answers the following questions – 1) Does receiving JMG during school lead to a positive VR closure outcome compared to cases who did not enroll in JMG? 2) Given successful VR closures, do JMG youth hold on to stable employment for longer duration?
The results suggest that youth with disabilities in the VR system who received JMG during school were more likely to have a successful VR case closure. Further, among successful case closures, JMG youth were significantly more likely to stay employed for a longer duration. Findings were further broken down by time between high school exit and VR closure, and the study finds that the differences remain significant even 6 to 8 years after JMG enrollment. The evidence points towards promising interventions and role of including career readiness trainings in schooling curricula.

Authors

• Garima Siwach, American Institutes for Research

• Michelle Yin, Northwestern University