The Social Innovation Fund ( SIF ) , an initiative enacted under the Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act, deploys millions of dollars in public-private funds to expand effective solutions in three issue areas: economic opportunity, healthy futures, and youth development and school support. This work seeks to create a catalog of proven approaches that can be replicated...

The Workforce Investment Act of 1998 ( WIA ) is the federal government’s largest source of federally funded employment services and training. WIA is the latest in a series of federal employment and training programs, the first having arisen in response to the Great Depression. WIA aims to bring together formerly fragmented public and private reemployment services, make...

Low-income children too often begin school without the basic behavioral, emotional, and cognitive skills that they need to thrive academically — putting them at an immediate disadvantage and contributing to the large gap that develops in school achievement between low-income children and their more affluent peers. States and localities are responding by making major...

Young people without postsecondary education or vocational credentials face an uphill battle in the competition for jobs. Though the economic boom of the 1990s cut youth unemployment by one-quarter, it failed to benefit African-American and Hispanic young people as much as their white counterparts, and youth who lacked a high school diploma were actually more likely to...