|
Implementation of the In-Home Learning program in New Jersey was spotlighted in a March 21 article in The Wall Street Journal.
The story cited overwhelmingly positive results, beginning with a pilot program in 2001, in which 92 percent of the 128 women in the initial class finished, earning an average pay increase of 14 percent.
Quoting from the Journal:
A key to the New Jersey program's success was that it addressed the "lived experiences of the working poor," says sociologist Mary L. Gatta, director of the Sloan Center on Innovative Thinking and Workforce Development at Rutgers University, who wrote about the program in a book with Kevin McCabe, a former New Jersey labor and work-force commissioner. Replicating the program would "democratize access to education and training to populations who may not be able to take advantage of such opportunities in traditional classrooms," she says. "Even more, it provides access to the Internet, which, even though it has become an essential tool for most businesses, is still largely inaccessible to poor people," she adds.
The article went on to include Kevin McCabe's comments on the subject:
"We know that education and targeted skills training are necessary to raise income," says Mr. McCabe, now a union official. "Using technology to deliver job-skills training is a way to make work-force training programs more flexible and accessible to this population."
Among success stories included in the article was the following:
La-Seana Scurry, who left a transitional women's addiction-recovery center in Asbury Park, N.J., more than a year ago, and is still enrolled in the program, credits it for her recent success. While working and caring for the three of her 10 children who are still at home, she mastered several Microsoft Office, Web and desktop publishing applications, in addition to business courses.
The training, she says, helped her go from an office assistant's position at the Monmouth County Vocational School District's Neptune, N.J., annex to a 25-hour-a-week job as an employment program facilitator, earning $20 an hour.
"It was like an elevation. Once I got my life on the right track everything fell into place," says Ms. Scurry, 38. "I'm able to help women in situations where I used to be." Her 16-year-old son studies alongside her sometimes, she says. "He wants to learn the things that I'm learning."
|
