About this trail:
The U.S. Department of Labor has yet to provide a satisfactory reason for abruptly closing a work center for troubled youths in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Shutting down the Job Corps center means 70 workers will lose their jobs over the next two months and 150 students will have to be transferred to other centers within a week. Advertisement It also means breaking a government contract with the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, which supplies 30 workers to the center. The contract was set to expire at the end of June.
Trail link: http://trailfire.com/corrections/trails/34224
Summary: http://trailfire.com/corrections/trailview/34224
Summary: http://trailfire.com/corrections/trailview/34224
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The U.S. Department of Labor has yet to provide a satisfactory reason for abruptly closing a work center for troubled youths in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Shutting down the Job Corps center means 70 workers will lose their jobs over the next two months and 150 students will have to be transferred to other centers within a week. Advertisement It also means breaking a government contract with the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, which supplies 30 workers to the center. The contract was set to expire at the end of June.
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Although the Job Corps was more thoroughly studied and evaluated than any other antipoverty agency, its long-range impact remains an open question. In the 1990s, Job Corps faced a number of challenges, threats, and criticism: Critics charged that the program was wasteful because it was spending $26,000 per student, and fewer than 15 percent of participants were completing the program. A 1995 bill sought to turn control over to the states and to close numerous programs, but Congress voted that the federal government should retain control and that fewer centers should be closed.
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Dr. Esther R. Johnson, the national director of the U.S. Department of Labor’s Job Corps program, offered her vision of the future of the organization during a speech kicking off the Corps’ annual leadership summit earlier this month. The Washington-based Job Corps is dedicated to providing educational and career pathways for disadvantaged 16- to 24-year-olds.
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The federally funded program administered by the Department of Labor has a proven record of achievement, as evidenced by program year 1999 when 80 percent of all Job Corps participants were placed in a job, joined the military, or enrolled in higher education. Furthermore, a recent study has shown that for every $1.00 invested in the program, $1.46 is returned to society through reductions in welfare, crime and incarceration costs, and through increased taxes paid by graduates
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"Given Job Corps' poor performance, the Bush Administration's $1.5 billion spending proposal is unreasonable. Job Corps is not the "highly successful" program it is touted to be. Congress should move to eliminate this wasteful and unproductive program." Not my opinion but an analysis based on an in depth study.
