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Catalogue Blog

In The News …

Regional jobless rates fall in November (Washington Post): “Steady private sector growth drove down the unemployment rates in the District, Maryland, and Virginia for the second consecutive month in November, according to a US Labor Department report released Tuesday. The data showed that the District’s unemployment rate dropped to 10.6 from 11 percent the month before, fueled mainly by gains in the professional and business services sector and in education and health.” Virginia’s jobless level fell 0.2 percent (from 6.4 to 6.2), while Maryland’s dropped 0.3 percent (from 7.2 to 6.9).

Leadership needed to extend DC school day (Greater Greater Washington): “Both the Washington Teachers’ Union and DC Council agree that DCPS should likewise increase teachers’ time on task, but no one is showing needed leadership to make it happen […] The innovation that is perhaps most common in successful charter schools, according to a new research study, is an extended school day. On a comprehensive ranking of public charter schools by educational outcomes released by the DC Charter School Board, all of the top performing charter middle schools have school days longer than the 6.5 hour DCPS school day.” Do you agree? If so, what is needed to drive such a change?

Americans Are Most Generous, Global Poll Finds (Chronicle of Philanthropy): “Americans give more to help others than the residents of 152 other countries, according to a new global survey. That’s a big change from last year, when the United States ranked No. 5. people whether they had donated money to a charity, volunteered their time, or helped a stranger in the previous month.” Ireland and Australia closely followed the United States in the rankings, with the United Kingdom and New Zealand tied for fourth position.

20 Year Goal

Monday morning food for thought from Martha Ross of the Brookings Institution’s Metropolitan Policy Program, via WAMU 88.5:

The city should commit to an ambitious goal: by 2022, 90 percent of DC’s young people will earn a post-secondary credential and obtain full-time work by the age of 24. Such a shared goal would have a cascading effect, and require partners in the public, private and social sectors to re-think and re-orient their standard operating procedures […] Building and expanding such programs will be a complex, multi-year project, but it’s not out of our reach. In fact, city leaders have already taken a number of steps. They created a community college, revitalized the Workforce Investment Council, and are developing an intermediary to better match residents with job openings. These steps are necessary but not sufficient. We must do more.

What do you think? Is such a goal achievable? And what might be the first steps for us, in the nonprofit sector?

Closing The Skills Gap

Yesterday’s “In The News” highlighted this piece from DCentric; and I think that its thesis bears repeating. As author Elahe Izadi points out, “Many of the available jobs in the District, the ones that attract people from around the country, require advanced degrees. This mismatch, or skills gap, means many of those born and raised within the District are increasingly being left out of its economic success.” Many residents of low-income DC communities also lack access to computers and high-speed internet and “about 20 percent of District adults are functionally illiterate.”

How, and when, can we resolve the “skills gap” problem? To start, here are a few Catalogue nonprofits who are working to do precisely that. We absolutely would suggest learning more about their work and their needs.
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In The News …

Division of Labor: The Gap Between Skills and Jobs (DCentric): “While much of the country struggles with job creation, DC is in the unique position of having more jobs than residents […] Many of the available jobs in the District, the ones that attract people from around the country, require advanced degrees. This mismatch, or skills gap, means many of those born and raised within the District are increasingly being left out of its economic success.” According to the DC Department of Employment Services, professional, technical, or scientific or federal government positions make up nearly half of the area’s jobs; and 65% of November online job postings stipulated that applicants needed a minimum of a bachelors degree.
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New Chances

Good morning, Washington, and welcome to December. I just tuned into Morning Edition on WAMU and caught this story:

JUNE KRESS: As the previously incarcerated in our city know all too well, finding a job is essential to getting their lives back on track. But they face many obstacles. My organization, the Council for Court Excellence, recently conducted a survey of 550 District residents who had served time in prison or jail and found that 46 percent were unemployed.
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In The News …

Nation’s report card: Kids showing a bit of improvement in math, but many still not proficient (Washington Post Local): “The nation’s report card on math and reading shows fourth- and eighth-graders scoring their best ever in math and eighth graders making some progress in reading. But the results released Tuesday are a stark reminder of just how far the nation’s school kids are from achieving the No Child Left Behind law’s goal […] Just a little more than one-third of the students were proficient or higher in reading. In math, 40 percent of the fourth-graders and 35 percent of the eighth-graders had reached that level.” According to the article, Maryland students in both grades showed reading improvement; according to WAMU, “Virginia’s scores in reading and mathematics remain higher than nationwide averages.”

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In The News …

Obama’s Jobs Bill: Ready to Take a Chance Again? (Nonprofit Quarterly): Wondering “which parts of the president’s plan are most relevant to nonprofits, and what effect are they likely to have on the sector?” NPQ’s intricate piece walks through both the President’s “track record on nonprofits” and six points of interest to nonprofits in the jobs bill (#4: “Are there any parts of the American Jobs Act that appear to take advantage of the unique skill sets and missions of nonprofits?”), and concludes that “the American Jobs Act must do a better job than ARRA did in involving and including nonprofits of all stripes in its implementation.”

How do we make cities greener? Start by growing smarter?(Greater Greater Washington): Continuing on the green cities theme of yesterday’s article, check out this post on GGW: “a fixed set of people is more sustainable the fewer acres they collectively use. At one point, some viewed the ideal sustainable lifestyle as one where a small bubble of trees and grass surrounds each household. But instead, that just means a lot of heating and cooling energy is wasted to that bubble, and we spend far more energy moving among them […] The way we grow in the future is likely to be the most significant factor in how sustainable a region we have for generations to come.”

Washington economy grows 3.6% (Washington Business Journal): “Washington’s gross domestic product grew 3.6 percent in 2010, reaching $425.2 billion, the fourth-largest metropolitan economy in the nation. Washington also ranks as the third-fastest growing metropolitan economy” behind Boston and New York. For some additional positive news, metropolitan economies across the country grew in size by 2.5% in the past year, whereas they declined by that same percentage in the previous year.

In The News …

Can job training help solve the jobs crisis? (Washington Post Blogs): “In the southern US, 51 percent of current job openings are middle-skill, but only 43 percent of the region’s workers are trained to that level, according to a recent study by the National Skills Coalition […] In a major speech next week, ’s expected to propose support for job training as part of his renewed push for job growth, focusing especially on the 6.2 million Americans who’ve been out of work for more than six months.” In other words, the current jobs crisis is two-fold: too few entry-level jobs and too few workers for middle-skill opportunities. For some innovative solutions right in DC, check out Catalogue non-profits Byte Back (where adults can access Advanced Certification training and mentorship in technological fields) and New Course Restaurant and Catering (where the kitchen staff all receive comprehensive on-the-job training in commercial food preparation and customer service). Or learn about one our newest non-profits, the DC Students Construction Trades Foundation. Continue reading

In The News …

Tufts U. Soothes the Financial Sting for Graduates Taking Nonprofit Jobs (Chronicle of Higher Education): “Tufts University is offering loan-repayment assistance to alumni of any of its undergraduate or graduate schools, or professional-degree programs, if they take on public-service or nonprofit careers […] Based on their need and income, alumni can receive grants of $500 to $5,000 each year to use toward paying off student-loan balances.” Pretty cool! In addition to financial incentives, what other assistance could universities offer to enable and encourage graduates to try a non-profit career? Continue reading