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Findings Available
Interim Implementation Findings
Final Implementation Findings
Interim Impact Findings
Final Impact Findings
Final Cost-benefit Findings
Findings
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08/01/97:
LEAP Evaluation: Final Report of Ohio's Welfare Initiative to Improve School Attendance Among Teenage Parents
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Final Implementation Findings:
"The state and county welfare departments successfully implemented LEAP statewide, forging a link between welfare departments and schools and putting the incentive system in place"(ES-7).
"Almost all eligible teens (93%) were touched by LEAP’s incentives, with 75% earning at least one bonus and 56% qualifying for at least one sanction"(ES-7).
"The majority of teens with multiple sanctions reported diminished spending on essentials for their families, especially clothing and food. Most teens with multiple bonus payments reported spending a large share if the additional money on their children"(ES-7).
Final Impact Findings:
"LEAP’s immediate goals- and the behaviors directly targeted by its financial incentives- were to improve the teens’ enrollment and attendance in school or in a GED program. After one year of follow-up, LEAP achieved a substantial increase in these outcomes, for both initially enrolled and not initially enrolled teens. The program also produced modest, but statistically significant, increases in completion of the 9th, 10th, and 11th grades"(ES-8).
"LEAP’s effect on school completion- its longer-term education goal- was found to be limited when measured three years after teens entered the program. The program increased GED receipt among teens who were enrolled in school when they entered LEAP. There were no impacts on high school graduation or GED receipt among teens who were not enrolled in school when they entered LEAP"(ES-8).
"Two-thirds of the teens in the sample did not receive a high school diploma or a GED certificate within a three-year follow-up period. However, approximately one-sixth of the teens were still in school at the end of that period and could have graduated or received a GED subsequently"(ES-9).
"Teens in both the program group and the control group experienced substantial growth in their employment rates and earnings during the four-year follow-up period. By the end of the follow-up, four out of five teens worked in a job covered by Unemployment Insurance. Overall quarterly employment rates for such employment increased from 17% in the third quarter or year 1 to 40% in the last quarter of year 4. If employment not covered by Unemployment Insurance could have been taken into account, the employment rates and earnings presented in this report would have been higher"(ES-10).
"The LEAP program increased employment for initially enrolled (in school) teens, but not for teens who were not initially enrolled. These impacts were strongest early in the follow-up period"(ES-10).
"LEAP increased initially enrolled teens’ earnings the first two years of follow-up, but the impacts became smaller in later years"(ES-10).
"Rates of AFDC receipt remained high throughout the four-year follow-up period, but were declining over time. More than 60% of all teens were on welfare for at least one of the last three months of follow-up, and close to 30% received AFDC continuously during the last two years"(ES-13).
"During the final two years of follow-up, LEAP reduced welfare receipt by increasing the number of teens who were not receiving any AFDC and reducing the number who were receiving AFDC in every single month"(ES-13).
"LEAP reduced both the number of teens receiving AFDC and the amount of AFDC they received. Reductions were somewhat smaller for those not initially enrolled than they were for teens who were enrolled in school when they entered LEAP"(ES-13).
"During the last two years of follow-up, LEAP caused reductions in the amount of AFDC received that exceeded the program’s positive effects on earnings"(ES-16).
Final Cost-benefit Findings:
"The LEAP program was relatively inexpensive, with an upfront investment by the Ohio Department of Human Services of $1,388 per teen, or $747 for 12 months. Costs were higher for initially enrolled teens than for those not initially enrolled"(ES-16).
"Because of LEAP-induced savings on AFDC, Food Stamps, and related Medicaid expenditures, ODHS recovered its investment in the program over the four-year follow-up period"(ES-17).
"LEAP teens experience a net loss of $1,110 over the four years"(ES-17).
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03/01/96:
LEAP Evaluation: Three-year Impacts of Ohio's Welfare Initiative to Improve Attendance Among Teenage Parents
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Interim Implementation Findings:
"[For subsample of teens in 7 of the 12 counties] County LEAP programs experienced difficulties in implementing LEAP’s incentive structure during the program’s first two to three years of operation, particularly in urban counties, but have efficiently carried out bonuses and sanctions since then" (ES-5).
Interim Impact Findings:
"Almost all eligible teens (93%) were touched by LEAP’s incentives, with 75% earning at least one bonus and 56% qualifying for at least one sanction" (ES-5).
"Bonus and sanction rates were strikingly different for teens who were enrolled in school when they became eligible for LEAP and teens who were not" (ES-5).
"The majority of teens with multiple sanctions reported diminished spending on essentials for their families, especially clothing and food. Most teens with multiple bonus payments reported spending a large share of the additional money on their children" (ES-6).
"For the full sample of teens, LEAP substantially increased high school enrollment, attendance, and progress through the eleventh grade, but did not have a significant impact on high school graduation" (ES-6).
"Two-thirds of the teens did not receive a high school diploma or GED certificate within the three-year follow-up period" (ES-8).
"LEAP’s school impacts varied substantially across geographic areas. The program significantly increased high school graduations in Cleveland, produced no significant effects in Cincinnati, Columbus, and Toledo, and significantly increased GED receipt outside these large urban areas" (ES-10).
"Overall, LEAP increased the likelihood that teens would be working three years after they became eligible for the program and reduced the likelihood that they would be receiving AFDC benefits" (ES-12).
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05/01/93:
LEAP Evaluation: Interim Findings on a Welfare Initiative to Improve School Attendance Among Teenage Parents
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Interim Implementation Findings:
"LEAP has operated relatively smoothly during the study period, considering that the program is complex to administer. Not surprisingly, all counties experienced operational problems, particularly during the start-up period" (xxi).
"LEAP has reached a large and diverse population of teens. However, identifying eligible teens - particularly those who do not head welfare cases - was quite difficult, in large part because of the limitations of the welfare computer system" (xxi).
"Most of the difficulties were in processing needed grant adjustments. The severity of this problem varied depending on the organizational structure of LEAP in each county" (xxii).
"Several counties have gone beyond the requirements of the LEAP model to create a relatively expansive definition of the case management function" (xxii).
"School districts have generally cooperated with LEAP. Still, it often has been difficult for LEAP staff to establish reliable attendance reporting systems" (xxiii).
"Because it provides no education services, LEAP is dependent on the local school environment, which varies across counties and school districts. One particularly important factor in the operation of LEAP is the availability and accessibility of alternatives to traditional high school" (xxiii).
"LEAP has largely avoided the legal challenges that initially hindered the Learnfare program in Wisconsin, which includes only grant reductions. It is likely that this has resulted in part from specific aspects of LEAP’s design" (xxiv).
"The vast majority of teens have been scheduled for at least one bonus or sanction during the time that they have been eligible for LEAP. More teens earned bonuses than sanctions" (xxiv).
"Although almost all teens earned at least one grant adjustment, many were not scheduled for large numbers of adjustments during their time in LEAP" (xxv).
"There are important differences across counties, both in the rates of sanction and bonus requests and in the proportion of requested adjustments that actually occurred" (xxv).
"Some teens were scheduled for many sanctions and never cooperated with LEAP" (xxvii).
"There have been important changes in the operation of the financial incentive system over time" (xxvii).
"Largely because of the program’s unusual design, LEAP’s sanctioning rate was much higher than the rates measured in previous evaluations of welfare-to-work programs for adults" (xxix).
"Overall, in a survey, about half of eligible teens characterized LEAP as "fair" and a third called it "unfair". Not surprisingly, teens who had been sanctioned had much more negative views of the program than did other teens" (xxix).
"Many teens report that child care arrangements are critically important to their decisions about school attendance. However, most LEAP teens did not use child care assistance offered by the program" (xxx).
Interim Impact Findings:
"LEAP had two important and statistically significant effects on teens’ enrollment in high schools and adult education programs: It increased school retention among in-school teens and induced many dropouts to return to a school or program. Most teens who were recent dropouts and resumed their schooling because of LEAP returned to high school. Longer-term dropouts who returned always entered adult education programs" (xxx).
"LEAP’s impact on enrollment was significant for most subgroups of eligible teens. However, LEAP appears to be less effective for older teens and those who had two or more children when they were identified as eligible for the program" (xxxii).
"LEAP had a consistent overall impact on enrollment across counties. However, the composition of this impact - i.e., the proportion of the effect that is attributable to high school versus adult education program enrollment - varied substantially, partly owing to school district policies" (xxxv).
"The impact estimates probably understate the effects that would be found in an ongoing LEAP program because the groups of teens for whom LEAP had slight impacts were larger during the period covered by this study than they will be later in the program’s operation" (xxxvi).
"In addition to promoting enrollment and retention, LEAP improved the daily attendance of teens enrolled in high school. Among teens who enrolled in adult education programs, LEAP teens attended less than controls. However, there was still an overall small positive impact on total attendance in these programs" (xxxvi).
"Data on the performance of in-school teens indicate that LEAP’s impacts on high school enrollment have already translated into more graduations, although it is too early to tell how large this increase will eventually be. LEAP has also led to an increase in the proportion of teens who have passed the GED test" (xxxviii).
"Many teens have negative views of their high school experiences. These perceptions appear to have affected their decisions about enrollment and whether to attend high school or adult education programs" (xxxvii).
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