This article was published by Alexia Elejalde-Ruiz for the Chicago Tribune on October 14, 2016. Below is an excerpt:

A consistent challenge in workforce development is figuring out what works — and that means not just tracking how many people a program has placed into jobs, but whether their lives actually improved as a result.

Skills for Chicagoland's Future, a nonprofit funded mostly with public money, on Friday plans to release the preliminary results of a study that measured whether its employer-driven approach is helping people not only find jobs, but good jobs that improve their incomes and access to benefits while ending reliance on government assistance.

The results come as the 4-year-old organization announces its first regional expansion outside of Chicago, with the launch of Skills for Rhode Island's Future, and plans to create a national organization to manage future expansions.

The Skills model, which has placed more than 3,000 people into jobs since its Chicago launch, is to work closely with businesses to determine their hiring needs and recruit unemployed and underemployed job seekers with the right backgrounds to fill those jobs.

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