While most evidence suggests that immigration has had a modest negative effect on black employment, especially for those without a high school diploma, changes in immigration law will probably not improve job prospects for young blacks, Senior Fellow Harry Holzer told the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. He offered six suggestions for policymakers looking to improve outcomes for young African Americans, such as improving their early work experience and occupational training with high-quality career and technical education.

The difficult tasks for District of Columbia policymakers and education administrators, the Urban Institute's Jane Hannaway told a Senate subcommittee, are how to get more high-performing teachers in the classroom (especially classrooms serving the most disadvantaged students), how to hold teachers and schools accountable for student performance, and how to do it fairly. Reforms that promote teacher effectiveness should no doubt be tried, but reforms should be guided by data systems that provide feedback on how well the reforms are doing and how they might be fine tuned.

This testimony discusses recent data, compiled by NeighborhoodInfo DC, on foreclosures and losses of Section 8 housing units in Washington, D.C. Foreclosures have almost doubled since 2005 and the city has lost close to 2,000 units of federally-subsidized housing since 2000. These developments exacerbate an already serious affordable housing shortage in the nation's capital.

In testimony on the ramifications of inadequate investments in workforce development, Senior Fellow Harry Holzer told a House Appropriations subcommittee that the very low earnings and employment of millions of Americans generate high poverty rates and impose huge costs on the U.S. economy. The research evidence, while somewhat mixed, shows that many public investments in workforce development are cost-effective at raising the earnings of low-income workers.

Only 37 percent of tested students in District of Columbia Public Schools and the city's public charter schools earned proficient or advanced rankings in reading in 2007, and only 32 percent reached those levels in math, Jennifer Comey told the city council. However, between 2006 and 2007, the share of all public school students testing proficient or advanced increased. In 2007, public charter school students tested slightly higher on average compared with DCPS students.

Dr. Harold Salzman tells a House subcommittee on innovation and technology that new perspectives on competition and new routes for sharing knowledge freely across borders have prompted firms and universities to globalize. Salzman argues that globalization is not prompted by any deficiencies in the domestic supply of trained workers, and that "techno-nationalist" policies of the past are outdated and ineffective.

Small employers face substantial disadvantages relative to large employers when providing health insurance to their workers. These problems can largely be summarized as higher administrative costs of insurance, limited ability to spread health care risk, and a workforce with lower wages. But the primary barrier to coverage for workers in small firms is being low-income; workers in small firms are more than twice as likely as those in large firms to have family income below 200 percent of the federal poverty level. Significant inroads into reducing the uninsured in this population will require income-related subsidization of insurance coverage.

In this testimony Burman argues that there are limitations to using tax credits to expand health insurance coverage. A program of health insurance tax credits combined with reforms of the market for nongroup health insurance could significantly expand coverage, but at a very high cost. The testimony summarizes the current tax treatment of health insurance, the effects of tax subsidies on coverage and health care costs, and discusses ways that tax credits might affect health coverage. Burman offers recommendations and adds that the most cost-effective approach to expanding health insurance coverage may not be a tax subsidy at all, but an expansion of an existing public program, such as Medicaid, S-CHIP, or Medicare.

Martha Burt, in congressional testimony regarding the reauthorization of the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act, discussed definitions of homelessness, activities to prevent homelessness, the advisability of a setaside for permanent supportive housing, and the composition of local homeless planning bodies and their relationship to 10-year planning processes. She also addressed what works for whom, accountability, performance outcomes, and incentives.

While an estimated 40 percent of nonprofits focus on the economically disadvantaged (half or more of their clients), few nonprofits serve that proportion of ethnic and racial populations, Elizabeth Boris told the House Ways and Means Oversight Subcommittee. Her testimony addressed five key questions: Who gives, how much, and to whom? Who benefits from charitable contributions? How do charities and foundations identify the needs of their communities? Are there gaps between needs and services? How can we improve the quality and scope of data on charitable beneficiaries?