Instituto del Progreso Latino's Carreras en Salud Program: Three-Year Impact Report

Carreras aims to provide training to low-income Latinos with a seven-course pathway that starts with Career ESL and concludes with Licensed Practical Nurse (LPN). It incorporates a range of academic and non-academic services and supports to help participants complete their first course and advance to subsequent ones. This research was undertaken to evaluate whether Carreras was successful in providing training to low-income, low-skilled adults and whether the program’s efforts led to impacts on credentials, earnings, healthcare employment, and other life outcomes.

Analyses in this report indicate that after three years, Carreras en Salud:

• Increased by 3 percentage points receipt of college credentials requiring at least one year of study, the confirmatory outcome in the education domain for the three-year impact study. Twelve (12) percent of the treatment group received such a credential, compared to 9 percent of the control group. LPN is the Carreras course of study that fits this category.
• Increased by 12 percentage points receipt of any college credential. Twenty-nine (29) percent of the treatment group received a college credential compared to 17 percent of the control group. The Carreras program also increased receipt of a healthcare credential from any type of school by 13 percentage points.
• Increased college enrollment in almost every follow-up quarter but had no detectable effect on full-time enrollment. Treatment group members were significantly more likely than control group members to be enrolled in a two- or four-year college from quarter 3 onwards, except for the most recent quarter (quarter 13). The quarterly impact ranged from 5 to 10 percentage points. The proportion of study participants enrolled full-time never exceeded 7 percent for the treatment group and 6 percent for the control group.
• Had no detectable impact on average quarterly earnings in follow-up quarters 12-13, the confirmatory outcome in the earnings and employment domain for the three-year impact study. Carreras did not have a positive impact on average earnings in any quarter in the follow-up period, and it had a negative impact on average earnings in six quarters, including the quarter of random assignment.
• Had no detectable impact on employment during the three-year follow-up period. The same proportion of treatment and control group members (65 percent) were employed at the time of the three-year follow-up survey.
• Had no detectable impact on access to career supports, confidence in career knowledge, or family economic well-being. The evaluation found no impact on career knowledge and career supports. Nor were there detectable differences on a variety of measures of family economic well-being, including health insurance coverage from any source, receipt of means-tested public benefits, unsecured debt, or financial hardship.

To assess the effectiveness of Carreras, the PACE project used an experimental design in which program applicants were assigned at random to a treatment group that could access the program or to a control group that could not, then compared their outcomes. From November 2011 to September 2014, Carreras staff randomly assigned 800 program applicants (402 treatment, 398 control). The impact study used data from a follow-up survey conducted three years after randomization, earnings records from the National Directory of New Hires, college enrollment data from the National Student Clearinghouse, and Instituto program records. The study measured impacts on outcomes three years after random assignment for all measures and as much as four years for select education and earnings outcomes with available administrative data.

Instituto del Progreso Latino’s Carreras en Salud Program: Appendices for Three-Year Impact Report (PDF)

Gardiner, Karen, Karin Martinson, and Samuel Dastrup. 2021. Instituto del Progreso Latino’s Carreras en Salud Program: Three-Year Impact Report, OPRE Report 2021-97. Washington, DC: Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation, Administration for Children and Families, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.