Jason Jabbari, an assistant professor at the Brown School at WashU, along with his collaborators, has received a two-year $225,000 grant from the Urban Institute’s Student Upward Mobility Initiative.
Jabbari’s project, “Leveraging Professional Skills to Increase Economic Mobility and Racial Equity,” will study how professional skills and competencies and on-the-job performance in career-connected educational settings can increase economic mobility.
Jabbari and his collaborators — Shaun Dougherty, of Boston College, Lauren Russell, of the University of Pennsylvania, and Fahvyon Jimenez, founder of Jimenez Strategy & Analytics — will work with 14 private high schools from the Cristo Rey Network that exclusively serve low-income students.
Cristo Rey is the only network of high schools in the country that integrates four years of rigorous college preparatory academics with four years of professional work experience through their unique Corporate Work Study Program.
The work-study program provides all students with a tangible work-based learning experience one day per week at a local business. These experiences are accompanied by a school-based curriculum that focuses on professional skills and competencies. Jabbari’s team will examine long-term outcomes, including college enrollment and persistence; employment; earnings; and credit report data.
