Withholding basic information about the District’s career readiness investments makes DOES programs unnecessarily challenging to navigate, assess, or improve.
The DC Council will hold a performance oversight hearing for the Department of Employment Services (DOES) this week. DOES is a cornerstone agency for career readiness opportunities, offering at least 7 programs1 that connect youth between the ages 14-24 to the experiences, skills and networks needed to enter the workforce. Yet the DC Council, advocates, families and—most importantly—young people lack basic transparency into which programs youth and families can choose between, what these programs actually deliver, and whether they help youth succeed in the workforce. In our testimony this week, DC Action will call for stronger oversight and swift Agency action to address 4 major areas lacking transparency:
- Program Catalogue: Across reports and websites, DOES lacks clear and consistent information about the current catalogue of youth programs it provides, how these programs differ by model or eligibility requirements, and how young people and their families can enroll in them. DOES shares information on Youth Services on a departmental page of their general website, a summer jobs portal that highlights three year-round programs in addition to the Marion Barry Summer Youth Employment Program (MBSYEP), and an AI-integrated website called SkillsNation for youth seeking support with early career growth. On some of these sites, like the MBSYEP portal, detailed information about the program, application process and eligibility requirements is shared, while others, like the Agency’s page for the Out-of-School program, include vague eligibility requirements and direct interested participants to schedule an intake meeting to participate. Ideally, each website should consistently share program model descriptions, program intensity and duration, all available wraparound supports, the skills, credentials and compensation youth can expect to earn through them, and complete eligibility and participation requirements. Additionally, these websites should mention any DOES adult programs youth 18 and older may be eligible for. For a young person exploring their options online, encountering this frustrating maze of information can dampen the excitement of taking decisive steps toward their career goals and leave them feeling discouraged instead.
- Budget: In analyzing the city’s operating budget over the last three years, DC Action estimates the District manages over $40 million annually in local and federal funds to provide youth workforce development through DOES. This figure includes approximately $28 million for the District’s largest career readiness program, the Marion Barry Summer Youth Employment Program (MBSYEP), $5.3 million for the year-round High School Internship Program (HSIP), and $5.5 million in federal formula funding for year-round programs geared primarily to out-of-school youth facing barriers to education, training, and employment. Additionally, DOES serves an unknown number of youth in adult programs like Project Empowerment, the DC Infrastructure Academy and through pre-apprenticeship and apprenticeship programs managed by the Agency. However, it is challenging to decipher the source of funding for some of these programs. For example, DOES has reported providing career exploration to 550 middle school students through their year-round Career Ready Early Scholars Program (CRESP). But there is no transparency about how much the District spends on this program because it is nested within MBSYEP’s $28 million annual budget (pg. 5). As the District faces a challenging financial outlook, this lack of budget and data transparency for DOES leaves DC Council in the position to make budget decisions with a chainsaw rather than a scalpel.
- Program Participation, Eligibility and Inclusivity: After the Agency’s responses to our direct requests stalled this summer, DC Action submitted a FOIA request to DOES in October 2025 to obtain basic youth workforce data, including the specific workforce development models of each DOES-managed program, participant eligibility requirements, participant demographics (ages served; ward of residence; participant race/ethnicity; and the numbers of youth served across subgroups including youth with disabilities, youth experiencing homelessness, student-participants that are one year older, or more, than the expected age for the grade in which the student is enrolled, participants who are CFSA involved, participants who are juvenile justice involved, and participants who are parenting). The Agency has been non-responsive for more than 3 months now, a flagrant violation of FOIA requirements to produce a response, and ideally data, within 15-business days. Without this data, the broader ecosystem of advocates, schools, community-based providers and families lack information about what specialized supports are needed to ensure all youth have a clear pathway to workforce participation. Many community-based youth service providers are primed to partner with DOES to ensure access to wraparound services like mentorship, housing programs, mental health services, and career navigation. But without clear information on the scope or intensity of need, cross-sector coordination and holistic support for young people cannot materialize.
- Program Outcomes: Understanding the long-term impact of DOES youth programs on career development requires standardized, systemized, and disaggregated reporting on participant outcomes, including program completion rates, on-time grade promotion, graduation, employment rates, median earnings, postsecondary credential attainment, and skill gains. Collecting longitudinal outcomes data requires coordinated infrastructure and dedicated resources to follow up with program participants and share data across agencies. Additionally, information on which employers participate in each program, the training these employers receive on youth employment best practices and workplace mentorship, or the quality of job placements would be highly valuable information for youth seeking pathways aligned to their career ambitions, skills and experience.
The chart below demonstrates the most basic budget and participation data gaps (gaps indicated in red) DC Action found in reviewing DOES websites, budget books, performance oversight responses from the Agency, testimony to the Council and Agency-generated reports. This week, DC Action will urge DOES to rectify these gaps in publicly available data and respond to our FOIA submission for information on the program models they offer and which young people are being served by them. The DC Council cannot effectively conduct oversight, and families and youth cannot make informed choices about workforce development opportunities, if the Agency refuses to consistently and transparently provide the most fundamental information about their programs and outcomes.
