Federal Policy

Senate Workforce Investment Act of 2013 To Be Marked Up Today

/ The Old Crank

NCL Letter of Support - Senate WIA 2013

(Updated Below)

Just a reminder that the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee will mark up legislation to reauthorize the Workforce Investment Act (WIA) today at 10:00am. The National Skills Coalition has published a nice summary that provides some good background on this bill.

The National Coalition for Literacy has sent the committee a letter of support for the bill.

There is still apparently some disagreement in the disability community about the title on vocational rehabilitation negotiated separately from the rest of the bill by HELP committee Chairman Harkin (D-IA) and Ranking Member Alexander (R-TN). Their plan establishes new requirements that must be met before individuals with disabilities could be allowed to work for less than the federal minimum wage, but some advocates are concerned it does not go far enough.

UPDATE 11:05 AM: Well, that was quick. The Committee passed the bill quickly and uneventfully about 20 minutes into the session, by a vote of 18-3. Voting no were Sens. Burr, Scott, and Roberts. Sen. Paul not voting.

UPDATE 2:30 PM: In a piece published in The Hill this morning, Dr. Fredric K. Schroeder, former commissioner of the Rehabilitation Services Administration under President Clinton and a vice president at the National Federation of the Blind, explains his concerns about the vocational rehabilitation changes proposed by Sens. Harkin and Alexander:

Section 511 purports to permit placement in subminimum wage work only as part of training for later competitive employment, with a review of the worker’s status required every six months. But this approach would merely write subminimum wages into the Rehabilitation Act—where there has never before been any language authorizing subminimum wages. Sheltered workshops often claim that they are training their workers, but we know from sad experience and extensive study that 95 percent of the workers who enter sheltered workshops never leave them. Section 511 does nothing but require a rehabilitation counselor to certify that a worker is in “training” every six months. This proposal will simply make the rehabilitation system complicit in the exploitation of disabled workers from the time they are old enough to leave school—or possibly earlier—until they die.

Important Congressional Hearings Coming Up for Adult Education Over the Next Two Weeks

/ The Old Crank / 1 Comment

(Updated Below)

Congress is getting ready to leave town for a long August recess, but not before holding two hearings—one in the House and one in the Senate—that are of significance to adult education supporters.

First, the House Labor-HHS-Education Appropriations Subcommittee is going to mark up a FY 2014 appropriations bill this Thursday morning. (When and whether this bill ever gets to the floor is another matter.) This will be an interesting hearing, to say the least. The budget adopted by the House majority establishes a $121.8 billion top-line discretionary spending level for their Labor-HHS-Education spending bill, which is $42.5 billion less than the Senate’s. (See Table 2, in this CPBB report.) That’s a big difference—almost 26% less than the Senate bill—and the widest disparity, by the way, between any of the subcommittee discretionary allocations by far.

Most observers have been saying that the House Labor-HHS-Education Subcommittee will have to cut funding in their bill by about 20% from FY 2013 levels in order to stay under the budget allocation they were handed. That would be, I believe, an unprecedented reduction. That doesn’t mean, though, that each program covered by this bill (and adult education is one of them) will all be cut across-the-board by 20%, or receive 26% less than what was appropriated in the Senate bill—some could be cut more, some less—as long as the entire bill stays under that $121.8 billion cap.

A lot of education advocates I know have been urging House Reublican to produce a bill, not because they expect to like what they’ll see in it, but because at least they’ll see it–that is, they’ll finally be able to see what programs House Republican propose to cut—and by how much— in light of the budget they produced last spring. Maybe a lot of the hits will come at the expense of Obamacare, but even so, I don’t see how you get to $121.8 billion without substantial cuts to a lot of education programs. Like I said, this bill, and the hearing on Thursday, should be interesting.

Secondly, it looks like there is going to be further action on WIA in the Senate before the break. I’ll post details on this once they become publicly available.

UPDATE 7/24: No House Labor-HHS-Education Subcommittee hearing after all: “Due to scheduling uncertainties surrounding the House consideration of the Defense bill and the State and Foreign Operations full committee mark-up, the Labor, Health and Human Services Subcommittee mark-up scheduled forThursday morning at 9:00 am has been postponed.”

The Wages and Productivity Debate

/ The Old Crank

Interesting post here by James Tankersley on a study conducted by James Sherk, a senior policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation on the perceived wage/productivity gap. Sherk argues that total compensation (not just wages), if properly adjusted for inflation, has actually kept pace with productivity over the last 40 years, even wages have haven’t grown much since the 1970s.

Sherk argues that you have to take into account the growing share of compensation going to health care benefits—not just wages—and then makes some seemingly valid adjustments to the way productivity is measured and how inflation should be tracked for real wages and output. This results in what appears to be a much smaller gap between productivity and pay.

Tankersley writes:

The real problem, [Sherk] says, is that far too many workers are stuck in low-productivity jobs, particularly in the health-care sector; he argues policymakers should be focused on helping those workers gain more skills and move into more productive sectors — specifically, by looking for ways to reduce the cost and increase the accessibility of higher education. (my emphasis)

According to Tankersley, Sherk blames market forces for pushing lower-skilled workers into low-productivity jobs: “If those workers could more easily and cheaply gain more skills — say, through widely available, low-cost online education — they could compete for higher-productivity jobs.”

But this points again to an issue I’ve never been able to figure out (actually two issues, but I’m going to put aside my question about how to best measure productivity among health care workers*):

If everyone currently in a low-skilled/low pay job was to gain the skills they need to move out of those jobs and into a better one (this assumes, of course, that enough of those better jobs are actually out there), in most cases we’ll still need people to do those low-skilled jobs. This is particularly true in the health care sector that Sherk cites here, where the demand for low-skilled workers, like home health aids, is pretty high. Training people out of low-skilled jobs doesn’t eliminate the low-skilled jobs. I just think at some point you’ve got to address wages at the low end even as we expand education and training opportunities for those workers. (And as I’ve argued before, raising wages probably increases the likelihood that people in those low skilled jobs can take advantage of the education and training opportunities that are available.)

Anyway, for those who find Sherk’s research compelling, I’d suggest checking out Dean Baker’s response to Tankersley’s post, in which he essentially agrees that, yes, the problem has been not so much a wage/productivity gap, but an “upward redistribution from middle and lower income workers to those at the top, doctors, lawyers, and especially Wall Street types and CEOs.” He also argues that a wage/productivity gap does appear to have emerged in the years since the crash.

None of this suggests that low wages aren’t a problem. There’s some really good data, for example, in this post by Janelle Jones and John Schmitt at CEPR that shows how the minimum wage has lagged behind inflation. And in this post, Felix Salmon makes about as cogent argument in favor of raising the minimum wage I’ve ever read. His point about how the government essentially subsidizes companies that pay lousy wages is a good one, especially in light of the living wage controversy here in the District.

*I’m also ignoring Sherk’s obligatory plug for online learning.

What’s in the Senate Labor-HHS-Education Appropriations Bill for Adult Education?

/ The Old Crank / 1 Comment

For those who follow federal adult education policy, there are a few items of interest in the Senate Labor-HHS-Education Appropriations Committee’s Fiscal Year (FY) 2014 Appropriations bill, which was approved by the full Appropriations Committee last week.

Adult Education Basically Level-Funded

The Senate calculated their FY 2014 spending totals under the assumption that the budget sequester for FY 2013 and beyond will be lifted. With that in mind, the Committee recommended $608,105,000 for Adult Education programs—essentially level funding as compared with FY 2013. It’s actually a little less, and the reason is a little complicated: The Continuing Resolution (CR) that extended the federal budget at FY 2013 levels (after Congress was unable to pass a budget) included an across-the-board budget cut of 0.2%. So while the Senate ignored the more substantial sequester cut, it used the budget less .2% as their baseline for FY 2014. In other words, the FY 2014 appropriation would be the same as FY 2013’s, with the .2% cut, but without the sequester cut.

Of that amount, $593,803,000 would be set aside for Adult Education State Grants, with $74,559,000 set aside to “help States or localities affected significantly by immigration and large limited-English populations to implement programs that help immigrants acquire English literacy skills, gain knowledge about the rights and responsibilities of citizenship, and develop skills that will enable them to navigate key institutions of American life.”

The rest of the funds ($14,302,000) would be dedicated to national leadership activities, and it includes a bump up of $3,000,000 “to support new awards for prisoner reentry education models that build on the success of the Promoting Reentry Success through Continuity of Education Opportunities [PRSCEO] competition.” PRSCEO, surely a front-runner for the 2013 Worst Acronym Award, was funded last year with money that was  transferred from the Department of Justice under an interagency agreement.

New “Dual Enrollment” Program

The Committee would also allocate funds for a new $22 million dual enrollment grant initiative “that supports CTE career pathways and targets local workforce needs.” Adult education providers would be eligible to serve as a partner on these, and adult education students would be eligible participants, although funding could not be used to supplant other federal, state, or local public funds used for adult education and literacy activities.

Note that if this program were to become law (far from certain), it would create a new federal source of WIA grant funding for adult education programs/students—but one not flowing through Title II.

Here’s what the Committee has to say about this new program in their report (see page 187):

Dual enrollment programs enable high school students and adults without a high school equivalency credential to pursue post-secondary education and earn course credit that can be applied to a college degree or credential. Research shows dual enrollment programs are associated with gains in college enrollment and credit accumulation and higher grades. The Department will make competitive awards that help establish or expand dual enrollment programs through partnerships among institutions of higher education, LEAs that operate high-need public schools or adult education providers, and State and local agencies responsible for secondary and adult education and workforce training. This funding will provide students with support services, including tutoring, assistance completing financial aid applications and selecting courses, mentoring, career counseling, and assistance transferring from 2-year to 4-year institutions of higher education. Funds will also support activities designed for students with limited proficiency in English or from groups traditionally underrepresented in postsecondary education, individuals with disabilities, students who are homeless or in foster care, or disconnected youth. (my emphasis)

The Committee goes on to say (on page 199) that these funds are also intended to “support tuition, fees, and supplies for low-income students enrolled in dual enrollment programs who would qualify for Pell grants but are not eligible because they do not have a high school diploma.” This would be something of a replacement for the recently eliminated “ability to benefit” rule under Pell, although only for those enrolled in one of the dual enrollment programs funded through this initiative.

The program would be funded by carving out $5 million from CTE national programs, and a total of $17 million of Higher Education Act money (specifically, GPRA Data/Higher Education Act Program Evaluation funding). Fifteen million of the higher education money would support the program itself, while $2 million would be set aside for the evaluation.

Realistically, since the money here is being carved out of CTE and higher education funding, there is a reasonable question as to how much money would actually flow to adult education providers under this initiative. Yet there’s a heavy emphasis in the bill language on serving adults without high school credentials, a population that is mostly associated with Title II programs under WIA. If this program were to come into being, it would be interesting to see how it would be implemented and administered.

Report from Department of Labor on Strategies for Serving Those With “Low Literacy”

Citing their continued concern about “the low level of literacy and numeracy skills among adult workers,” the Committee requests a report from the Department of Labor, no later than March 1, 2014, on their progress in “educating the workforce system on the effectiveness of adult literacy and basic skills programs that have successfully implemented strategies for delivering basic literacy instruction together with occupational training.” They further recommend that best practices on how “to help adults with the lowest literacy levels improve their overall skills and employment opportunities” be widely disseminated.

It May Not Matter All That Much

It’s worth noting that the prospects for any of the above to be signed into law is iffy at best. For one thing, leaders in the House of Representatives are assuming that the sequester is continuing, so the corresponding House appropriations subcommittee has a much smaller pot of money to work with for its Labor-HHS bill. It’s possible that the adult education budget could be significantly chopped in a House bill.

The House subcommittee has not yet scheduled a markup of its bill, however, and the conventional wisdom is that it may not ever do so. In theory, each appropriations  bill is supposed to be passed and been signed into law by September 30th, the end of the fiscal year, but that hasn’t happened in a long time. Instead, it’s much more likely that the House and Senate will hammer out some kind of CR on the FY 14 budget in September. The CR might be for all of FY 14 or it might be a short-term CR that would be followed up by another negotiation of a government-wide “omnibus” spending bill sometime later. It’s hard to say what the spending levels will be under those scenarios, or whether any of the provisions above will survive.