State Policy

Election Thought of the Day

/ The Old Crank

Thinking about the impact of the elections on adult education policy, I wonder if the results of some of the governer’s races are more significant for adult education (and workforce policy generally), than the shift in power in the Senate. While most education-related legislation languished without much progress during the last Congress, the current crew did manage to successfully dispose of the most important piece of legislation for our field, the Workforce Investment and Opportunity Act (WIOA), passing it by a wide margin this summer. The action is really now at the state level, where governors hold sway over WIOA’s implmentation.

What will party switches in the governor’s offices in Illinois, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, and Maryland, for example, mean for WIOA implementation in those states?

 

Good Ideas Can Be Dressed Up in Bad Proposals

/ The Old Crank

I don’t have an opinion about this, or any useful information to share with you that might help you form your own opinion about it, but I do think it’s worth pointing out that questioning whether the people proposing this kind of financing know what they’re doing does not necessarily mean you are anti-technology or against computers in schools or don’t believe the future is our children etc. As this article notes, the interest alone on $2 billion in bonds could buy a lot of stuff.

One of the things I’m doing in my actual job is to better understand how communities identify the best ways for technology to drive what they are tryying to accomplish, and figure out how to pay for those tools they need in a responsible and effective way. Taking on a lot of debt to do so may not be the best approach. (Again, not saying it’s a bad idea, just that it may not be.)

 

Warning of the Day

/ The Old Crank / 2 Comments

From John Huppenthal:

The state’s top education official warned Wednesday that Arizona schools could be inundated with tens of thousands of immigrant children at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars if President Obama enacts some kind of amnesty.

But John Huppenthal conceded he has absolutely nothing to back that up. In fact, Huppenthal acknowledged that federal law already requires Arizona — and all states — to educate children regardless of their immigration status. That, he said, means the children who he fears might be granted amnesty likely already are here and in Arizona schools.

“Perhaps,” he said, saying there is no way to know “all of the implications” of what the president might order. (my emphasis)

It’s true. For all we know the President will announce the rollout of some kind of mutant clone army to escort illegal aliens across the boarder and into our schools. Best to prepare for the worst you can make up imagine.

Going After the Scammers

/ The Old Crank

(Updated Below)

The New York Times story yesterday on the Workforce Investment Act is related to the post I published yesterday. I realize there are political and strategic challenges associated with calling out public officials when they make possibly disingenuous calls for more job training. But calling out scammers like those described in the Times should be much easier. They should not only be called out for what they are, but workforce development advocates should consider aggressive, proactive initiatives aimed at taking them down. It’s the best way to distance the good stuff from the scammers. Defensive responses—sure-these-guys-are-bad-but-look-at-all-the-good-things-that-WIA-does-and-it’s-not-my job-anyway-its’-the-states-and-being accountable-is-hard etc.—is probably not going to be good enough to stem the erosion in confidence that the presence of these outfits have on the whole system.

UPDATE 8/19/14 11:15 AM: By the way, I largely agree with my colleague Mary Alice McCarthy’s criticism of the Times article, (and would be foolish not too, as her knowledge of this subject is about as good as there is), and recommend anyone interested in the subject go read it. In particular, I think she’s right that the Times does not do nearly enough to make it clear that the student indebtedness problem has to do with problems in our higher education system, rather than WIA. And since that is the entire point of the article suggested in the headline and subheading—that WIA is leaving people in debt—that’s a pretty glaring mistake.

But I don’t think that this takes anything away from my point above. I don’t think the people scammed by Daymar College and their ilk really distinguish between our higher education system and our workforce development system, and I imagine that they would find debates about who is at fault to be something between irrelevant and irritating. They were out of work and needed help, and got screwed. In such cases the WIA system may not be at fault, but the entry point for these folks may have been WIA. I think workforce development advocates can do more than just say, ‘this is a higher education problem, not ours.’

Under both the old WIA and the new WIOA, one of the success measures for a program includes transitioning participants to postsecondary education and training. Clearly for the people profiled in the Times, that transition to postsecondary hasn’t worked out too well. So OK, not WIA’s fault. My point is that it might be a helpful for workforce proponents in general to do more to identify and do something about these terrible programs, whatever legislative authority it falls under. Of course, how to do so, I have no idea. (McCarthy suggests higher ed reformers look to the recently passed WIOA legislation as a model for higher education reform.) What do others think?

UPDATE 8/25/14: Bob Lanter, Executive Director of the California Workforce Association raises similar objections to the Times piece in this press release.