Reengagement under WIOA?

Andrew Moore

I woke up thinking about the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act, wondering how much it is a compromise just to be able to get it approved and how much it really is drawing from knowledge of what it takes to re-connect teens and young adults.

So I started re-reading the materials at the American Youth Policy’s forum held last month on efforts to re-engage dropouts in education. Speakers included Andrew O. Moore, Senior Fellow, Institute for Youth, Education, and Families, National League of Cities; Robert Sainz, Assistant General Manager, Economic and Workforce Development Department, City of Los Angeles; Eric Dregne, Vice President of Strategic Initiatives, Community Foundation of Greater Dubuque; and Allie Kimmel, Legislative Assistant to Colorado Representative Jared Polis.

A couple things jumped out at me:
1) How we are addressing the dropout crisis: The four ways that Andy Moore identified to address the dropout crisis (identifying chronic absence as a key precondition; developing early warning systems and interventions; pressing for ongoing high school reform; and expanding alternative schools) failed to include the ways that schools are pushing students out through exclusionary disciplinary policies. I tend to think about it as strategies to keep students in school – with efforts focused on students as well as on school attitudes, policies and practices. There is incredible momentum regarding school discipline and we need to keep it front and center so that every district develops the capacity to keep students in schools.

I’m equally surprised that there is no discussion about integrating work-based approaches into schooling. I’ve never been able to find any research on the role of early work experiences on young people and persistence (which makes me wonder – have we ever asked the question?). Time after time young people have mentioned to me that they returned to school after working for six months, highly motivated to access better jobs than the proverbial hamburger-flipping. For students whose parents did not go to college, working in the secondary labor market as well as internships that expand their idea of what is possible is an important step on the way to college.

Implicit in the idea of expanding alternative schools is access to education. As we focus more and more on what is holding our young men of color back, we are sure to come across how court-involved youth encounter a number of barriers to education to graduation. Their home schools usually don’t want them back, and they often don’t want to go back. There aren’t enough alternative schools, and few have the staffing needed to address the enormous gaps in literacy and math that leaves young people trying to do high school curriculum with the skills of a fifth grader. I think being clear that expanding access to education is the strategy allows us to ally with civil rights organizations in our communities.

2) Open Door Approaches to Multi-Service: This is the place that I have the most concern about the WIOA (which I’ve come to pronounce as whee-ooo-ahhhh as a wizard whispering in a bit of magic). According to Andy Moore’s presentation on reengagement strategies, “city and district must provide an open door approach that creates opportunities for professionals to reach out to dropouts, assess their mental and educational needs both in and out of school environments, and support them through and beyond the reenrollment process. Coordination between school districts, NGOs, city governments and community colleges can provide these resources to dropouts.”

Even with the results that Andy shared – contact with 41,000 youth with 6,000 confirmed reenrollments and a 73 percent “stick rate” among students that have been reengaged – I am terribly worried that pay for performance(PfP) contracts are going to slip into the realm of reengagement without testing it. Open door means kids come and go, which is inconsistent with the PfP. Access to services through coordination and collaboration are also difficult to manage under a PfP, which to date has been focused on single organization strategies (I could be wrong here – I skim news about PfP strategies about every three months. If you know of its use for collaboratives, please let me know).

I am not convinced at all that WIOA is positioned to help us address the youth unemployment crisis. Certainly, reauthorization is important, as we are otherwise held hostage to out-of-date policies. We just need to keep thinking about a policy strategy that allows for a major re-investment in the infrastructure to support our youth.