What’s Coming Down the Pike?

Vice President Joe Biden
(from whitehouse.gov)

The report Ready to Work: Job-Driven Training and American Opportunity, recently released by Vice President Joe Biden, provides insights into what to expect from the federal government. Since our focus at YTFG is on youth ranging in age from 14 to 24, I thought it would be a good idea to see what might be coming down the pike in the coming years.

After reading the report, I continue to believe that our country is still in a state of denial about what it really takes to support youth and what it is going to take to address the youth unemployment crisis. There is certainly attention being paid to innovation and better integration of services, but it’s just not enough. (I know, I know...I’m constantly repeating myself these days. "It’s just not enough” seems to be my mantra.)

Here are examples of what leaves me so concerned:

The US Department of Education is going to “Improve Adult Education Providers’ Efforts to Teach Employability Skills” (p. 42). According to the report, Adult Education programs serve 1.7 million youth and adults, with almost 50% in adult basic education (below high school), 40% in English language acquisition and 12% in adult secondary education. The report says, “ED will issue state plan guidance that will require states to address how they will incorporate employability skills development in the state plans they will submit in April in 2015.”

Now that’s a huge stretch for Adult Education, which is already terribly stretched by providing education to teens and young adults that did not receive a quality education in the first place. I don’t know what the funding is, but I’m pretty sure it is minimal, based on delivery of instruction, not integration of services. Second, employability skill development is not one of the services indicated in the accompanying report, What Works In Job Training: A Synthesis of the Evidence.

It’s a great idea to integrate adult education and workforce development, but can’t we just turn to the models that are showing promise, such as I-BEST?

Another example is the investments in innovation for youth programs (p. 48). It’s a great idea to improve Job Corps. It’s fantastic that they are going to invest in running a long-term demonstration for improving the long-term labor market prospects of youth with prior involvement in the juvenile justice system by building on the Youth ChalleNGe Program model. Yes, I agree wholeheartedly that the National Guard Youth ChalleNGe programs should have a stronger employment focus, as too many of their young people transition into other youth programs rather than into jobs. Performance Partnership Pilots? Yep, it’s a great idea to get rid of some of the red tape for better collaboration.

However, little of this addresses the enormity of the youth unemployment crisis. (If you haven’t read it, take a look at the Brookings Institution’s The Plummeting Labor Market Fortunes of Teens and Young Adults). The Administration is pumping a lot of money into Job Corps and National Guard Youth ChalleNGe – programs that serve a small portion of the demand and are not easily replicated. They could take those same funds and run an innovation grant competition to upgrade our community-based youth employment services. We definitely need high-quality residential programs in the mix of opportunities for young people, but the Administration needs to invest in both residential AND community programs. And last I heard, PPP isn’t offering additional funds. It’s a “do more with what you’ve got” strategy, which is fine if the youth unemployment program hadn’t been undercapitalized over the past 30 years.

This leaves me wondering, now that the Workforce Innovation Act has been fully reauthorized, can we next figure out how to get legislation to address the youth unemployment crisis and right-size our school districts so that they have the capacity to re-engage students who still need their diploma?