Washington Monthly - September/October 2022 - 43

lege in Sacramento with a 30 percent graduation rate, and various
branches of the Milan Institute, a for-profit cosmetology
school that, among other things, offers a 75-week course in
" barbering " for $18,781. (It, too, is under Education Department
monitoring.)
These ETPLs are meant to ensure that workers qualifying
for federal job training assistance have high-quality programs
from which to choose. But as the California examples
show, the lists fall short. As an instrument for giving workers
" choice " while demanding " accountability " from training
programs, ETPLs are a failure. And this is a major reason why
federal job training efforts are much less effective than they
could be.
Rather than ensuring practical, affordable training
for in-demand jobs, the lists are a haven for expensive forprofits
and fly-by-night concerns. Some of the nation's best
training providers actually eschew being on an ETPL because
of the bureaucratic hassles. At the same time, states' poor data
collection (despite all the bureaucracy) means that potential
trainees can't compare programs for the best investment of
their time and federal aid. The Education Department's College
Scorecard, for instance, is not cross-referenced on ETPL
sites, depriving a would-be trainee of valuable information.
Collecting reliable performance data from providers has been
a long-standing challenge. Worst of all, the ETPL represents
an archaic approach to workforce development- " train and
pray " -where workers enroll in training programs that may
or may not match up to the jobs available or impart the skills
that employers want.
With employers starved for skilled talent, the federal
workforce development system should provide workers with
the skills to land in-demand jobs. Yet the number of workers
enrolled in WIOA-funded training has been declining, indicating
a broken system. The best place to start is to fix who's doing
the training.
" The ETPL is a dinosaur, " says Kris Stadelman, who recently
retired as executive director of the NOVA Workforce
Board in Silicon Valley and was also CEO of the Workforce Development
Council of Seattle-King County in Washington. " It
does not at all work in the way it was designed, " she says. " And
it should just be put to bed. "
C
ongress appropriates nearly $3 billion a year to fund
worker training programs via almost 2,400 " American
Job Centers " authorized by the WIOA. Given this
decentralized infrastructure, the ETPL was meant to provide
workers with maximum flexibility in choosing a training
program.
This concept of " customer choice " was also intended to
fix an earlier iteration of the federal workforce program, the
Job Training Partnership Act of 1982. Under this law, participants
didn't pick their training but were assigned to programs
chosen and contracted out by local workforce development
agencies. " Often these arrangements led to overconsumption
of some training and lack of flexibility for funders, students,
and employers, " a 2011 analysis by Carl Van Horn of Rutgers
University and Aaron Fichtner of the New Jersey Department
of Labor and Workforce Development concluded. Widely publicized
incidents of abuse fueled the JTPA's reputation as a
boondoggle for state and local governments.
In a 1990 screed from the Cato Institute, the journalist
James Bovard excoriated the program for " providing contractors
with a license to steal. " " JTPA has spent taxpayers' money
to set up a circus museum, teach cab drivers to smile, and enable
a small-town mayor to fly to Japan, " he wrote. In addition
to numerous audits by the Government Accountability
Office and the Department of Labor's inspector general faulting
the program's contracting practices, Bovard cited a 1988
investigation by The Plain Dealer, finding that Ohio Governor
Richard Celeste had funneled $1.4 million in JTPA contracts
to campaign contributors. Among these was a $100,000 effort
" to train 32 unemployed coal miners to become engineering
aides. " " Only two of the trainees got jobs, which is not surprising
because there was no demand for engineering aides in the
area of Ohio where the training occurred, " Bovard wrote.
Even though states don't do
much to police the schools
allowed on their eligible
training provider lists,
some for-profit providers
exploit the fact that they
are on the list as a badge of
quality in their marketing.
Successor legislation to the JTPA, the Workforce Investment
Act of 1998, created the ETPL to be a tool for
consumers-a Consumer Reports for training programs, as the
former workforce director Stadelman says. Meant to help trainees,
the ETPL has instead created a different set of pitfalls.
One problem is that anyone can apply to become an eligible
training provider. Most states actively solicit applications.
The result is an array of programs that may or may not align
with the skills and credentials a local economy needs. Among
the more than 1,500 approved programs in Virginia, for example,
trainees can pursue credentials in everything from an associate's
degree in diesel technology to certification as a wind
turbine technician, an EMT, or a truck driver. They can also
seek training as a bail bondsman, an ethical hacker, or a massage
therapist and get certificates in such specialties as permanent
cosmetic tattooing, professional horseshoeing, or the
appropriate use of pepper spray (for aspiring security guards).
No doubt these might be excellent programs, but what's lackWashington
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