Washington Monthly - September/October 2022 - 44

ing is information about the availability of area jobs for students
interested in these fields (that is, whether there's a local
shortage of farriers or cosmetic tattoo artists).
In West Virginia, many of the approved providers are
online and based out of state, so they might lack a connection
with local employers. A scan through the state's ETPL
includes providers based in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Maryland,
Michigan, and even California. (This would be the Ding King
Training Institute, which offers a certificate in " painless dent
repair " for vehicles for $13,000, according to West Virginia's
ETPL online.)
The options are dizzying. " People don't make good choices
without a lot of instruction in the current labor market,
an assessment of their skills, understanding not just who succeeds
at that training but how much money they make at the
end, " Stadelman says.
And in California and Virginia, at least, the number of
for-profit providers on the state's approved provider lists
equals or exceeds the number of public institutions, such as
community colleges, which means that the choices available
Some training providers
might be reluctant to
disclose their outcomes
because they don't have
good news to report. States
might not want to dig too
deep, for fear of failing to
meet federally mandated
performance targets.
to students might be more expensive than they need to be.
(Trainees pay out of pocket for costs above the training dollars
provided in their individual training accounts.)
A student interested in becoming an administrative assistant,
for example, could enroll in a three-week, 120-hour
certificate program at Rappahannock Community College for
$320-or they could spend $4,000 for a certificate from the
for-profit MD Technical School. Another for-profit, the Joshua
Career Institute, offers a 600-hour certificate program for
$8,000. Virginia's ETPL describes all three offerings as " administrative
assistant " training, and none of the programs
have outcomes data available on the site (all values for completion
rates and earnings are listed as zeros).
Even though states don't do much to police the schools
allowed on their ETPLs, some for-profit providers exploit the
fact that they are on the list as a badge of quality in their marketing.
The online training provider MedCerts, which offers
44 September/October 2022
IT and health care certifications, boasts on its home page that
it has " approved ETPL status in 30+ states. " Aryan Consulting
and Staffing, an approved Maryland provider that offers entry-level
pharmaceutical manufacturing training, promises,
" If you are unemployed and receiving government benefits,
you may be qualified for complementary training and placement
program (sic). " The for-profit Medical Learning Center
writes on its " Payment Options " page that it " is an approved
Northern Virginia Workforce Investment (NVWIB) trainer
provider for Virginia Residents. Funding is provided for Nurse
Aide that covers the total cost (sic). "
A
second problem plaguing the ETPL system is the lack
of performance data. WIOA participants cannot tell
which programs work and which don't.
" Everybody likes to talk about customer choice, but
the caveat is that it's got to be informed customer choice, "
John Pallasch says. He was executive director of Kentucky's
workforce development program and served as assistant
secretary for employment and training at the Department
of Labor. " We have to give the customer better
information-real-time information-so that they can
make informed decisions. "
Department of Labor regulations require states to collect
information from approved providers, including the number
of WIOA participants enrolled in a particular course, the cost
of the course, and outcomes such as the percentage of enrollees
who receive a credential and whether they're working.
This data is supposed to be available on a state's ETPL and on
trainingproviderresults.gov, a project initiated by the Labor
Department in 2019 that was intended to be for training programs
what the College Scorecard is for colleges.
But click on provider listings on a state's ETPL or the
website, and lots of information is missing. Clicking on the
" Course Performance " tab for half a dozen approved courses
on West Virginia's ETPL yielded straight zeroes for such measures
as " wages at placement, " " number employed after six
months, " and " number receiving degree or certificate. "
Trainingproviderresults.gov frequently shows only asterisks
for employment rate, completion rate, and earnings
with the note " Data Suppressed. " In fairness, the site is relatively
new, and states have not finished submitting their data.
But the problems are still profound. " The data in there is junk
because that's the data that the states are giving us, " says Pallasch,
under whose watch the site was launched.
One problem is that training providers aren't handing
over data, a challenge that dates back to the 1998 Workforce
Investment Act. In a 2003 audit, the Department of Labor's
Office of the Inspector General found that many ETPL
providers considered reporting requirements to be " burdensome, "
especially if they didn't have many WIOA-funded students.
" The cost of collecting the data often exceeded the benefit
when few WIA participants were in a class, " the office reported.
Some programs also worried that disclosing personal
information about students, such as Social Security numbers
http://www.trainingproviderresults.gov http://www.Trainingproviderresults.gov
Washington Monthly - September/October 2022

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