Washington Monthly - September/October 2022 - 45

and wage data, would violate students' privacy rights and subject
them to liability.
Although new regulations have since resolved the privacy
concerns, a November 2020 report from the research organization
Mathematica found that in many states, local officials
still said training providers " could not, or would not, provide
the required performance data. "
It's not clear, however, that training providers would be
forthcoming with their data, even if barriers disappeared. I
emailed 10 providers on the Virginia and Maryland ETPLs,
asking about the number of WIOA-funded participants
they've served in the past year and their outcomes. Eight out
of 10 did not respond, and two failed to follow up after an initial
response.
Some training providers might be reluctant to disclose
their outcomes because they don't have good news to report.
Pallasch suggests that states might not want to dig too deep,
for fear of failing to meet federally mandated performance
targets. " I know firsthand that in Kentucky, we cleaned the
data well enough to get the performance measures and then
we moved on, " he says. " We didn't clean it pristinely, and
there's not a state out there that does, because there's no incentive
to do that at the state level. "
The consequence of this missing data is that WIOA participants
don't have the information they need. It also means
that poor-performing programs slide under the radar.
" If we're being honest about our eligible training provider
lists right now, we know that they are bloated. We know
that there are programs on there that are not performing, "
Pallasch says. " States will tell you that they have a process to
go through and check performance and purge their lists, but
I would love to see an audit trail. I would love for any state
to say, 'Here are the 2,200 programs we had on the list last
year. Here's the data we looked at, we kicked these 400 off,
and we brought these 200 on.' I assure you there's not a state
out there doing that. "
On the other hand, ironically, some of the nation's best
providers aren't even on state ETPLs, because of onerous reporting
requirements.
Particularly problematic is a requirement that approved
providers report performance on all students, not
just those funded by the WIOA (though this requirement
was frequently waived during the pandemic). Many community
colleges opt out of applying for a state's ETPL because
they don't " have the capacity to collect and report on these
data for their thousands of students, even if they did decide
that being on the ETP list was important, " according
to Mathematica.
National or multistate providers have to meet the requirements
of multiple ETPLs. " If you're LinkedIn Learning
or a Cisco certifications class, would you want to submit to
all 50 states the data on everybody who took your class and
whether or not they got a job and how much they made if they
got a job? " Kris Stadelman says. " No. So you just never get on
the ETPL. "
" Many small organizations that run good programs opt
out [because] it's too bureaucratic, " the former director of a
nationally recognized training program based in Maryland
says. (They declined to use their name or the name of their
institution to preserve relationships with state officials.) " We
started to pursue [an ETPL application] but stopped because
the process ... was lengthy, and it was clear they were going to
mess with a program we felt good about. We didn't want to
change it for dribs and drabs of money. "
Among the cutting-edge institutions you won't find on
state ETPLs are well-regarded ones like Western Governors
University, an online institution that offers skills-based credentials,
and Southern New Hampshire University. (The
Washington Monthly has written about Western Governors
University in the past, and SNHU has ranked in our top 20
best colleges for adult learners.) Amazingly, SNHU is not on
New Hampshire's ETPL. Ultimately, it is WIOA participants
The eligible training provider
list 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.
who lose out. The result is not protection for the consumer
but limits on choice and limits on marketable skills workers
can acquire, " Stadelman says.
A third and final problem with ETPLs is philosophical:
their reliance on " consumer choice, " without sufficient consideration
of that training's ultimate value. Only about one
in three people who enroll in WIOA training ends up in a job
related to that training, according to Labor Department data.
The problem, Pallasch says, is the lack of employer input into
the kinds of programs the WIOA offers and that participants
enroll in. " We ask people, 'Hey, what do you want to be when
you grow up? Okay, great, go into training.' And then they
finish their training and come back to the job center asking
for job search assistance, " he says.
I
t doesn't have to be this way. One obvious solution for fixing
the ETPL is for the federal government to insist on
better data and provider quality.
Washington Monthly 45
Washington Monthly - September/October 2022

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