The Workforce Investment Act: Implementation Experiences and Evaluation Findings

11 - Ten Years of WIA Research

315 11 ten Years of WIA Research Paul T. Decker Mathematica Policy Research To remain competitive in today’s global economy, U.S. workers increasingly need a strong foundation in core work competencies and advanced technical skills. In the past two decades, however, concerns have mounted about the widening gap between U.S. employers’ need for skilled labor and the availability of workers with the requisite skills. In one national survey, more than 80 percent of U.S. manufacturers reported a shortage of skilled workers, and nearly half viewed the skill levels of their employees as poor (National Association of Manufacturers and Deloitte Consulting 2005). This skills shortage contributes to the growing earnings gap between those who are educated and skilled and those who are not (Heckman and Krueger 2003; Katz and Autor 1999; Lemieux 2006a,b). The continuing poor performance of U.S. youth—compared to their counterparts in other countries—in mathematics , science, and literacy suggests that the skills shortage is unlikely to attenuate in the near future (U.S. Department of Education 2004). In response to rising concerns about our nation’s ability to meet these growing demands on the U.S. workforce, Congress made historic reforms to the public workforce investment system in 1998, and enacted WIA. Congress viewed WIA as a way to end “business as usual” in the workforce investment system. WIA consolidated JTPA’s fragmented system of employment and training programs and provided universal access to basic services. It also promoted customer choice, gave state and local agencies more flexibility in service design, strengthened local accountability for customer outcomes, engaged businesses, and fundamentally changed the services provided to youth. WIA is currently the largest source of federally funded employment and training, serving over 2 million people annually through its Adult, Dislocated Worker, and Youth programs, at a cost of $3 billion (U.S. Department of Labor 2007). 316 Decker This chapter describes the existing research on WIA and related programs. During the implementation of WIA, the USDOL initiated three large studies of the new program: 1) the National Evaluation of WIA Implementation (D’Amico et al. 2005); 2) the Evaluation of the ITA/Eligible Training Provider Demonstration (D’Amico and Salzman 2004); and 3) the ITA Experiment (McConnell et al. 2006). Other studies have focused on implementation and early operations of the program as well as impacts on participants. Studies of earlier programs, including JTPA, may also have relevance for assessing the potential benefits of WIA. In the remainder of this chapter, I discuss findings from studies of WIA implementation and early operations. The next two sections review estimated effects of WIA and related programs on the earnings and employment of participants, including both the adult and dislocated worker target populations. Then I describe findings from the ITA Experiment , which assessed the effects of different models for structuring and administering ITAs, the training vouchers used under WIA to fund training. The final section provides a summary and interpretation of the findings. RESEARCh ON WIA IMPLEMENtAtION Several studies have examined implementation of WIA during the six years after it became fully operational.1 My summary of the major findings from these studies is organized around seven key principles of the WIA program. 1) Service coordination. WIA has generally succeeded in increasing service coordination through local One-Stop service centers, but there have been challenges. Perhaps the greatest has been determining the appropriate contribution of various program partners to support the One-Stop infrastructure; to date, WIA’s mandatory partners have made only limited financial contributions. Other challenges to coordination include conflicting goals among partners and practical obstacles that impede partnerships, such as lack of common data systems. Ten Years of WIA Research 317 2) Customer empowerment. Local workforce investment agencies have enthusiastically embraced customer choice by offering a wide range of core and intensive services and establishing ITAs to facilitate customer choice of training. However, use of the eligible training provider list (ETPL) has had its weaknesses. For example, some providers have been unwilling to supply the information required to be on the list, and others have furnished data of questionable reliability (D’Amico and Salzman 2004). 3) Universal access. State and local agencies have made great progress toward the goal of universal access. It has been challenging , however, for states to provide adequate core services with available resources. Tensions have arisen between emphasizing core and intensive services for a wide range...