Staffers for the House and Senate education committees have announced that months of negotiations have produced an agreement on legislation to reauthorize the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA).
Staff members for the House Committee on Education and the Workforce and Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee gave stakeholders a high-level overview of the compromise bill late Thursday, and a bill summary and text were released Friday.
While the bipartisan bill is a big achievement in an otherwise unproductive Congress, the path forward for the bill is not clear. The staffers indicated that the process of “hotlining” the bill in the Senate, which essentially polls senators for any objections to the bill, would begin immediately. Even without substantial objections, the time is short to pass a bill in both chambers before the end of the year. Some reports have indicated that the committees may seek to attach the bill to the must-pass National Defense Authorization Act.
Good news on SCCTG program
Authorization of the Strengthening Community Colleges Training Grant (SCCTG) program, the top priority for the American Association of Community Colleges (AACC), is included in the bill. The program would undergo a slight name change to the Strengthening Community Colleges Workforce Development Grant program due to House committee chair Virginia Foxx’s aversion to the word “training.”
The authorization provisions are unchanged from the House bill passed earlier this year, which is good news. AACC has prioritized SCCTG authorization because it is important to maintain and grow the program over time. The program has been funded for several years but lacks a permanent authorization. AACC thanks its members who have advocated strongly for this outcome.
Changes on ETPL
Another AACC priority — automatic inclusion of community college programs on the Eligible Trainer Provider List (ETPL) — was not included in the compromise bill. The inclusion of this provision in the Senate bill was a surprise because this idea had not gained much acceptance on the Hill over the past several years, going back to the previous reauthorization. In the current debate, there was little enthusiasm for the concept in the House, so this provision was a long shot for inclusion in the compromise bill.
The process for establishing and maintaining the ETPL has been revised substantially. As before, governors are charged with developing the lists, but the new bill is somewhat more prescriptive in how they go about doing so. In particular, the bill would require governors to set minimum performance levels on credential attainment, job placement and earnings metrics that a program must meet to be on the ETPL. Current law simply says that these things must be taken into account.
Programs that are top performers on these metrics can identify and market themselves as “Workforce Innovation Leaders.” States are responsible for generating placement and earnings information for program participants through administrative data, such as unemployment insurance quarterly reports, but training providers will still need to report substantial data to the states.
Divvying funds
The compromise bill maintains a requirement that 50% of funds that local areas receive must go toward skills development (training). This was one of the more controversial elements of the House bill, as many stakeholders argued that the requirement would not leave enough resources for all the other services that local boards and operators provide. The 50% requirement was modified in the compromise bill to allow local areas to use up to 8% of the 50% for supportive services.
As was the case in both underlying bills, the bill would repurpose funds received by the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) from H1B visa fees into individual training accounts of at least $5,000 for displaced workers. DOL currently uses those funds for competitive grant programs that have benefited community colleges over time.
