The Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee recently released a draft for reauthorizing the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA). Though the bill is an improvement on the House’s bill, A Stronger Workforce for America Act (ASWA) the bill needs several improvements before it can get our coalition’s full support.
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After conducting in-depth listening sessions with a wide range of partners in 2022, NSC prioritized a set of policy recommendations designed to transform WIOA from an underfunded system to one that is resourced to deliver high-quality skills training, support working people, help small businesses, and advance racial equity.
One of the critical recommendations was that Congress should provide accountability for our workforce system to contribute to an inclusive economy by:
Like ASWA, the Senate bill proposes a two-tiered Eligible Training and Provider List (ETPL). The ETPL is a list of training providers and their programs approved by a state’s workforce development agency as meeting certain criteria for quality and performance. Unlike the House bill, however, the Senate bill does not offer a conditional eligibility on-ramp for providers. Instead, it creates the standard eligibility list and the Workforce Innovation Leader (WIL) list. Community colleges, labor organizations, and registered apprenticeship programs gain automatic eligibility for the standard list. This approach is promising, but it may overlook specialized local training providers that cater uniquely to community needs.
New requirements for the standard list could pose challenges for many programs to qualify. For instance, one concerning metric mandates that graduates’ median earnings exceed those of local high school graduates by 20% or more, a criterion difficult to meet due to data collection limitations and potential impacts on providers serving marginalized groups such as individuals with disabilities or the formerly incarcerated. The Workforce Innovation Leader List sets eligibility requirements up to 20% higher than the Standard Eligibility list, with few incentives to achieve these marks.
While maintaining training provider quality is crucial, overly strict measures risk excluding or burdening local partners and limiting participant choice. Additionally, the creation of the WIL as a second tier may be unnecessary if numerous local providers struggle to qualify for the standard eligibility criteria.
NSC has also recommended that WIOA reauthorization Expand outcome measures, disaggregate data, and invest in evaluation and data systems to promote high-quality skills training, racial equity, and quality jobs
The Senate bill echoes ASWA’s data transparency and innovation provisions, such as
Read the full list in our side-by-side comparison chart.
Overall, these new data collections for the ETPL should be replaced with non-burdensome requirements, based in measuring racial equity of workforce programs.
Finally, NSC has recommended that WIOA Require state and local plans and boards to incorporate racial equity goals that include workers’ voices. In the Senate’s WIOA reauthorization bill, there are slight improvements in local board makeup compared to ASWA, which lacked mandatory changes to board composition or state/local plans. The Senate version introduces “standing committees” to advise on issues like youth employment, workers with disabilities, and reentry populations, each requiring representation from individuals with lived experience. However, these committees are advisory only and not mandatory, supplementing existing advisory structures on many workforce boards. A more impactful and equitable approach would be to mandate compensation for workers with specific lived experiences on local boards.
For more WIOA analysis – read the other two blogs in this series
