Preparing for the Workplace Charting A Course for Federal Postsecondary Training Policy (1994) / Chapter Skim
Currently Skimming:
5 THE FEDERAL ROLE IN POSTSECONDARY TRAINING
5 THE FEDERAL ROLE IN POSTSECONDARY TRAINING
Pages 118-128
The Chapter Skim interface presents what we've algorithmically identified as the most significant single chunk of text within every page in the chapter.
Select key terms on the right to highlight them within pages of the chapter.
From page 118... ...
Employers would have information about the existing and future supply of trained workers, and they would be able to signal their needs to training providers. We do not find these attributes to be broadly present in American postsecondary training, despite the existence of many isolated exemplars such as community colleges and proprietary schools offering high-quality vocational programs, employers strongly committed to the continuous improvement of their workers at all levels, or community groups effectively helping welfare recipients move into the work force.
|
From page 119... ...
More important, however, the federal government must move beyond support for individual programs and take the lead in promoting policies that encourage quality and coherence in the training system as a whole. In recommending a change in the federal role, we emphasize that developing a more coherent, high-quality system is a dauntingly complex task, one not readily amenable to quick or blunt policy strokes.
|
From page 120... ...
The federal government has an important role in encouraging the development of mechanisms for promoting and rewarding quality performance. However, we again emphasize that state and local governments or private groups will usually have the most direct responsibility for improving quality and sustaining high-quality performance.
|
From page 121... ...
Finally, the federal government can guard against the tendency for individual federal programs to impose incompatible requirements that produce unintended barriers to movement through the system. There is much we do not know about the ideal shape of a system that performs these various functions effectively in a decentralized nation and economy.
|
From page 122... ...
And, for fiscal reasons if nothing else, the federal government may have a hard time regaining the initiative back for the foreseeable future. Because of the need to reduce the federal budget deficit, the federal government is unlikely to have large amounts of money to use as leverage on state policies in a period when states are increasingly capable of acting on their own.
|
From page 123... ...
Chapter 3 described the growing number of promising state initiatives designed to bring business, education and training institutions, and state officials together to restructure education and training systems in order to improve the planning and delivery of integrated work force development services. The federal government needs to be careful not to unwittingly derail the Progress being made in the states; it has the potential to reduce the creativ~ty being demonstrated by state, local, and business leaders.
|
From page 124... ...
as economic changes demanded new ways of preparing people for adult responsibilities. Long before America's citizens and legislators were ready to allow the federal government to give general aid to education, probably the most strongly held reserved power given to the states by the Constitution, they were prepared to support federal aid to occupation-oriented training.2 But while the federal government has historically spurred the development of training opportunities, especially for the young, it also bears some responsibility for the fragmentation of the nation's training effort.
|
From page 125... ...
The problem of ensuring quality is admittedly complex in a decentralized system, but the federal government can encourage improvement in the quality of postsecondary training in ways compatible with our traditions and institutions (see Chapter 6~. Another way of improving the overall performance of the postsecondary training system is for the federal government to respond to the information that is available about what works and what doesn't and to make changes when there is evidence public programs do not seem to be helping those whose lives they are supposed to improve.
|
From page 126... ...
Part of the federal role in continuously improving postsecondary training should be to evaluate the pace at which good practices are adopted and to determine what kinds of technical assistance and incentives might encourage faster diffusion. One specific area where the federal government can make an important contribution is in encouraging experimentation with and evaluation of promising training practices and structures used in other countries.
|
From page 127... ...
The weaknesses in state government that had contributed to the growing role of the federal government in domestic affairs from the Great Depression on were addressed. Guber
|
From page 128... ...
From this grew a great system of socalled land-$rant colleges and universities. In 1917, heeding changes brought about by an industrializing economy as well as fear of falling behind Germany, with whom the United States would soon be at war, the Smith-Hu ,hes Act was passed, promising federal funds to high schools for vocational education in agriculture, trades and industry, and home economics.
|
Key Terms
This material may be derived from roughly machine-read images, and so is provided only to facilitate research.
More
information on Chapter Skim is available.