Preparing for the Workplace Charting A Course for Federal Postsecondary Training Policy (1994) / Chapter Skim
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6 FOSTERING HIGH-QUALITY TRAINING
6 FOSTERING HIGH-QUALITY TRAINING
Pages 129-143
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From page 129... ...
We gave a great deal of attention to whether performance management and standard-setting, which are increasingly being adopted in federal training programs, are likely to be effective tools to improve the quality of postsecondary training. We concluded that performance-management and standard-setting approaches that produce information useful for continuous improvement and that in 129
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From page 130... ...
It demands careful thinking about federalism and about how to coordinate three levels of government, training providers, and employers; it requires marshaling resources from multiple financing sources. To improve quality and coherence, policy makers must focus on adding value that benefits those who are trained and that justifies the costs to those who pay; and changes must include mechanisms that are flexible enough to adjust as the needs of workers and employers change.
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From page 131... ...
Advocates argue that if standards are based on clearly defined goals, and if these goals are based on realistic appraisals of what students or trainees will need to know in order to perform effectively in society and the economy, then education and training institutions will link what they teach and how they teach to the goals. Standards can focus education and training institutions primarily on outcomes, rather than inputs.
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From page 132... ...
Some critics of national education and training standards argue that they will lead inevitably to the institutionalization of existing inequalities, because the standards will be manipulated to protect the privileged and exclude the underprivileged. Other critics argue that, while standards are generally a good idea, national standards are suspect, because the responsibility for most governance decisions related to education and training is located at the state and local level.
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From page 133... ...
If an outcome measure is how many people are employed 3 months after completion of a training program, for example, the standard for satisfactory performance might be set at 60 percent or better (McDonnell and Elmore, 1987; Bardach and Kagan, 1982~. Recent conventional wisdom has been that outcome standards are preferable to design standards.
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From page 134... ...
So when speaking of policies aimed at improving public services, it is important to note that no policy is likely to consist entirely of outcome standards to the exclusion of design standards. It is more accurate to say that such policies shift the balance between design standards and outcome standards, giving more weight to the latter.
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From page 135... ...
~ , This involves deliberately setting standards at a level that only a few implementing agencies can achieve, and investing resources in pulling the rest of the implementing agencies along. Variants of this approach in the private sector are sometimes called benchmarking, because they involve setting design and outcome standards for a firm at the leading edge of industry practice rather than at the average level.
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From page 136... ...
Should one continue to push education and training institutions to use leading-edge design standards and benchmarking based on the SCANS model, even though the capacity of firms to absorb the better-trained workers is limited? Determining where to set criteria in the design of standards systems, then, is a major strategic problem not amenable to simple solutions.
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From page 137... ...
Moving from a single administrative structure to multiple structures, each with its own governance system, raises other issues: where does the authority come from to set standards and who adjudicates differences among standards? When providers of training no longer draw their support primarily from one source or provide certain services that are funded completely from one source and instead become relatively autonomous actors drawing support from multiple sources, how much leverage can any single funding agency exercise over the performance of any single provider?
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From page 138... ...
The federal interest in ensuring quality must extend beyond federal programs if the entire postsecondary training system is to improve; this suggests standard-setting should emphasi e changing institutions rathe7- than regulating federally funded activities. Current federal performance management systems assume that any federal effort to set standards should focus on the recipients of federal funds and that money is the federal government's main source of leverage.
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From page 139... ...
· If they involve a framework that measures skills at various levels of an occupation, skills standards can create ladders that define career pathways and help document and monitor the progress of people as they move through various kinds of postsecondary training. The existing federal demonstration-project approach, in our view, fails to provide enough of a framework for the development of a national skills standards system.
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From page 140... ...
Will skills standards reflect the requirements of highperformance workplaces, even when these do not reflect current industry practices? · How should national boards accommodate existing standards, licensing, certifying, and accrediting processes?
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From page 141... ...
Improving information has several dimensions: improving the federal and state statistical system that provides labor-market data and broadening it to include more useful information about local labor markets; coordinating federal requirements, so that integrated management information systems can be developed at the state level; and improving the availability and accessibility of information to users at the local level. Information can also become an indirect means for ensuring accountability and oversight by providing details of institutional performance that can be used as a basis for client choice, professional sanctions, or political pressure.
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From page 142... ...
People who work in training institutions, with some notable exceptions, occupy relatively low-status roles characterized by working conditions that do not favor continuous learning. The internal structure and management of postsecondary education and training institutions, again with notable exceptions are not conducive to the diagnosis of shortcomings or to creative solutions.
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From page 143... ...
The effort involved creating "a coherent vision of what it means to be mathematically literate both in a world that relies on calculators and computers to carry out mathematical procedures and in a world where mathematics is rapidly growing and is extensively being applied in diverse fields" and creating "a set of standards to guide the revision of the school mathematics curriculum and its associated evaluation toward this vision" (National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, 1989:1)
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