NATIONAL
CENTER
ON
EDUCATION
AND
THE
ECONOMY
BOARD
OF TRUSTEES
MARIO M. CUOMO
Honorary
Chair
JOHN SCULLEY
Chair
JAMES
B. HUNT, JR.
Vice
Chair
R.
CARLOS CARBALLADA
Treasurer
ANTHONY
CARNEVALE
SARAH
H. CLEVELAND
HILLARY R.
CLINTON
THOMAS
W. COLE, JR.
VANBUREN
N. HANSFORD, JR.
LOUIS
HARRIS
BARBARA
R. HATTON
GUILBERT
C. HENTSCHKE
VERA
KATZ
ARTURO
MADRID
IRA C. MAGAZINER
SHIRLEY
M. MALCOM
RAY
MARSHALL
RICHARD
P. MILLS
PHILIP
H. POWER
LAUREN
B. RESNICK
MANUEL
J. RIVERA
DAVID
ROCKEFELLER, JR.
MARC
S. TUCKER
ADAM
URBANSKI
KAY
R. WHITMORE
MARC S. TUCKER
President
MAIN
OFFICE:
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OFFICE:
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|
11
November 1992
Hillary
Clinton
The
Governor's Mansion
1800
Canter Street
Little
Rock, AR 72206
Dear
Hillary:
I still
cannot believe you won. But utter delight that
you did pervades all the circles in which I move.
I met last Wednesday in David Rockefeller's
office with him, John Sculley, Dave Barram and
David Haselkorn. It was a great celebration. Both
John and David R. were more expansive than I have
ever seen them — literally radiating
happiness. My own view and theirs is that this
country has seized its last chance. I am fond of
quoting Winston Churchill to the effect that
"America always does the right thing —
after it has exhausted all the
alternatives." This election, more than
anything else in my experience, proves his
point.
The
subject we were discussing was what you and Bill
should do now about education, training and labor
market policy. Following that meeting, I chaired
another in Washington on the same topic. Those
present at the second meeting included Tim
Barnicle, Dave Barram, Mike Cohen, David
Hornbeck, Hilary Pennington, Andy Plattner,
Lauren Resnick, Betsy Brown Ruzzi, Bob Schwartz,
Mike Smith and Bill Spring. Shirley Malcom, Ray
Marshall and Susan McGuire were also invited.
Though these three were not able to be present at
last week's meeting, they have all contributed by
telephone to the ideas that follow. Ira Magaziner
was also invited to this meeting.
Our
purpose in these meetings was to propose concrete
actions that the Clinton administration could
take — between now and the inauguration, in
the first 100 days and beyond. The result, from
where I sit, was really exciting. We took a very
large leap forward in terms of how to advance the
agenda on which you and we have all been working
— a practical plan for
putting all the major components of the system in
place within four years, by the time Bill has to
run again.
I take
personal responsibility for what follows. Though
I believe everyone involved in the planning
effort is in broad agreement, they may not all
agree on the details. You should also be aware
that, although the plan comes from a group
closely associated with the National Center on
Education and the Economy, there was no practical
way to poll our whole Board on this plan in the
time available. It represents, then, not a
proposal from our Center, but the best thinking
of the group I have named.
We
think the great opportunity you have is to remold
the entire American system for human resources
development, almost all of the current
components of which were put in place before
World War II. The danger is that each of the
ideas that Bill advanced in the campaign in the
area of education and training could be
translated individually in the ordinary course of
governing into a legislative proposal and enacted
as a program. This is the plan of least
resistance. But it will lead to these programs
being grafted onto the present system, not to a
new system, and the opportunity will have been
lost. If this sense of time and place is correct,
it is essential that the administration's efforts
be guided by a consistent vision of what it wants
to accomplish in the field of human resource
development, with respect both to choice of key
officials and the program.
What
follows comes in three places:
First,
a vision of the kind of national — not
federal — human resources development system
the nation could have. This is interwoven with a
new approach to governing that should inform that
vision. What is essential is that we create
a seamless web of opportunities, to
develop one's skills that literally
extends from cradle to grave and is the same
system for everyone — young and old, poor
and rich, worker and full-time student. It needs to be a
system driven by client needs (not agency
regulations or the needs of the organization
providing the services), guided by clear
standards that define the stages of the
system for the people who progress through it,
and regulated on the basis of outcomes
that providers produce for their clients, not
inputs into the system.
Second, a proposed
legislative agenda you can use to implement
this vision. We propose four high priority
packages that will enable you to move quickly on
the campaign promises:
- The
first would use your proposal for an apprenticeship
system as the keystone of a strategy for
putting a whole new postsecondary
training system in place. That
system would incorporate your proposal
for reforming postsecondary
education finance. It
contains what we think is a powerful idea
for rolling out and scaling up the whole new
human resources system nationwide over
the next four years, using the (renamed)
apprenticeship ideas as the entering
wedge.
- The
second would combine initiatives
on dislocated workers, a rebuilt
employment service and a new system of
labor market boards to offer the
Clinton administration's employment
security program, built on the best
practices anywhere in the world. This is
the backbone of a system for assuring
adult workers in our society that they
need never again watch with dismay as
their jobs disappear and their chances of
ever getting a good job again go with
them.
- The
third would concentrate on the
overwhelming problems of our inner
cities, combining elements of the
first and second packages into a special
program to greatly raise the work-related
skills of the people trapped in the core
of our great cities.
- The
fourth would enable you to take
advantage of legislation on which
Congress has already been working to
advance the elementary and secondary
reform agenda.
The
other major proposal we offer has to do with government
organization for the human resources agenda.
While we share your reservations about the
hazards involved in bringing reorganization
proposals to the Congress, we believe that the
one we have come up with minimizes those
drawbacks while creating an opportunity for the
new administration to move
like lightning to implement its human resources
development proposals. We hope you can consider
the merits of this idea quickly, because, if you
decide to go with it or something like it, it
will greatly affect the nature of the offers you
make to prospective cabinet members.
The
Vision
We take the proposals
Bill put before the country in the campaign to be
utterly consistent with the ideas advanced in America's
Choice, the school restructuring agenda first
stated in A Nation Prepared, and later
incorporated in the work of the National Alliance
for Restructuring Education, and the elaboration
of this view that Ray and I tried to capture in
our book, Thinking for a Living. Taken
together, we think these ideas constitute a
consistent vision for a
new human resources development system for the
United States. I have tried to capture
the essence of that vision below.
An Economic Strategy Based
on Skill Development
- The
economy's strength is derived from a
whole population as skilled as any in the
world, working in workplaces organized to
take maximum advantage of the skills
those people have to offer.
- A seamless system of
unending skill development that begins in
the home with the very young and
continues through school, postsecondary
education and the workplace.
The Schools
- Clear
national standards of performance in
general education (the knowledge and
skills that everyone is expected to hold
in common) are set to the level of the
best achieving nations in the world for
students of 16, and public schools are
expected to bring all but the most
severely handicapped up to that standard.
Students get a certificate when they meet
this standard, allowing them to go on to
the next stage of their education. Though
the standards are set to international
benchmarks, they are distinctly American,
reflecting our needs and values.
- We
have a national system of education in
which curriculum,
pedagogy, examinations, and teacher
education and licensure systems are all
linked to the national standards, but
which provides for substantial variance
among states, districts, and schools on
these matters. This new system of linked
standards, curriculum, and pedagogy will
abandon the American tracking system,
combining high academic standards with
the ability to apply what one knows to
real world problems and qualifying all
students for a lifetime of learning in
the postsecondary system and at
work.
- We have a system
that rewards students who meet the
national standards with further education
and good jobs, providing them a
strong incentive to work hard in
school.
- Our
public school systems are reorganized to free up school
professionals to make the key decisions
about how to use all the available
resources to bring students up to the
standards. Most of the
federal, state, district and union rules
and regulations that now restrict school
professionals' ability to make these
decisions are swept away, though strong
measures are in place to make sure that
vulnerable populations get the help they
need. School professionals are paid at a
level comparable to that of other
professionals, but they are expected to
put in a full year, to spend whatever
time it takes to do the job and to be
fully accountable for the results of
their work. The federal, state and local
governments provide the time, staff
development resources, technology and
other support needed for them to do the
job. Nothing
less than a wholly restructured school
system can possibly
bring all of our students up to the
standards only a few have been expected
to meet up to now.
- There
is a real — aggressive —
program of public choice in our schools,
rather than the flaccid version that is
widespread now.
- All
students are guaranteed that they will
have a fair shot at reaching the
standards: that is, that whether they
make it or not depends on the effort they
are willing to make, and nothing else.
School delivery standards are in place to
make sure this happens. These standards
have the same status in the system as the
new student performance standards,
assuring that the quality of instruction
is high everywhere, but they are
fashioned so as not to constitute a new
bureaucratic nightmare.
Postsecondary
Education and Work Skills
- All
students who meet the new national
standards for general education are entitled to the
equivalent of three more years of free
additional education. We would
have the federal and state governments
match funds to guarantee one
free year of college education to
everyone who meets the
new national standards for general
education. So a student who meets the
standard at 16 would be entitled to two
free years of high school and one of
college. Loans,
which can be forgiven for public service,
are available for
additional education beyond that.
National standards for sub-baccalaureate
college-level professional and technical
degrees and certificates will be
established with the participation of
employers, labor and higher education.
These programs will include both academic
study and structured on-the-job training.
Eighty percent or more of American high
school graduates will be expected to get
some form of college degree, though most
of them less than a baccalaureate. These
new professional and technical
certificates and degrees typically are
won within three years of acquiring the
general education certificate, so, for most
postsecondary students, college will be
free. These
professional and technical degree
programs will be designed to link to
programs leading to the baccalaureate
degree and higher degrees. There will be
no dead ends in this system. Everyone who
meets the general education standard will
be able to go to some form of college,
being able to borrow all the money they
need to do so, beyond the first free
year.
(This
idea of post-secondary professional and
technical certificates captures all of the
essentials of the apprenticeship idea, while
offering none of its drawbacks (see
below). But it also makes it clear that those
engaged in apprentice-style programs are
getting more than narrow training; they are
continuing their education for other purposes
as well, and building a base for more
education later. Clearly, this idea redefines
college. Proprietary schools, employers and
community-based organizations will want to
offer these programs, as well as community
colleges and four-year institutions, but
these new entrants will have to be accredited
if they are to qualify to offer the
programs.)
- Employers
are not required to provide slots for the
structured on-the-job training component
of the program but many do so, because
they get first access to the most
accomplished graduates of these programs,
and they can use these programs to
introduce the trainees to their own
values and way of doing things.
- The
system of skill standards for technical
and professional degrees is the same for
students just coming out of high school
and for adults in the workforce. It is
progressive, in the sense that
certificates and degrees for entry level
jobs lead to further professional and
technical education programs at higher
levels. Just as in the case of the system
for the schools, though the standards are
the same everywhere (leading to maximum
mobility for students), the curricula can
vary widely and programs can be custom
designed to fit the needs of full-time
and part-time students with very
different requirements. Government grant
and loan programs are available on the
same terms to full-time and part-time
students, as long as the programs in
which they are enrolled are designed to
lead to certificates and degrees defined by the
system of professional
and technical standards.
- The
national system of professional and
technical standards is designed much like
the multistate bar, which provides a
national core around which the states can
specify additional standards that meet
their unique needs. There are national
standards and exams for no more than 20
broad occupational areas, each of which
can lead to many occupations in a number
of related industries. Students who
qualify in any one of these areas have
the broad skills required by a whole
family of occupations, and most are
sufficiently skilled to enter the
workforce immediately, with further
occupation-specific skills provided by
their union or employer. Industry and
occupational groups can voluntarily
create standards building on these broad
standards for their own needs, as can the
states. Students entering the system are
first introduced to very broad
occupational groups, narrowing over time
to concentrate on acquiring the skills
needed for a cluster of occupations. This
modular system provides for the
initiative of particular states and
industries while at the same time
providing for mobility across states and
occupations by reducing the time and cost
entailed in moving from one occupation to
another. In this way, a balance is
established between the kinds of generic
skills needed to function effectively in
high performance work organizations and
the skills needed to continue learning
quickly and well through a lifetime of
work, on the one hand, and the specific
skills needed to perform at a high level
in a particular occupation on the
other.
- Institutions
receiving grant and loan funds under this
system are required
to provide information to the
public and to government agencies in a
uniform format. This information covers
enrollment by program, costs and success
rates for
students of different backgrounds and
characteristics, and career
outcomes for those students, thereby
enabling students to make informed
choices among institutions based on cost
and performance. Loan defaults are
reduced to a level close to zero, both
because programs that do not deliver what
they promise are not selected by
prospective students and because the new
postsecondary loan system uses the IRS to
collect what is owed from salaries and
wages as they are earned.
[Page: E1821] Education and Training for Employed and Unemployed Adults
- The
national system of skills standards
establishes the basis for the development
of a coherent, unified training system.
That system can be accessed by students
coming out of high school, employed
adults who want to improve their
prospects, unemployed adults who are
dislocated and others who lack the basic
skills required to get out of poverty. But it is all the
same system. There are no longer any
parts of it that are exclusively for the
disadvantaged, though special
measures are taken to make sure that the
disadvantaged are served. It is a system
for everyone, just as all the parts of
the system already described are for
everyone. So the people who take
advantage of this system are not marked
by it as damaged goods. The skills they
acquire are world class,
clear and defined
in part by the employers who will
make decisions about hiring and
advancement.
- The
new general education standard becomes
the target for all basic education
programs, both for school dropouts and
adults. Achieving
that standard is the prerequisite for
enrollment in all professional and
technical degree programs. A wide
range of agencies and institutions offer
programs leading to the general education
certificate, including high schools,
dropout recovery centers, adult education
centers, community colleges, prisons and
employers. These programs are tailored to
the needs of the people who enroll in
them. All the programs receiving
government grant or loan funds that come
with dropouts and adults for enrollment
in programs preparing students to meet
the general education standard must
release the same kind of data required of
the postsecondary institutions on
enrollment, program description, cost and
success rates. Reports are produced for
each institution and for the system as a
whole showing differential success rates for each major
demographic group.
- The system is
funded in four different ways, all
providing access to the same or a similar
set of services. School dropouts below
the age of 21 are entitled to the same
amount of funding from the same sources
that they would have been entitled to had
they stayed in school. Dislocated workers
are funded by the federal government
through the federal programs for that
purpose and by state unemployment
insurance funds. The chronically
unemployed are funded by federal and
state funds established for that purpose.
Employed people can access the system
through the requirement that their
employers spend an amount equal to 1-1/2
percent of their salary and wage bill on
training leading to national skill
certification. People in prison could get
reductions in their sentences by meeting
the general education standard in a
program provided by the prison system.
Any of these groups can also use the
funds in their individual training
account, if they have any, the balances
in their grant entitlement or their
access to the student loan fund.
Labor Market Systems
- The
Employment Service is greatly upgraded
and separated from the Unemployment
Insurance Fund. All available
front-line jobs — whether public or
private — must be listed in it by
law. (This provision
must be carefully designed to make sure
that employers will not be subject to
employment suits based on the data
produced by this system — if they
are subject to such suits, they will not
participate.) All trainees in
the system looking for work are entitled
to be listed in it without a fee. So it
is no longer a system just for the poor
and unskilled, but for everyone. The
system is fully computerized. It lists
not only job openings and job seekers
(with their qualifications) but also all
the institutions in the labor market area
offering programs leading to the general
education certificate and those offering
programs leading to the professional and
technical college degrees and
certificates, along with all the relevant
data about the costs, characteristics and
performance of those programs — for
everyone and for special populations. Counselors are
available to any citizen to help them
assess their needs, plan a program and
finance it, and, once they are trained,
to find an opening.
- A system of labor
market boards is established at the
local, state and federal levels to
coordinate the systems for job training,
postsecondary professional and technical
education, adult basic education, job
matching and counseling. The rebuilt
Employment Service is supervised by these
boards. The system's
clients no longer have to go from agency
to agency filling out separate
applications for separate programs. It is all taken
care of at the local labor market board
office by one counselor accessing the
integrated computer-based program, which
makes it possible for the counselor to
determine eligibility for all relevant
programs at once, plan a program with the
client and assemble the necessary funding
from all the available sources. The same
system will enable counselor and client
to array all the relevant program
providers side by side, assess their
relative costs and performance records
and determine which providers are best
able to meet the client's needs based on
performance.
Some Common Features
- Throughout,
the object is to have a performance- and
client-oriented system, to encourage
local creativity and responsibility by
getting local people to commit to high
goals and organize to achieve them,
sweeping away as much of the rules,
regulations and bureaucracy that are in
their way as possible, provided that they
are making real progress against their
goals. For this to work, the standards at
every level of the system have to be
clear; every client has to know what they
have to accomplish in order to get what
they want out of the system. The service
providers have to be supported in the
task of getting their clients to the
finish line and rewarded when they are
making real progress toward that goal. We would sweep
away means-tested programs, because
they stigmatize their recipients and
alienate the public, replacing them
with programs that are for everyone, but also
work for the disadvantaged. We would
replace rules defining inputs with rules
defining outcomes and the rewards for
achieving them. This means, among other
things, permitting local people to
combine as many federal programs as they
see fit, provided that the intended
beneficiaries are progressing toward the
right outcomes (there are now 23 separate
federal programs for dislocated
workers!). We would make individuals,
their families and whole communities the
unit of service, not agencies, programs
and projects. Wherever possible, we would
have service providers compete with one
another for funds that come with the
client, in an environment in which the
client has good information about the
cost and performance record of the
competing providers. Dealing with public
agencies — whether they are schools
or the employment service — should
be more like dealing with Federal Express
than with the old Post Office.
This
vision, as I pointed out above, is consistent
with everything Bill proposed as a candidate. But
it goes beyond those proposals, extending them
from ideas for new programs to a comprehensive
vision of how they can be used as building blocks
for a whole new system. But this vision
is very complex, will take a long time to sell,
and will have to be revised many times along the
way. The right way to think about it is as an
internal working document that forms the
background for a plan, not the plan itself. One
would want to make sure that the specific actions
of the new administration were designed, in a
general way, to advance this agenda as it
evolved, while not committing anyone to the
details, which would change over time.
Everything
that follows is cast in the frame of strategies
for bringing the new system into being, not as a
pilot program, not as a few demonstrations to be
swept aside in another administration, but everywhere,
as the new way of doing business.
In the sections that
follow, we break these goals down into their main
components and propose an action plan for
each.
[Page: E1822] Major Components of the Program
The preceding section
presented a vision of the system we have in mind
chronologically from the point of view of an
individual served by it. Here we reverse the
order, starting with descriptions of program
components designed to serve adults, and working
our way down to the very young. HIGH SKILLS FOR
ECONOMIC COMPETITIVENESS PROGRAM Developing
System Standards
- Create National
Board for Professional and Technical
Standards. Board is private not-for-profit
chartered by Congress. Charter specifies
broad membership composed of leading
figures from higher education, business,
labor, government and advocacy groups.
Board can receive appropriated funds from
Congress, private foundations,
individuals, and corporations. Neither Congress
nor the executive branch can dictate the
standards set by the Board. But the
Board is required to report annually to
the President and the Congress in order
to provide for public accountability. It
is also directed to work collaboratively
with the states and cities involved in
the Collaborative Design and Development
Program (see below) in the development of
the standards.
- Charter
specifies that the National Board will
set broad performance standards (not
time-in-the-seat standards or course
standards) for college-level Professional
and Technical certificates and degrees in
not more than 20 areas and develops
performance examinations for each. The
Board is required to set broad standards
of the kind described in the vision
statement above and is not permitted to
simply reify the narrow standards that
characterize many occupations now. (More
than 2,000 standards currently exist,
many for licensed occupations —
these are not the kinds of standards we
have in mind.) It also specifies
that the programs leading to these
certificates and degrees will combine
time in the classroom with time at the
work-site in structured on-the-job
training. The standards
assume the existence of (high school
level) general education standards set by
others. The new standards and exams are
meant to be supplemented by the states
and by individual industries and
occupations. Board is responsible for
administering the exam system and
continually updating the standards and
exams.
Legislation
creating the Board is sent to the Congress in
the first six months of the administration,
imposing a deadline for creating the
standards and the exams within three years of
passage of the legislation.
Commentary:
The
proposal reframes
the Clinton apprenticeship proposal as a
college program and establishes a
mechanism for setting the standards for the
program. The
unions are adamantly opposed to broad based
apprenticeship programs by that name. Focus
groups conducted by JFF and others show that
parents everywhere want their kids to go to
college, not to be shunted aside into a
non-college apprenticeship
"vocational" program. By requiring
these programs to be a combination of
classroom instruction and structured OJT, and
creating a standard-setting board that
includes employers and labor, all the
objectives of the apprenticeship idea are
achieved, while at the same time assuring
much broader support for the idea, as well
as a guarantee that the program will not
become too narrowly focussed on particular
occupations. It also ties the Clinton
apprenticeship idea to the Clinton college
funding proposal in a seamless web. Charging
the Board with creating not more than 20
certificate or degree categories establishes
a balance between the need to create one
national system on the one hand with the need
to avoid creating a cumbersome and rigid
national bureaucracy on the other. This
approach provides lots of latitude for
individual industry groups, professional
groups and state authorities to establish
their own standards, while at the same time
avoiding the chaos that would surely occur if
they were the only source of standards. The
bill establishing the Board should also authorize the
executive branch to make grants to
industry groups, professional societies,
occupational groups and states to develop
standards and exams. Our assumption is that
the system we are proposing will be managed
so as to encourage the states to combine the last
two years of high school and the first two
years of community college into three year
programs leading to
college degrees and certificates. Proprietary
institutions, employers and community-based
organizations could also offer these
programs, but they would have to be
accredited to offer these college-level
programs. Eventually, students getting their
general education certificates might go
directly to community college or to another
form of college, but the new system should
not require that.
Collaborative
Design and Development Program
The
object is to create a
single comprehensive system for
professional and technical education that
meets the requirements of everyone from
high school students to skilled dislocated
workers, from the hard core unemployed to
employed adults who want to improve their
prospects. Creating such a system means sweeping aside
countless programs, building new ones,
combining funding authorities, changing
deeply embedded institutional structures, and
so on. The question is
how to get from where we are to where we want
to be. Trying to
ram it down everyone's throat would engender
overwhelming opposition. Our idea
is to draft legislation that would offer an
opportunity for those states — and
selected large cities — that are excited
about this set of ideas to come forward and
join with each other and with the federal
government in an alliance to do the necessary
design work and actually deliver the needed
services on a fast track. The legislation
would require
the executive branch to establish a
competitive grant program for
these states and cities and to engage a group
of organizations to offer technical
assistance to the expanding set of states and
cities engaged in designing and implementing
the new system. This is not the usual large
scale experiment, nor is it a demonstration
program. A highly regarded precedent exists
for this approach in the National Science
Foundation's SSI program. As soon as the
first set of states is engaged, another set
would be invited to participate, until most
or all the states are involved. It is a
collaborative design, rollout and scale-up
program. It is intended to parallel the work
of the National Board for College
Professional and Technical Standards, so that
the states and cities (and all their
partners) would be able to implement the new
standards as soon as they become available,
although they would be delivering services on
a large scale before that happened. Thus, major parts of the
whole system would be in operation in a
majority of the states within three years
from the passage of the initial legislation. Inclusion
of selected large cities in this design is
not an afterthought. We believe that what we
are proposing here for the cities is the
necessary complement to a large scale
job-creation program for the cities. Skill
development will not work if there are no
jobs, but job development will not work
without a determined effort to improve the
skills of city residents. This is the skill
development component. Participants
- volunteer
states, counterpart initiative for
cities.
- 15 states, 15
cities selected to begin in first
year. 15 more in each successive
year.
- 5 year grants
(on the order of $20 million per year
to each state, lower amounts
to the cities) given to each, with
specific goals to be achieved by the
third year, including program
elements in place (e.g., upgraded
employment service), number of people
enrolled in new professional and
technical programs and so on.
- a core set of
High Performance Work Organization
firms willing to participate in
standard setting and to offer
training slots and mentors.
- Criteria for
Selection
- strategies
for enriching existing co-op,
tech prep and other programs
to meet the criteria.
- commitment
to implementing new general
education standard in
legislation.
- commitment
to implementing the new
Technical and Professional skills
standards for college.
- commitment
to developing an outcome- and
performance-based system for
human resources development
system.
- commitment
to new role for employment
service.
- commitment
to join with others in national
design and implementation
activity.
- Clients
- young
adults entering
workforce.
- dislocated
workers.
- long-term
unemployed.
- employed
who want to upgrade
skills.
- Program
Components
- institute
own version of state
and local labor market
boards. Local
labor market boards to
involve leading employers,
labor representatives,
educators and advocacy group
leaders in running the
redesigned employment
service, running
intake system for all
clients, counseling
all clients, maintaining the
information system that will
make the vendor market
efficient and organizing
employers to provide job
experience and training slots
for school youth and adult
trainees.
- rebuild
employment service as a
primary function of labor
market boards.
- develop
programs to bring dropouts
and illiterates up to general
education certificate
standard. Organize local
alternative providers, firms
to provide alternative
education, counseling, job
experience and placement
services to these
clients.
- develop
programs for dislocated
workers and hard-core
unemployed (see below).
- develop
city- and state-wide programs
to combine
the last two years of high
school and the first two
years of colleges into
three-year programs after
acquisition of the general
education certificate to
culminate in college
certificates and degrees.
These programs should
combine academics and
structured on-the-job
training.
- develop
uniform reporting system for
providers, requiring
them to provide information in
that
format on
characteristics of clients, their
success rates by program, and
the costs of those programs.
Develop computer-based system
for combining this data at
local labor market board
offices with employment data
from the state so that
counselors and clients can
look at programs offered by
colleges and other vendors in
terms of cost, client
characteristics, program
design, and outcomes.
Including subsequent
employment histories for
graduates.
- design
all
programs around the
forthcoming general education
standards and the standards
to be developed by the
National Board for College
Professional and Technical
Standards.
- create
statewide program of
technical assistance to firms
on high performance work
organization and help them
develop quality programs for
participants in Technical and
Professional certificate and
degree programs. (It is
essential that these programs
be high quality,
nonbureaucratic and voluntary
for the firms.)
- participate
with other states and the
national technical assistance
program in the national
alliance effort to exchange
information and assistance
among all participants.
- National
technical assistance to
participants
- executive
branch authorized to
compete opportunity to
provide the following
services (probably using a
Request For
Qualifications):
- state-of-the
art assistance to the states
and cities related to the
principal program components
(e.g., work reorganization,
training, basic literacy,
funding systems,
apprenticeship systems, large
scale data management
systems, training systems for
the HR professionals who make
the whole system work, etc.).
A
number of organizations would
be funded. Each
would be expected to provide
information and direct
assistance to the states and
cities involved, and to
coordinate their efforts with
one another.
- it is
essential that the technical
assistance function include a
major professional
development component to make
sure the key people in the
states and cities upon whom
success depends have the
resources available to
develop the high skills
required. Some
of the funds for this
function should be provided
directly to the states and
cities, some to the technical
assistance agency.
- coordination
of the design and
implementation activities of
the whole consortium,
document results, prepare
reports, etc. One
organization would be funded
to perform this
function.
Dislocated
Workers Program
- new
legislation would permit combining all
dislocated workers programs at redesigned
employment service office. Clients would,
in effect, receive vouchers for education
and training in amounts determined by the
benefits for which they qualify.
Employment service case managers would
qualify client worker for benefits and
assist the client in the selection of
education and training programs offered
by provider institutions. Any provider
institutions that receive funds derived
from dislocated worker programs are
required to provide information on costs
and performance of programs in uniform
format described above. This consolidated
and voucherized dislocated workers
program would operate nationwide. It
would be integrated with Collaborative
Design and Development Program in those
states and cities in which that program
functioned. It would be built around the
general education certificate and the
Professional and Technical Certificate
and Degree Program as soon as those
standards were in place. In this way,
programs for dislocated workers would be
progressively and fully integrated with
the rest of the national education and
training system.
Levy-Grant
System
- this
is the part of the system that provides
funds for currently employed people to
improve their skills. Ideally, it should
specifically provide means whereby
front-line workers can earn their general
education credential (if they do not
already have one) and acquire
Professional and Technical Certificates
and degrees in fields of their choosing.
- everything we
have heard indicates virtually universal
opposition in the employer community to
the proposal for a 1-1/2% levy on
employers for training to support the
costs associated with employed workers
gaining these skills, whatever the levy
is called. We propose that Bill take a
leaf out of the German book. One of the
most important reasons that large German
employers offer apprenticeship slots to
German youngsters is that they fear, with
good reason, that if they don't volunteer
to do so, the law will require it. Bill
could gather a group of leading
executives and business organization
leaders, and tell them straight out that
he will hold back on submitting
legislation to require a training levy,
provided that they commit themselves to a
drive to get employers to get their
average expenditures on front-line
employee training up to 2% of front-line
employee salaries and wages within two
years. If they have not done so within
that time, then he will expect their
support when he submits legislation
requiring the training levy. He could do
the same thing with respect to slots for
structured on-the-job training.
College
Loan/Public Service Program
- we
presume that this program is being
designed by others and so have not
attended to it. From everything we know
about it, however, it is entirely
compatible with the rest of what is
proposed here. What is, of course,
especially relevant here, is that our
reconceptualization of the apprenticeship
proposal as a college-level education
program, combined with our
proposal that everyone who gets the
general education credential be entitled to a
free year of higher education
(combined federal and state funds) will
have a decided impact on the calculations
of cost for the college loan/public
service program.
Assistance
for Dropouts are the Long-Term Unemployed
- the
problem of upgrading the skills of high
school dropouts and the adult hard core
unemployed is especially difficult. It is
also at the heart of the problem of our
inner cities. All the evidence indicates
that what is needed is something with all
the important characteristics of a
non-residential Job Corps-like program.
The problem with the Job Corps is that it
is operated directly by the federal
government and is therefore not embedded
at all in the infrastructure of local
communities. The way to solve this
problem is to create a new urban program
that is locally — not federally
— organized and administered, but
which must operate in a way that uses
something like the federal standards for
contracting for Job Corps services. In
this way, local employers, neighborhood
organizations and other local service
providers could meet the need, but requiring local
authorities to use the federal standards would
assure high quality results. Programs for
high school dropouts and the hard-core
unemployed would probably have to be
separately organized, though the services
provided would be much the same. Federal funds would
be offered on a matching basis with state
and local funds for this purpose. These
programs should be fully integrated with
the revitalized employment service. The
local labor market board would be the
local authority responsible for receiving
the funds and contracting with providers
for the services. It would provide
diagnostic, placement and testing
services. We would eliminate the targeted
jobs credit and use the money now spent
on that program to finance these
operations. Funds can also be used from
the JOBS program in the welfare reform
act. This will not be sufficient,
however, because there is currently no
federal money available to meet the needs
of hard-core unemployed males (mostly
Black) and so new monies will have to be
appropriated for the purpose.
Commentary:
As you know very well,
the High Skills,
Competitive Workforce Act sponsored by Senators
Kennedy and Hatfield and Congressmen Gephardt and
Regula provides a ready-made vehicle for
advancing many of the ideas we have outlined. To
foster a good working relationship with the
Congress, we suggest that, to the extent
possible, the framework of these companion bills
be used to frame the President's proposals. You may not
know that we have put together a large group of
representatives of Washington-based organizations
to come to a consensus around the ideas in
America's Choice. They are full of energy and
very committed to this joint effort. If they are
made part of the process of framing the
legislative proposals, they can be expected to be
strong support for them when they arrive on the
Hill. As you think about the assembly of these
ideas into specific legislative proposals, you
may also want to take into account the packaging
ideas that come later in this letter.
ELEMENTARY AND
SECONDARY EDUCATION PROGRAM The situation
with respect to elementary and secondary
education is very different from adult education
and training. In the latter case, a
new vision and a whole new structure is required.
In
the former, there is increasing acceptance of a
new vision and structure among the public at
large, within the relevant professional groups
and in Congress. There is also a lot of existing
activity on which to build. So we confine
ourselves here to describing some of those
activities that can be used to launch the Clinton
education program.
Standard
Setting
Legislation to accelerate
the process of national standard setting in
education was contained in the conference report
on S.2 and HR 4323 that was defeated on a recent
cloture vote. Solid majorities were behind the
legislation in both houses of Congress. While
some of us would quarrel with a few of the
details, we think the new administration should
support the early reintroduction of this
legislation with whatever changes it thinks fit.
This legislation does not establish a national
body to create a national examination system. We
think that is the right choice for now.
Systemic Chance in
Public Education
The
conference report on S.2 and HR 4323 also
contained a comprehensive program to support
systemic change in public education. Here again,
some of us would quibble with some of the
particulars, but we believe that the
administration's objectives would be well served
by endorsing the resubmission of this
legislation, modified as it sees fit.
Federal
Programs for the Disadvantaged
The
established federal education programs for the
disadvantaged need to be thoroughly overhauled to
reflect an emphasis on results for the students
rather than compliance with the regulations. A
national commission on Chapter 1, the largest of
these programs, chaired by David Hornbeck, has
designed a radically new version of this
legislation, with the active participation of
many of the advocacy groups. Other groups have
been similarly engaged. We think the new
administration should quickly endorse the work of
the national commission and introduce its
proposals early next year. It is unlikely that
this legislation will pass before the deadline
— two years away — for the
reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary
Education Act, but early endorsement of this new
approach by the administration will send a strong
signal to the Congress and will greatly affect
the climate in which other parts of the act will
be considered.
Public
Choice Technology, Integrated Health and Human
Services, Curriculum Resources, High Performance
Management, Professional Development and Research
and Development
The restructuring
of the schools that is envisioned in
S.2 and HR 4323 is not likely to succeed unless
the schools have a lot of information about how
to do it and real assistance in getting it done.
The areas in which this help is needed are
suggested by the heading of this section. One of
the most cost-effective things the federal
government could do is to provide support for
research, development and technical assistance of
the schools on these topics. The new Secretary of
Education should be directed to propose a
strategy for doing just that, on a scale
sufficient to the need. Existing programs of
research, development and assistance should be
examined as possible sources of funds for these
purposes. Professional development is a special
case. To build the restructured
system will require an enormous
amount of professional development and the time
in which professionals can take advantage of such
a resource. Both cost a lot of money. One of the
priorities for the new education secretary should
be the development of strategies for dealing with
these problems. But here, as elsewhere, there are
some existing programs in the Department of
Education whose funds can be redirected for this
purpose, programs that are not currently informed
by the goals that we have spelled out. Much of
what we have in mind here can be accomplished
through the reauthorization of the Office of
Educational Research and Improvement. Legislation
for that reauthorization was prepared for the
last session of Congress, but did not pass. That
legislation was informed by a deep distrust of
the Republican administration, rather than the
vision put forward by the Clinton campaign, but
that can and should be remedied on the next
round.
Early
Childhood Education
The
president-elect has committed himself to a great
expansion in the funding of Head Start. We agree.
But the design of the program should be changed
to reflect several important requirements. The
quality of professional preparation for the
people who staff these programs is very low and
there are no standards that apply to their
employment. The same kind of standard setting we
have called for in the rest of this plan should
inform the approach to this program. Early
childhood education should be combined with
quality day care to provide wrap-around programs
that enable working parents to drop off their
children at the beginning of the workday and pick
them up at the end. Full funding for the very
poor should be combined with matching funds to
extend the tuition paid by middle class parents
to make sure that these programs are not
officially segregated by income. The growth of
the program should be phased in, rather than done
all at once, so that quality problems can be
addressed along the way, based on developing
examples of best practice. These and other
related issues need to be addressed, in our
judgment, before the new administration commits
itself on the specific form of increased support
for Head Start.
Putting
the package together:
Here
we remind you of what we said at the beginning of
this letter about timing the legislative agenda.
We propose that you assemble the ideas just
described into four high priority packages
that will enable you to move quickly on the
campaign promises:
- The
first would use your proposal for an
apprenticeship system as the keystone of
the strategy for putting the whole new
postsecondary training system in place.
It would consist of the proposal for
postsecondary standards, the
Collaborative Design and Development
proposal, the technical assistance
proposal and the postsecondary education
finance proposal.
- The
second would combine the initiatives on
dislocated workers, the rebuilt
employment service and the new system of
labor market boards as the Clinton
administration's employment security
program, built on the best practices
anywhere in the world. This is the
backbone of a system for assuring adult
workers in our society that they need
never again watch with dismay as their
jobs disappear and their chances of ever
getting a good job again go with
them.
- The
third would concentrate on the
overwhelming problems of our inner
cities, combining most of the elements of
the first and second packages into a
special program to greatly raise the
work-related skills of the people trapped
in the core of our great cities.
- The
fourth would enable you to take advantage
of legislation on which Congress has
already been working to advance the
elementary and secondary reform agenda.
It would combine the successor to HR 4323
and S.2 (incorporating the systemic
reforms agenda and the board for student
performance standards), with the proposal
for revamping Chapter 1.
Organizing
the Executive Branch for Human Resouces
Development
The
issue here is how to organize the federal
government to make sure that the new system is
actually built as a seamless web in the field,
where it counts, and that program gets a fast
start with a first-rate team behind it.
We
propose, first, that the President appoint a
National Council on Human Resources Development.
It would consist of the relevant key White House
officials, cabinet members and members of
Congress. It would also include a small number of
governors, educators, business executives, labor
leaders and advocates for minorities and the
poor. It would be established in such a way as to
assure continuity of membership across
administrations, so that the consensus it forges
will outlast any one administration. It would be
charged with recommending broad policy on a
national system of human resources development to
the President and the Congress, assessing the
effectiveness and promise of current programs and
proposing new ones. It would be staffed by senior
officials on the Domestic Policy Council staff of
the President.
Second,
we propose that a new
agency be created, the National Institute for
Learning, Work and Service. Creation of this agency
would signal instantly the new administration's
commitment to putting the continuing education
and training of the `forgotten half' on a par
with the preparation of those who have
historically been given the resources to go to
'college,' and to integrate the two systems, not
with a view to dragging down the present system
and those it serves, but rather to make good on
the promise that everyone will have access to the
kind of education that only a small minority have
had access to up to now. To this agency would be
assigned the functions now performed by the
assistant secretary for employment and training,
the assistant secretary for vocational education
and the assistant secretary for higher education.
The agency would be staffed by people
specifically recruited from all over the country
for the purpose. The staff would
be small, high powered and able to move quickly to implement
the policy initiatives of the new President in
the field of human resources development.
The
closest existing model to what we have in mind is
the National Science Board and the National
Science Foundation, with the Council in the place
of the Board and the Institute in the place of
the Foundation. But our council would be
advisory, whereas the Board is governing. If you
do not like the idea of a permanent Council, you
might consider the idea of a temporary
President's Task Force, constituted much as the
Council would be.
In this
scheme, the Department of Education would be free
to focus on putting the new student performance
standards in place and managing the programs that
will take the leadership in the national
restructuring of the schools. Much of the
financing and disbursement functions of the
higher education program would move to the
Treasury Department, leaving the higher education
staff in the new Institute to focus on matters of
substance.
In any
case, as you can see, we believe that some
extraordinary measure well short of actually
merging the departments of labor and education is
required to move the new agenda with
dispatch.
Getting
Consensus on the Vision
Radical changes in
attitudes, values and beliefs are required to
move any combination of these agendas. The federal
government will have little direct leverage on
many of the actors involved. For much of what
must be done, a new, broad consensus will be
required. What role can the new administration
play in forging that consensus and how should it
go about doing it?
At the
narrowest level, the agenda cannot be moved
unless there is agreement among the governors,
the President and the Congress. Bill's role at
the Charlottesville summit leads naturally to a
reconvening of that group, perhaps with the
addition of key members of Congress and
others.
But we think that having
an early summit on the subject of the whole human
resources agenda would be risky, for many
reasons. Better to build on Bill's enormous
success during the campaign with national talk
shows, in school gymnasiums and the bus trips. He
could start on the consensus-building progress
this way, taking his message directly to the
public, while submitting his legislative agenda
and working it on the Hill. After six months or
so, when the public has warmed to the ideas and
the legislative packages are about to get into
hearings, then you might consider some form of
summit, broadened to include not only the
governors, but also key members of Congress and
others whose support and influence are important.
This way, Bill can be sure that the agenda is
his, and he can go into it with a groundswell of
support behind him.
•
• •
That's
it. None of us doubt that you
have thought long and hard about many of these
things and have probably gone way beyond what we
have laid out in many areas. But we hope that
there is something here that you can use. We
would, of course, be very happy to flesh out
these ideas at greater length and work with
anyone you choose to make them fit the work that
you have been doing.
Very
best wishes from all of us to you and Bill.
[signed:
Marc]
Marc
Tucker
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