Arizona has plenty of schools, colleges, training programs and employers working on career preparation, but no shared plan for how they fit together, according to a new paper from the nonprofit Education Forward Arizona.
The paper, the second installment of the group's whitepaper series on education and the workforce and produced with Collaborative Communications Group, looks at how four other states coordinate education and job training and what Arizona might borrow. Its considerations for Arizona were laid out by Rich Nickel, the nonprofit's president and CEO, and Ricardo Lopez Valencia, its senior vice president for education and workforce alignment.
Four jobs a coordinating system does
The authors describe four functions they found in states with formal systems: making someone clearly responsible for overseeing the whole effort, tying statewide goals to regional work, using evidence to make decisions, and producing results that students, employers and communities can see.
They argue that the work of planning, analyzing data and reporting to the public should have a lasting, identifiable home, whether that is a state agency, a coordinating body or a partnership, and that regional partners need room to adapt statewide goals to local conditions.
What other states do
The authors chose Washington, Texas, North Carolina and Florida as case studies because each wrestles with issues Arizona shares, and they say the comparison is not a ranking. It also notes that research has not shown any single structure, on its own, by itself lifts a state's education levels, jobs, wages or economy.
- Washington gives planning, program evaluation and performance reporting to a state agency, the Workforce Training and Education Coordinating Board. It runs Career Bridge, a public website listing thousands of programs with completion, employment and earnings data. The board can point out programs that underperform and suggest fixes, but it has no power to force schools or colleges to act.
- Texas uses the governor's Tri-Agency Workforce Initiative, in which the state's education agency, higher education coordinating board and workforce commission keep their own powers while sharing priorities, funding approaches and data. Much of the work is done regionally, by groups that bring together schools, colleges, workforce boards and employers; research cited in the paper puts the number of partnerships in the Texas Regional Pathways Network at 33.
- North Carolina has a goal in state law for 2 million North Carolinians between 25 and 44 to have a quality degree or credential by 2030, backed by a nonprofit and a public dashboard that tracks 18 indicators.
- Florida has a review committee at CareerSource Florida that decides which credentials make the state's master list, which can affect eligibility for some state and federal funding.
Arizona's own goal
Arizona's Achieve60AZ goal, launched in 2016, aims for 60% of Arizonans between 25 and 64 to have a degree, certificate or license by 2030. The paper notes it was never written into state law and says it lacks the accountability that a statute or state funding would provide.
The paper does not recommend copying any one state. Instead, it says the state should start by deciding which coordinating functions need a statewide home.
Sources
queencreektribune.com
