Experts Outline Strategies for Effective Job Training As Congress Considers Requests for More Funding

WASHINGTON, D.C., March 17, 2000—In a new book from the Urban Institute Press, some of the nation's leading labor market and human resources experts offer guidance for increasing the effectiveness of publicly funded job training. Their suggestions in Improving the Odds, edited by Burt Barnow and Christopher King, come as Congress prepares to consider the Clinton administration's request for higher spending on training and employment programs, especially those for disadvantaged youth.

Clinton is asking Congress to increase funding for Youth Opportunity Grants by 50 percent to $375 million in FY 2001. These grants provide at-risk youth with programs that emphasize job placement, work experience through community service, and additional education. The White House is also requesting $255 million next year for employment and training services for welfare families, noncustodial fathers, and other low-income parents under the proposed Fathers Work/Families Win Initiative.

Are these and other government-funded training programs, such as the Job Corps, on the right track? Improving the Odds provides a framework for evaluating program effectiveness in the context of welfare reform, with its mandate to move people from welfare to work, and changes in job training programs under the 1998 Workforce Investment Act. "There have been major changes in the nation's income support and training systems, and major changes in the economy," noted Burt Barnow, associate director for research at the Institute for Policy Studies at Johns Hopkins University. "It's more important than ever to examine how we train people."

"One of the debates going on around the country is what to do about growing inequality in terms of earnings and wealth. Training can potentially play an important role in that," added co-editor Christopher King, director of the Center for the Study of Human Resources at the University of Texas. "This book offers a review of different strategies that might be successful."

In Improving the Odds, Barnow and King highlight key strategies recommended by more than a dozen experts who contributed to the book. Specifically, they suggest that:

• Publicly funded training programs should respond to the needs of local labor markets. Good labor market information and a focus on high-demand occupations are critical.
• Employment and training programs for disadvantaged groups should focus on occupational training rather than immediate employment.
• Employers should be solidly engaged in training programs: in curriculum design, provision of trainers and equipment, and assistance in identifying emerging occupations and employment opportunities.
• Other key strategies for successful programs involve integrating basic skills training with occupational skills training and providing support services, such as need-based training payments, access to affordable child care and transportation, and post-employment services.

Improving the Odds provides an in-depth look at key areas that have been the focus of government funding efforts. In a chapter on welfare employment efforts, Urban Institute researcher Demetra Nightingale and Lisa Plimpton of the Center for Law and Social Policy review evaluations of 14 separate programs for welfare recipients going back to the late 1970s. They find that welfare-to-work programs that focus exclusively on placing recipients without skills training in jobs will have modest positive impacts, but will not move welfare families permanently out of poverty. Such programs may be cost effective in the short run, but their impact disappears in three to five years.

A chapter by Robert Lerman, a leading labor economist and senior researcher at the Urban Institute, shows that strategies highlighted in Improving the Odds are clearly relevant to the design of successful programs for out-of-school youth. Public investment in youth goes "almost entirely to the college-bound," he writes, partly because evaluations of national training programs for out-of-school youth and major demonstration projects have not shown significant impacts on post-program earnings. While noting these discouraging results, he points to several local training sites that appear successful and might serve as models to pursue at the national level. These, he writes, link occupational skills training to job market demands; integrate basic skills training with occupational training; use individual case management to mentor participants; and make a commitment to removing barriers to finding and keeping a job.

Other chapters of Improving the Odds cover training programs for dislocated workers, methodologies for determining the effectiveness of training programs, training customized for employer needs, and the challenge of adapting publicly funded programs to a changing labor market. "We're urging people to take a good look at training and at what works," Barnow stressed. "Our contributing authors find that long-term training can be effective. If you don't give people the skills they need, they are not going to be able to become self-sufficient."

Improving the Odds, Increasing the Effectiveness of Publicly Funded Training, edited by Burt S. Barnow and Christopher T. King, ISBN 0-87766-689-X, $24.00, is available for purchase online at www.uipress.org, or by calling toll-free 1-877-UIPRESS.

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