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Courtesy reprint for the Community Action Partnership |
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ETR is published |
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Courtesy reprint for the Community Action Partnership |
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ETR is published |
If you thought TANF regulations and workforce development program performance standards were complex, try crafting national goals to end poverty. That was part of the task at a symposium on poverty and economic security held by community action agency activists in the Washington, D.C., area.
In a two-and-a-half-year process begun last September with meetings at the local and state levels and expected to be completed in May 2009, the Washington-based Community Action Partnership and its 1,000 loosely affiliated agencies, have set themselves the task of crafting “a collaborative approach” to end poverty through a “new national conversation.”
The first national event in the process took place May 29-31 in Bethesda, Md., one of two national meetings planned, along with 55 local and state meetings involving 1,100 CAAs and 50 state associations at an estimated cost of $1.02 million, according to a concept paper distributed at the event.
The spirit of the conversation was illustrated by Ona Porter, executive director of the New Mexico Association of Community Action Agencies, who said that “community action has been pushed to become a part of the safety net.” She first took her job with the understanding that she had to change that, warning the board who was weighing her application, “If you want to be true to the original purpose, ending poverty, I’m with you, but not if you want to stay in the place to which you’ve been pushed.”
Porter also underscored the nonpartisan aims of the CAA network in stating that she had deliberately avoided involving her state’s governor, Bill Richardson, an announced Democratic presidential candidate, in the dialogue about antipoverty goals.
The likely substance came in part from two possible models for national goals, accountability measures and strategies: the Oregon Benchmarks and the Minnesota Milestones.
“I was looking for a different way,” explained Benchmarks author Wayne Fawbush, who spent 16 years in the Oregon State Legislature, an endeavor that he described as involving “an epidemic of myopia” and “a long line of special interests” whose lobbyists always stood ahead of advocates for basic human needs. “I was a farmer. I counted everything. In a legislative environment, you can’t count anything.”
Fawbush wanted to know how the policy crops planted in his bills were doing. “Good conversations are great, but good benchmarks are better,” he said.
In 1989, Oregon was recovering from a recession and, after asking citizens “what they wanted their state to look like,” engaging employers and convincing the governor to chair a committee to oversee the blueprint, the legislature approved benchmarks in the original Oregon Shines report. The paper concluded that to complete globally the Beaver State had to shift its traditionally resource-based economy to one more knowledge-based.
“We fooled our legislative colleagues,” Fawbush recalled, adding that under the legislation the lawmakers were inserted into the state planning as part of the normal budget process. “Every two years they had to certify progress in these goals.”
Oregon Shines II, adopted in 1997, came from a state riding the technology boom and adopted a broader approach. The first set of goals had focused on “a value-adding, diversified, export-driven economy” brought about by public and private investment in education, infrastructure and social support. Now policymakers homed in on “quality jobs,” “safe, caring and engaged communities” and the environment.
To assure progress in the first area, the plan called for evaluation based on particular figures, among them the state’s 8th-grade reading and math skills, the number of Oregonians with bachelor’s degrees, industry research and development spending and per capita personal income in Oregon relative to the nation. Similarly, caring communities would be evaluated in terms of outcomes concerning their high school dropout rates; 8th-grade use of alcohol, illicit drugs and cigarettes; proportion of the population in poverty; Oregonians without health insurance; and other benchmarks.
Oregon officials have begun work on the third set of benchmarks, due by 2009.
In contrast to Fawbush’s pioneering work, Minnesota Sen. Tarryl Clark (D-Dist 15), a former executive director of the Minnesota Community Action Partnership elected to state office in December 2005, uncovered that her state’s goals in a 2002 report, Minnesota Milestones, “had been swept under the carpet.” Elected assistant majority leader, she decided to reclaim the document.
“These are our official goals. This is current law,” she argued. “We need to be getting this into the discussion of the budget.”
Begun in 1991 under Gov. Rudy Perpich (D), the Milestones report sets 70 progress indicators that policymakers must use to determine whether the state is achieving 19 publicly determined goals in human needs, public safety, economic outlook and the environment.
For example, progress in the welfare to work goal that “people in need will receive support that helps them live as independently as they can” is gauged by the percentage of welfare households with an adult working. According to the Minnesota Department of Human Services, the percentage “increased dramatically” after welfare reform in 1996, although the trend was already upward in the early 1990s. The rate rose from 26 percent in 1997 to 43 percent in 2000. Starting in 2001, however, it began to dip, at first slightly, to 39 percent.
One indicator related to workforce development is the percentage of two-year public college graduates obtaining a job related to their training within nine months of graduation. The Minnesota Department of Administration states that the placement rate rose almost 8 percentage points, from a 1990 level of 83.8 percent to 91.6 percent in 1999. No newer figures are provided.
About ETR - The Employment & Training Reporter is a weekly trade journal covering the field of workforce development with a special emphasis on public sector programs since 1969. For a free three-issue trial subscription to the Employment & Training Reporter, visit http://www.miipublications.com
