The Dear Hillary Letter on Education
The "Dear Hillary" letter, written on Nov. 11, 1992 by Marc Tucker,
president of the National Center on Education and the Economy (NCEE), lays
out a plan "to remold the entire American [school] system" into "a seamless
web that literally extends from cradle to grave and is the same system for
everyone," coordinated by "a system of labor market boards at the local,
state and federal levels" where curriculum and "job matching" will be
handled by counselors "accessing the integrated computer-based program."
Tucker's plan would change the mission of the schools from teaching
children academic basics and knowledge to training them to serve the global
economy in jobs selected by workforce boards. Nothing in this comprehensive
plan has anything to do with teaching schoolchildren how to read, write, or
calculate.
Tucker's ambitious plan was implemented in three laws passed by Congress
and signed by President Clinton in 1994: the Goals 2000 Act, the
School-to-Work Act, and the reauthorized Elementary and Secondary Education
Act. These laws establish the following mechanisms to restructure the
public schools:
1.Bypass all elected officials on school boards and in state legislatures
by making federal funds flow to the Governor and his appointees on
workforce development boards.
2.Use a computer database, a.k.a. "a labor market information system," into
which school personnel would scan all information about every schoolchild
and his family, identified by the child's social security number: academic,
medical, mental, psychological, behavioral, and interrogations by
counselors. The computerized data would be available to the school, the
government, and future employers.
3.Use "national standards" and "national testing" to cement national
control of tests, assessments, school honors and rewards, financial aid,
and the Certificate of Initial Mastery (CIM), which is designed to replace
the high school diploma.
Designed on the German system, the Tucker plan is to train children in
specific jobs to serve the workforce and the global economy instead of to
educate them so they can make their own life choices.
The original Tucker letter was typed on the letterhead shown below.
The text of the letter as inserted into the Congressional Record follows:
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
SUITE 500
39 STATE STREET
ROCHESTER, NY 14614
WASHINGTON OFFICE:
SUITE 1020
1341 G STREET, NW
WASHINGTON, DC 20005
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, Hillary 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:
1.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.
2.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.
3.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.
4.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, combing high academic standards with the ability to apply what one
knows to real world problems, and qualifying all students to 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 pregressive, 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 quality 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.
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 loads 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.
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.
The 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
OUT; 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 academic
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
nonresidential 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 Congressman 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 or 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 student
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 the 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:
1.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.
2.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.
3.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.
4.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 ides 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.
MARC TUCKER.
END