110th Congress Begins
The 110th Congress officially began last week with the swearing in of members of the House and Senate on Thursday, January 4th. In a historic moment for the United States, Rep. Nancy Pelosi became the first female leader of House of Representatives.
Dept. of Ed. Scales Back State Accountability for Gender Equity
New guidance from the Department of Education would drastically roll back States' accountability for preparing women and girls for non-traditional employment.
In December, the Department released the second edition of the Perkins IV State Plan Guide, outlining the different items that States must submit in their 1-year or 6-year career and technical education plans, due to the Department by April 16, 2007. The State Plan Guide would make a significant, negative change to the primary accountability mechanism for gender equity in Perkins law – the core performance indicator on non-traditional training.
The non-traditional performance indicator was included in the 1998 Perkins law to ensure a significant focus on nontraditional training and employment in each state. Congress mandated that States be held accountable for progress in two areas: student participation in programs that lead to nontraditional employment and student completion of these programs.
The changed rules outlined by the Department of Education would hold States accountable for only one performance level, most likely by bundling separate participation and completion scores into one score.
The Department of Education's proposal is unacceptable, especially since the law on this issue is unchanged from Perkins III. Separate measures were created to ensure that sufficient numbers of students are being recruited to programs that are non-traditional for their gender and that students in non-traditional training programs persist in and complete these programs. In addition, two separate indicators are necessary to determine whether critical interventions – such as professional development, mentoring, parental involvement, and peer support programs – occur between recruitment and completion.
If States are struggling to meet performance levels on one or both non-traditional measures, the solution is not to roll back accountability, but to provide States with technical assistance that helps them to be more successful in ensuring that women enroll and succeed in non-traditional programs.
Fortunately, the Guide is not yet final. OVAE will be accepting responses to these new changes through January 15. Women Work! strongly encourages each of its members to speak out on this unacceptable rollback of State accountability for gender equity in career and technical education.
Click here for model comments that you can customize and submit to OVAE.
Click here for a full copy of the revised State Plan Guide.
House to Vote on Minimum Wage Increase on Jan 10!
Call Your Representatives on Tuesday, January 9th and tell them to give women working for low-wages the raise they deserve.
The House of Representatives will vote Tuesday on a bill to increase the federal minimum wage from the current $5.15 an hour to $7.25 an hour over two years. Because there is so much support for the bill it will not go through the standard process of committee approval, but head straight to the House floor.
Raising the minimum wage is an important first step towards economic self-sufficiency for millions of American women and families. An estimated 14% of all working women – over 9 million women – would benefit directly from an increase in the minimum wage to $7.25 per hour. This includes: women who currently earn the minimum wage, women who earn between $5.15 and the new minimum wage, and women who earn slightly more than $7.25 an hour whose employers wish to maintain wage differentials between entry level workers and more experienced workers.
The minimum wage increase is expected to pass fairly easily in the House. However, a large and bipartisan win is needed to build momentum for passage of a “clean” minimum wage bill in the Senate, where some Republican Members are pushing for unrelated amendments that would stall and could ultimately kill a minimum wage increase.
WIA Reauthorization Begins Again This Year; DOL Releases Proposed Rule Changes
Because Congress was not able to complete work to reauthorize the Workforce Investment Act (WIA) by the end of 2007, the process of renewing and improving this program will need to begin again in the new Congress. Congress has struggled for several years now to pass WIA – the largest single source of federal funding for workforce development activities – which first expired on September 30, 2003.
In the absence of a reauthorization bill, the Department of Labor has proposed new regulations that would address some of its priorities and other issues that have emerged during reauthorization debates.
Proposed changes include:
- Sequential Delivery of Services. The proposed changes would essentially eliminate the sequential delivery of services by clarifying that individual job seekers do not need to “pass through” different levels of service in order to prove their need for the next level of service. Training and services can be provided in whatever order makes the most sense for an individual job seeker – concurrently, sequentially, or otherwise.
- Authority of State Workforce Investment Boards. The proposed regulations would give State Workforce Investment Boards (WIBs) authority to create policies on the operation of the State's One-Stop system, which Local WIBs would implement.
- WIB Memberships. The regulations also suggest that the DOL is considering reducing the number of required representatives from certain areas that must be included in membership for State and local Workforce Investment Boards. Currently, each board is required to have two or more members from the following categories: labor representatives, youth representatives, and workforce development experts (which includes CEOs of community colleges and community based organizations.)
- Training Provider Eligibility. The proposed rule changes would also give States greater flexibility in establishing the process by which training programs are approved for the official State list of eligible training providers.
Comments on the proposed regulations are due to the DOL by February 20th, 2007. Women Work! encourages members – especially those organizations who work closely with WIBs and/or One-Stops – to weigh in on these significant changes to the Workforce Investment System. Stay tuned for additional analysis and a copy of our comments in the coming weeks.
FY2007 Funding Bills Will Not Include Earmarks
The 109 th Congress adjourned without completing its work on most FY2007 spending bills, instead passing yet another Continuing Resolution (CR), or temporary funding extension to keep the government running.
This latest CR will run through February 15th. Because the new Congress will have very little time to complete the current year's funding bills before beginning work on next year's budget, the new Appropriations Chairman Sen. Robert Byrd and Rep. David Obey have announced that they will simply extend FY2006 funding levels for most programs. However, some programs in the Labor-HHS-Education bill – which allocates federal dollars to job training, education, child care assistance, and other federal programs – may see a slight increase.
While it is unclear exactly how the final funding package will turn out, one aspect is fairly certain. The bill will not contain earmarks, funds set aside by Members of Congress for individual projects, locations, or institutions. Some local women's programs rely on funding from earmarks to provide critical services, especially in the absence of dedicated state or federal funding streams. Unfortunately, those programs who worked with their Members of Congress to secure earmarks in this year's Labor-HHS-Education bill will need to make alternative plans for their upcoming budgets.
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