The next reauthorization of the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA) provides an opportunity for federal policymakers to harness the power of evidence and data to significantly improve workforce outcomes for our nation’s youth, adult, and dislocated workers.
Results for America’s new report – Moneyball for Workforce Development – highlights a series of policy recommendations to help federal policymakers ensure that federal workforce funds promote innovation, continuous improvement, and the scaling of proven workforce solutions.
More specifically, the report recommends:
- Defining and prioritizing evidence of effectiveness in WIOA grant programs;
- Setting aside 1% of WIOA funds for program evaluations;
- Creating a new Workforce Innovation Fund; and
- Highlighting how state and local government workforce agencies are already building and using evidence to improve workforce outcomes.
These recommendations, if implemented, could enable the reauthorization of WIOA to catalyze a truly evidence-driven public workforce system.
Moderated by Results for America’s Vice President of Workforce Development, Celeste Richie, this conversation with Frieda Molina, Deputy Director for the Low-Wage Workers and Communities Policy Area at MDRC, and Allison Jones, Deputy Secretary of Policy and Planning in the Office of Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf explores the promising evaluation findings from the WorkAdvance study and the impressive strides that the state of Pennsylvania is making in building a more evidence-based and equitable public workforce system. Both of these initiatives are featured in RFA’s Moneyball for Workforce Development report which highlights 8 policy recommendations to help federal policymakers ensure that federal workforce funds promote innovation, continuous improvement, and the scaling of proven workforce solutions.