Congress Renews Focus on Efforts To Reauthorize WIOA Starting With Tomorrow’s House Hearing
Overview
In the 118th Congress the House and Senate Education Committees came extremely close to passing legislation to reauthorize The Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act but were thwarted at the end of the session by concerns raised by incoming President Trump and Elon Musk. This year, with a new Congress and Republican control of both the White House and Congress, the Education Committees look to complete efforts to update this important education and labor legislation which was last reauthorized eleven years ago (2014).
As a precursor to the likely introduction in the near future of a comprehensive WIOA reauthorization bill, tomorrow House Higher Education and Workforce Development Subcommittee Chairman Burges Owens (R-UT) is hosting a hearing entitled, “Strengthening WIOA: Improving Outcomes for America’s Workforce.”
Scheduled to testify at the hearing are:
- Dr. Stephen Moret, President and CEO, Strada Education Foundation
- Ms. Molly Dodge, Senior Vice President of Workforce and Careers, Ivy Tech Community College
- Mr. Robert Sainz, President, Board of Directors, National Youth Employment Coalition
- Mr. Nicholas Moore, Director, Office of Education and Workforce Transformation
If you are interested in tuning in to tomorrow’s hearing, it begins at 10:15 AM ET and can be viewed on the Committee’s YouTube page (house.us19.list-manage.com/track/click?u=242c4a1c0560b7d513ce7962f&id=08598e51fd&e=f6794059b8) .
What’s Next
As the hearing title makes clear, CSPEN believes that a major focus of the hearing will be the continued use of outcomes as the primary assessment mechanism for many of the WIOA programs. Last year’s proposed legislation built upon the use of outcomes as the framework not only for measuring program success, but also the continuation of funding for the state and local Boards – which favors our community as we have always been measured based upon our outcomes.
CSPEN will provide more details on the legislation and movement of the House and Seante in seeking to complete reauthorization this year.
