Government Training Programs – A History of Failure (updated 17sep2011)

George Rebane

[This is the transcript of my radio commentary broadcast on 16 September 2011 over KVMR-FM.]

President Obama’s latest economic stimulus program – the half trillion dollar Ameircan Jobs Act – also contains the next tranche of funding for the next government training program that supersedes his 2009 Green Summer Jobs Corps for youth.  The new program will be modeled after Georgia Work$ - that’s spelled with an ending dollar sign.  Well Georgia Work$ doesn’t actually work, but its dollar sign does indicate that it is just the latest of government training programs that have cost taxpayers a bundle, and to have failed utterly to do anything close to what they were set up to do.

To understand this brand new jobs training programs, we have to go way back to 1962 when Congress gave us the Manpower Development and Training Act (or MDTA).  It was supposed to train workers who were losing jobs to advancing technology.  It quickly became a bureaucratic mess that performed so poorly, that the Dept of Labor had to fudge its performance statistics.  The GAO or Government Accounting Office blew the whistle on them two years later.  But true to bureaucratic and political inertia, the MDTA continued operating and wasting money for a total of eleven years before its plug was pulled.

James Bovard in the WSJ reports that “a 1969 government study warned that teens in federal jobs programs ‘regressed in their conception of what should reasonably be required in return for wages paid’.”  In short, that program and similar ones to follow also taught young people bad work habits.

The time for this commentary does not let me go into the gory details in the litany of government training programs.  But it is important to at least list this trail of federally funded follies.  After the Manpower Development and Training Act crashed and burned, Congress passed the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act (or CETA) in 1973.  This farce went on for 15 years, and was simply a massive step’n fetchit hire program for helpers to various government agencies.  No statistics whatsoever were kept by the government, and in the mid-80s an Urban Institute study concluded that young men going through the program suffered “significant earnings losses” and women obtained no benefit at all in their follow-on employments.

After CETA became the next national ‘laughing stock’, Congress replaced it with the Job Training Partnership Act in 1982 - typical of Congressional wisdom, if something doesn’t work, then do it again and spend a lot more money doing it.  The Job Training Partnership Act turned out so badly that, according to the Labor Department’s inspector general, more of its ‘graduates’ wound up on welfare than similar control groups without the training which included how to apply for all kinds of government handout programs.  These people received the finest education available on how to become lifelong welfare kings and queens.

Better late than never, after eleven years of the JTPA, the Labor Department discovered in 1993 that the training "actually reduced the earnings of male out-of-school youths” by 10%.  Thirty years into constant failures, do you think that any politician inside the Beltway had learned anything.  Not a chance.

Instead we saw Congress replace the JTPA in 1998 with something called the Workforce Investment Act, and on this round the Labor Department by law was required to report on its effectiveness in 2005.   Now I know by this time you’re too smart to hold your breath for such an early look/see after seven years of spending, pardon me, ‘investing’ in more federal training.  No sirree, the Labor Department instead told Congress that it will see what it can do by 2015, ten years late, in reporting on the latest disaster, and seventeen years after the cash spigots on the program were opened.

We already know the Workforce Investment Act is the latest in this series of failures by just having witnessed President Obama re-investing in jobs training not once, as in 2009, but just last week introducing us to a federal lookalike of Georgia Work$, the newest program that started this little walk down memory lane.

In the end it’s actually much worse than that.  Today there are 47 overlapping federal workforce training programs costing $18B annually, none can demonstrate that they actually don’t harm their trainees, forget about helping them.  And with this record, our government continues to pour money into this bottomless pit for the only visible purpose of keeping numb-brained bureaucrats employed, and re-electing politicians who tout these programs to voters innocent of history.  For more, please read Bovard’s article available through the transcript to this commentary.

On a happier note, I’m pleased to announce that KVMR News Director Paul Emery and I will be having a “civil discussion of current events that spans the political divide” featured as The Great Dialogue by the Nevada County Tea Party Patriots.  This event will held be at the Nevada County Horseman’s Club in Grass Valley on Tuesday the 27th of September at 6:30PM.  We will be appearing as private individuals not representing KVMR or the Tea Party Patriots.  Please join us for this free admission event.

My name is Rebane, and I also expand on these and other themes in my Union columns, and on georgerebane.com where this transcript appears.  These opinions are not necessarily shared by KVMR.  Thank you for listening.

[17sep2011 update]  I have been informed that KVMR chose to delete the paragraph beginning with "On a happier note ..." and the commentary was broadcast without that paragraph.  The ostensible reason was that it promoted an event for which KVMR was not a sponsor.  I will have more to say about this after talking to the folks at the radio station.

Comments

[Russ Steele]

George,

We have a Work Force Investment Act failure right here in Nevada County - The Apple Worm Farm. The Butte County PIC was funded through the WFIA. If you will remember the Worm Farm was to produce ten living wage jobs. The money vanished along with the Worm Farm and the jobs.

[George Rebane]

Absolutely right Russ. None of the lefties want to talk about the worm farm or actually showing any reality of sustainable small farms paying a 'living wage' (the new darling of local progressives). UC Davis is just down the road, and there are plenty of profs there who are expert in running the numbers on what kinds of ag businesses could make a go of it in Nevada County. No one wants to talk to them, because they'd be blown out of the water.

[D. King]

O.T.

LOL!

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/thu-september-15-2011/that-custom-tailored-obama-scandal-you-ordered-is-finally-here

[Douglas Keachie]

Yup, government can't train anybody, it's impossible for them to succeed, even with the help of Ronald Reagan as a trainer, which is why we lost WWII und jetzt wir sprechen nur Deutsch.

[George Rebane]

DougK makes an important point here. American military training is comprised of the finest training delivered through the most effective programs in the world, and has been that way since some of the first missteps during the early part of WW2. I have been trained in its programs and have subsequently been an instructor in those same programs. In addition to 'standard' teaching, these programs effectively teach young men (and now women) to think and do with complex equipment in mentally and physically stressful environments. And they are NOTHING like what has been going on in government training programs – both public K-12 schools and adult vocational – since the early 1960s. Darum kennen die heute nicht Englisch oder Deutsch. (The careful reader will note that these adult remedial and vocational programs were the subjects of my critique which stands as posted.)

To these plaudits I would add the after-hours schools on military bases which service members who didn’t finish high school or sought college credits attended. Jo Ann and I had the opportunity to volunteer in such a program while I was on active duty.

Military education is different because it is based totally on meritocracy, defined educational objectives, structured instruction, and testing, testing, testing. All of which is covered by a sane program of record keeping and student performance reporting. Instructors are invited to innovate, and a well-oiled feedback procedure is in place to spread the word about what works better. Peer recognized self-esteem enters the equation only after the student has demonstrated proficiency, until then its best to consider yourself a double dummy and listen up.

[Douglas Keachie]

And as an example of the connection between the economy and school success, I present you with:

http://www.rgj.com/article/20110914/NEWS02/110914061/Washoe-graduation-rate-increase-linked-economic-recovery-Reno-area?odyssey=mod|newswell|text|Local%20News|s

If you have a good infrastructure at home and in society in general, you get better results. I note that in the military, except on the battlefield, nobody is having to concern themselves with a roof over their head, food in the belly, or entertainment at PX movie house (video rental these days I suppose). The taxpayer sees to it that those items are amply covered.

[D. King]

New jobs training program, what are we starting with?

Here is John Stossel's take(part 2).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGNz0Y9vrBo

[George Rebane]

Indeed DougK, and to that we have to add that the students are motivated and disciplined - i.e. the classroom environment is markedly more conducive to learning.

[Russ Steele]

I went through Air Force training schools from Aviation Cadets (Navigation) to graduating from Air Command and Staff College. The one component through out was discipline. It was learn, or else. And the else was elimination from the program.

I also spend several years in the on base college programs from multiple Universities. I always ask my instructors/professors why they chose to teach after hours courses on base? The answer was almost universal -- after hours students were dedicated, disciplined and challenging. The instructors enjoyed the intelligent exchanges with the students, many who could share some life changing experiences, or who had been to countries under discussion. My calculus Professor was from the Air Force Academy, on a one year “bluing tour.” The professors had to spend time in the field learning what it was like to be in a combat unit.

I remember at Air Command and Staff, when a young newly ordained instructor was trying to teach the class about managing a squadron. After about 30 minutes in to his presentation a Major in audience jumped up and asked the instructor how large a unit had he managed. When the instructor professed to not having managed any unit, the Major fired back, “you do not know what the hell your are talking about, I came here from the managing a 900 man squadron”, and got up and walked out. About 15 other with direct experience got up and left the lecture hall. The next day the new instructor had been a squadron commander and we never saw the wet behind the ears instructor again. Most likely re-assigned to an operational unit for some experience.

The two most important things I learned in Air Force Schools was situation awareness and problem solving skills. Recognize the real problem, not the symptoms but the real problem, and then solve it with your tool sets. If only our schools would teach these skills. But, to do that would produce students who could challenge their instructors. Who would want that?

[Todd Juvinall]

I remember when Clinton, after shutting down the timber industry to protect the spotted owl, offered a few bucks to retrain the thousands upon thousands of timer folks. They retrained them into janitors for the government buildings that became the biggest employers in rural counties since the high pay timber jobs were no more. The system is totally broken.

One only needs to see the results of the federal "ownership" of the lands here in California. The counties where the urbanites play, ours, is now locked down to any resource extraction and fed and state employees are the biggest employers. What is wrong with that picture. Maybe we should take back our counties from them and they can be retrained.