Education and Labor Officials Pledge Closer Cooperation on Job Training

Washington — Appearing before the Senate education committee today, a pair of top officials from the Education and Labor Departments pledged to work together to better align federal education and labor programs.

“One criticism that we hear repeatedly is that we have asked local areas to partner with various stakeholders, and yet inside the Beltway we are conducting siloed business as usual,” said Jane Oates, an assistant secretary of labor and former top education aide to the committee’s chairman, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts.

Ms. Oates said representatives of both departments had already met several times, echoing comments made on Wednesday by Martha J. Kanter, the under secretary of education, at a conference of state higher-education leaders in Santa Fe, N.M.

Ms. Oates, who was joined by Ms. Kanter at today’s hearing, also cited a recent joint letter to states and colleges as the first fruit of the departments’ collaboration. In the letter, the agencies asked states to continue unemployment benefits for workers who enroll in college and encouraged colleges to factor in the financial situation of unemployed applicants when awarding aid to them.

Ms. Kanter and Ms. Oates said they would also work with the Departments of Health and Human Services, Defense, and Veterans Affairs to reauthorize, or renew, the Workforce Investment Act, the major law governing job-training and education programs. The law was enacted in 1998 and expired in 2003.

“We have a unique opportunity to better align and integrate programs within and across federal agencies, states, and localities to improve education and employment outcomes,” said Ms. Kanter.

As an example, she called for marrying adult-literacy and job-training programs, so that literacy training pertains to the prospective job. Ms. Oates agreed, and said that remedial education should also be embedded in job training.

“We can’t tell someone who wants to be a nurse that it will take two years of remedial work before they get credit” toward a degree, she said. “They’re going to lose their taste for nursing. We need to integrate job skills and adult basic ed.”

Ms. Oates said the agencies would also team up to streamline the reporting requirements for participants in the job-training system.

“Far too many people are wasting their time answering a question for me one way and for Martha another way,” she said. “We can’t afford to waste people’s time doing duplicative paperwork.” —Kelly Field