Expand the Role of Education and Training

The 1996 welfare reform's "work first" emphasis was, in part, a reaction to the perceived shortcomings of the 1988 Family Support Act (FSA) reforms, which had strongly encouraged education and training in the hope that it would help people get better jobs. To some extent, this swinging pendulum of action and reaction in federal policy mimics the movement between a work-first and an education-first approach that has characterized policymaking in state after state. At its extreme, "work first" becomes "work only." When administrators realize that not everyone can get a job, the pendulum swings back toward the point where everyone is assigned to education and training, few people are getting jobs, costs are high - and the pendu-lum again begins its return swing.

The challenge for policymakers is to find ways to maintain the employment orientation that underlies reform's success, while opening the door to additional education and training. Results from carefully designed tests of job-search-first programs, education-first programs, and mixed-strategy programs provide strong support for the idea that education and training have an important, although probably subsidiary, role to play in the future of welfare reform. The evidence indicates that both job-search-first and education-first strategies are ef-fective but that neither is as effective as a strategy that combines the two, particularly a strat-egy that maintains a strong employment orientation while emphasizing job search first for some and education first for others, as individual needs dictate. There is little evidence to support the idea that states should be pushed to one or the other extreme.

Welfare reform's success in reducing caseloads and increasing employment adds new urgency to this debate. These accomplishments have led states to begin experimenting with job retention and advancement strategies to help former recipients further secure their foothold in the labor market and reduce their long-term reliance on other government benefits such as Food Stamps and child care assistance. Investments in customized training or community college coursework to increase skills - sometimes in concert with release time from work - are among the many strategies states are beginning to use TANF resources to support. Back to summary of policy implications