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Career Development
GLOSSARY
Baldrige quality criteria Criteria,
administered by the National Institute of Standards and Technology,
that an organization may use to improve overall performance in leadership,
strategic planning, customer and market focus, information and analysis,
human resource focus, process management, and business results.
Career and technical education
(CTE) Programs to help students obtain knowledge and
skills leading to a first job or post-secondary technical education.
Competency-Based Curriculum (CBC)
Fund An initiative that will make funds available
to train providers to develop competency-based curricula with measurable
outcomes.
Economic development job training
(EDJT) Customized training to meet specific business
needs; supported by Michigan Department of Economic Development
grants.
Education advisory group (EAG)
A body comprising local school and college officials
and business people that advises the local workforce development
board on local education needs.
Michigan Technical Excellence Program
(M-TEP) An industry-led initiative to recognize high-quality
technical-education programs having high levels of placement and
employer satisfaction.
Michigan Works! “One-stop”
training/job-placement centers run by the workforce development
boards in their service areas.
Workforce development boards (WDBs)
Part-time, private-sector entities that plan and oversee
workforce development activities in the state's 25 workforce regions.
www.TalentFreeway.org An
on-line service that helps (1) Michigan residents find training
and jobs and (2) employers find workers.
BACKGROUND
[APRIL 1, 2002] In the past decade Michigan government has taken several
major steps to address businesses' need for a skilled workforce
and residents' need for good jobs.
- In 1993 the Governor's Workforce Commission was
created, which, among its other tasks, assessed the extent to
which federal, state, and local programs were meeting the state's
workforce needs.
- In 1994 the Michigan Jobs Commission was created,
and many economic- and job-development programs from various state
agencies were consolidated into the new agency.
- In 1996 workforce development boards (WDBs) were
established around the state to administer career-development
programs in their service areas.
- In 1999 the governor split the Jobs Commission
into the Michigan Economic Development Corporation (MEDC) and
the Michigan Department of Career Development (MDCD). The MEDC
assumed the commission's economic-development functions, and the
MDCD was assigned responsibility for workforce development, the
subject of this piece.
- In 2002 the Workforce Commission was replaced with
a 53-member Workforce Investment Board (27 members from business
groups and the balance from the legislature, local government,
youth programs, education, and unions) and charged with reviewing
the state's workforce-investment system, designating local workforce-investment
areas, developing formulae to distribute federal and state workforce
funds, and developing a statewide employment-statistics system.
The MDCD's mission is “to develop and continuously
improve a system to produce a workforce with the skills needed to
maintain and enhance the Michigan economy.”
The department first consisted of three agencies:
Office of Workforce Development, Michigan Rehabilitation Services,
and Employment Service Agency. A later executive order shifted the
offices of Career and Technical Education Services, Postsecondary
Services, and Adult Education into the MDCD. The department now
employs 1,100 and oversees the distribution and use of $200 million
in education funds, $500 million in federal funds, and $35 million
from the state General Fund.
State government's career-related activities are grouped
in this one department, which has wide authority and is responsible
for
- helping Michiganians choose careers and providing
education and training to equip them for those careers;
- helping schools give students a solid foundation
in core subjects of reading, writing, mathematics, science, and
social studies;
- informing Michiganians about the workplace and
how to acquire academic and career skills through career academies,
technical-education centers and programs, cooperative education,
apprenticeships, internships, school-based enterprises, and community
colleges;
- facilitating student and worker certification that
is based on competency and skill standards endorsed by employers;
- providing labor-exchange and placement services
that help workers find jobs and employers find skilled workers;
and
- assessing student progress toward obtaining good
jobs or further technical education.
Much of the work of the department is carried out
through the network of 25 locally appointed, part-time, workforce
development boards. They receive state and federal funds through
the MDCD, which they use to run the 102 local “one-stop centers”
(Michigan Works! agencies) and the Building Strategic Partnerships
for Career Development initiative (a local and statewide strategic-planning
process). The WDBs must provide certain services and programs in
their service areas, but they develop their own as well—examples
are computer training and permanent and temporary job placement.
Local education advisory groups (EAGs), to which members
are appointed by local WDBs, partner with the boards. They primarily
approve plans and recommend strategies for career-education programs—secondary,
career and technical, and adult—in the WDB service region.
Together, these bodies—the MDCD, WDBs, and EAGs—oversee
Michigan's career development system of worker training, learning,
and placement. The system is divided into three sub-systems.
- Career preparation focuses on schools and
colleges, to ensure that Michigan students obtain needed academic,
technical, and work-behavior skills.
- Workforce development targets workers in
transition; the Michigan Works! agencies offer adult education,
job training (through the federal Job Training Partnership Act
and the 1998 Workforce Investment Act), trade-adjustment programs,
vocational rehabilitation, Work First public-assistance programs,
and job-finding services.
- Worker enhancement is a skills and credentialing
system geared toward upgrading skills that workers need for current
or future jobs. It includes employer-based training and customized
training funded by state Economic Development Job Training (EDJT)
grants.
In its first year of operation (FY 1999–2000),
the MDCD launched a number of new initiatives.
- Operation Fast Break is an eight-week, accelerated-learning
program that helps students enter career-track work or college
and integrates math, reading, computer technology, and employability-skills
instruction.
- Partnership for Adult Learning comprises
private- and public-sector adult-learning programs for which funds
are allocated to the WDBs by the MDCD on a formula based on the
number of service-area residents (1) without a high school diploma,
(2) with limited English proficiency, or (3) receiving public
assistance.
- The Competency-Based Curriculum Fund is
a three-year, $30 million program providing financial incentives
to public and private schools and education agencies to create
business-education partnerships.
- WorkKeys is a workplace skills-assessment
method used nationwide by employers, students, workers, and educators.
A WorkKeys assessment can determine whether a person has the fundamental
academic and work skills needed to qualify for career-entry work
or training.
The MDCD has set five goals, with accompanying objectives,
and developed a five-year strategic plan to further them.
- Goal 1: Develop an integrated career-development
system through industry-education partnerships at the state, regional,
and local levels. The objectives are to
- provide technical assistance and resources
to WDBs and educational organizations to enable them to conduct
strategic planning in their region;
- direct state and federal discretionary funds
to WDBs to help them and their partners to implement their
goals and objectives; and
- explore ways to increase worker-training opportunities,
including on-line courses, particularly those in small businesses
and critical industries.
- Goal 2: Develop an effective, integrated,
career decision-making and preparation system for youth and adults.
The objectives are to
- increase the number of pupils participating
in Career Pathways schools and programs and develop program
standards that ensure high quality;
- expand Operation Fast Break;
- implement the Career Education Consumer Report
system, to provide information on education and training programs,
including their enrollment and success rates;
- integrate separate Web-based services into
a single Career Guidance System (CGS) for those seeking information
about careers, education, and jobs;
- conduct a career-guidance campaign offering
incentives to young people to enter fields deemed critical
to the Michigan economy;
- improve the Michigan Talent Bank (the state's
Internet-based employment-service system, which holds nearly
a half-million resumes and lists more than 22,000 job openings,
accessible through www.TalentFreeway.org), making it
easier for people to use it to create resumes, post job orders,
and conduct job and worker searches;
- help students with disabilities enter and succeed
in high-demand training areas; and
- explore teacher-certification alternatives
and ways to improve teacher training to make it more experience-based,
competency-based, computer-assisted, and relevant to career
development.
- Goal 3: Develop an industry-led skill-credentialing
and quality-management system that will provide employers with
a steady supply of well-prepared workers. The objectives are
to
- implement the Michigan Technical Excellence
Program (M-TEP) to recognize technical-education programs
that enjoy high placement levels and employer satisfaction;
- encourage the use of WorkKeys; and
- implement the Competency-Based Curriculum Fund.
- Goal 4: Inform and educate the public
about Michigan's career-development system and how to access and
use it effectively. The objectives are to
- Focus public attention on the career-development
system, services, and opportunities it offers to employers
and job seekers;
- provide students and their parents with the
information critical to successful career planning; and
- improve internal MDCD communications and staff
orientation.
- Goal 5: Develop the MDCD into a high-performance
agency by building Baldrige quality criteria into internal and
external operations.
DISCUSSION
Until recent years, the state's job-creation, -training,
and -placement system was very fragmented. The myriad programs were
run by many agencies at the state and local levels. The reorganization
of the past decade was an effort to build a comprehensive, coherent
system based on local control and employer leadership.
All state job-development programs have been pulled
into one department (the MDCD), programming control has been turned
over to local business people, educators, and others, and the federal
and state revenue streams are directed into agencies and programs
that have specific service missions.
Supporters of the new configuration say that Michigan
is unique among the states in the level of local control it confers;
the system works slightly differently, but similarly, in every region.
They also believe that one of the system's greatest strengths is
that it is “employer-driven.”
Critics contend that while the new system has consolidated
many programs, it also has usurped, duplicated, or made more cumbersome
some programming. They point to the MDCD's involvement in education
programming as an example.
Critics also believe that the department is too
focused on getting people into jobs and not enough on helping them
keep the jobs and advance. Even after former welfare recipients
enter the program, they say, it is difficult for a new worker to
put together enough education and training to advance out of the
relatively small number of entry-level jobs available. Many former
welfare recipients, they add, are in this predicament because they
do not speak English well if at all, but the program does not allow
English-as-a-second-language classes to count, as other skill-building
classes do, toward participation in work-and-learn programs.
See also Higher Education Funding; Welfare
Reform: TANF Reauthorization.
FOR ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
Michigan Department of Career Development
Victor Office Center, 7th Floor
201 North Washington Square
Lansing, MI 48913
(517) 241-4000
(517) 373-0314 FAX
www.michigan.gov/mdcd
Michigan League for Human Services
1115 South Pennsylvania, Suite 202
Lansing, Michigan 48912
(517) 487-5436
(517) 371-4546 FAX
www.milhs.org
CONTENT CURRENT AS OF APRIL 1,
2002
© 2002 Public
Sector Consultants, Inc.
Sponsored by the Michigan Nonprofit Association and the Council
of Michigan Foundations
www.michiganinbrief.org
 
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