Grubb, W. N., Badway, N., Bell, D., Chi, B., King, C., Herr, J., Prince, H., Kazis, R., Hicks, L., & Taylor, J. C. (1999). Toward order from chaos: State efforts to reform workforce development systems (MDS-1249). Berkeley: National Center for Research in Vocational Education, University of California.

SECTION  3

STATE POLICY AND LOCAL RESPONSES:
THE BALANCE OF STATE AND LOCAL INITIATIVES

      Workforce development programs are delivered at the local level. No matter how coherent and rational state policies may be, they make little difference if local programs do not implement these changes. In this section, therefore, we examine first how states have tried to implement their policies at the local level, and then examine what changes have taken place locally in response to state initiatives based on our examination of two localities in each of the states we visited.

      A decade ago, the most active forms of coordination among workforce development programs seemed to originate at the local level. Sometimes these efforts were helped along by state and federal requirements for joint planning and local advisory committees, to be sure, but they were dependent more on the ways local administrators and institutions saw their interests in either joining forces or remaining independent.[23] In such cases, successful coordination was idiosyncratic rather than systematic, occurring in a few local communities--the ones consistently held up as exemplars--while many more simply failed to create much coordination at all. The question, then, is whether the more recent efforts of states to create more coherent workforce development systems have had more effect at the local level, and whether we can detect any tendency for more local communities to enhance their coordination as a result of state policies. This is, of course, a much larger question than we can answer by examining only two communities within each state, and for many states it is still too early to expect many local responses to state initiatives. Nonetheless, information from the local level provides some indication of which state policies are more and less likely to have local effects. And from studying the interactions between local and state governments, it seems apparent that the structure of local and state efforts is moving in the direction of greater coordination, albeit slowly, fitfully, and with complaints on both sides.

A Continuum of State Strategies

      The different states that we examined vary substantially in the degree of direction over local programs. Some of them are--whether from a philosophical belief or political necessity--highly respectful of local autonomy, and have tried to improve workforce development through additional funding, exemplars and technical assistance, and other efforts that change the local culture around education and training programs by clarifying the local self-interest in doing so. Others, often more insistent that education and training are state rather than local prerogatives, have introduced more directive measures intended to force localities to comply with state policy--that is, more stick than carrot, more top-down than bottom up. The states we have examined fall roughly into three different strategies: (1) laissez-faire approaches; (2) "centrally guided, locally directed" efforts; and (3) directive state policies.

Laissez-Faire Approaches

      Some states have done little to encourage local programs to coordinate in any way. Because we deliberately chose a sample of states known to be actively reforming their workforce development systems, a laissez-faire approach is rare among these ten states. However, Arizona provides a good example of a state that has let local communities set their own direction. Aside from the implementation of one-stop centers, which provide vehicles for joint planning iflocal programs choose to do so, there isn't much state direction. Laissez-faire approaches generate the results that have been typical in most states: local initiative in coordination, with wide variations among communities in the extent of joint activities and planning.[24]

"Centrally Guided, Locally Directed" Efforts

      By far the most common approach to local implementation in the ten states we examined was the approach that Oklahomans describe as centrally guided but locally directed. This approach tends to avoid mandates on local governments, recognizing that local autonomy is both necessary and politically unavoidable. However, the state provides some guidance and encouragement (including fiscal encouragement) for local communities to plan and coordinate their programs. The Oklahoma effort is marked by voluntarism at both the local and the state levels because of the belief that enforced consolidation merely creates new layers of bureaucracy, conflict, and resistance. The Workforce Quality Compact supports the state vision that changes will be centrally guided but locally directed. Central guidance means that state members (state agency heads) will try to adhere to the principles of the Compact "before they start another program or run another contract," and the state agencies will provide "a great deal of training, of field support for the paradigm shift away from the traditional, and a willingness to promote and publicize the positive aspect of that change," as one state official mentioned. Local direction is necessary because local providers need to be responsive to local employers in reshaping their programs because communities across the state are very different, and because reform "would only work if it was bottom up instead of top down because if they're not interested in doing this, it will never happen." Ultimately, the state-level Compact in Oklahoma expects direction from local Compacts in the form of suggestions for changes at the state level to allow coordinated delivery at the local level. The state has hired two "evangelists" to travel around the state to raise awareness of the need for greater coordination. However, there are currently few mechanisms to require local Compacts to be formed; and local Compacts, taking their cue from state efforts, will bring together education, training, employment, and welfare providers but without directive power. We can anticipate that--like in Oregon--enthusiasm for these efforts will vary considerably around the state.

      In Oregon, the state is trying to establish a culture of coordination without sanctions in which expectations and peer pressure encourage local communities. The state's effort to develop a comprehensive data system and the Oregon Benchmarks may make it more obvious when a community is falling behind its peers, though there are no coercive mechanisms. Its theory of change, relatively simple to express though difficult to implement consistently, supports locally planned and administered programs. The primary strategy to change locally is peer pressure--from employers, other service providers, and even other regions--with the help of state benchmarks and performance measures that create measures of outcomes and progress visible to all. But if a region chooses not to link its programs, there are no sanctions; if it fails to meet performance targets, the response is technical assistance rather than reduced funding. The idea is "not to force people, but [to] have people want to do it," as one state administrator declared, because "if they don't buy it, they won't do it." State leadership is important, to be sure, to communicate to business leaders that government is serious about change, and to create the expectations--communicated through benchmarks and performance standards--for improvement, but local control is important because "needs are local and resources are local." The downside of this policy is that there has been uneven implementation of state directives. State administrators estimated that about half the state's regions embraced the purposes of the regional Workforce Quality Councils (WQCs) in some meaningful way. Other localities were just "dadgum resistant," not wanting the state to tell them what to do, or perceiving coordination to be unnecessary.

      Massachusetts has taken the same approach, though some feel that the balance between the local initiative and the state's role has gone too far in the local direction; for example, when the state allowed centers to develop their own data systems, the result was a set of incompatible systems that prevent comparisons among regions. Similarly, in Maryland, Governor Schaefer's Workforce Investment Board did not dictate who provided services locally, but, rather, encouraged collaborative planning. Particularly when new money became available, common planning was encouraged--or, as one local policymaker commented approvingly, "the state demanded planning," trying to bridge the "we/them" mentality in local programs. However, under Governor Glendenning, the Governor's Workforce Investment Board (GWIB) has been substantially weakened, and in one sense Maryland has gone back to being a laissez-faire state. One local administrator mentioned that the state had created "no new barriers, but no new support either" for local coordination, so that "the state allows locals to work out integration issues themselves"; in the creation of one-stop centers, the state has disbanded the state team promoting greater integration of one-stop services and has stopped "beating locals into one-stop formation." However, the state is also moving toward more market-oriented mechanisms that are in some ways more directive, as we will see shortly.

      Iowa's approach has been similar, though it has been trying to use state policy to createlocal action where little has existed before (at least in some regions). The hope is that the new Regional Advisory Boards (RABs) create a new set of stakeholders who will drive developments first at the local level, and then at the state level. As one state official commented, the goal is "to give the local center operators, the Regional Advisory Boards, and the coordinating services in each region a sack of money and tell them, `you invest this where you think it's needed most in your community'"--though subject to state approval. In part, this appears to have given many outlying regions in the state a greater chance for autonomy. As one local RAB member mentioned,

I think one of the most innovative things the state has done was the fact that they decided it was time to consolidate efforts and services and the fact that they broke the state down into regions. We always feel like, outside of Des Moines, that if something's a statewide effort, it means it's in Des Moines; otherwise, you see a little dribble here and there. So I think the fact that they did give regional control and regional input as to how the system is set up, how it will be monitored, is probably the best innovation in 20 years.

Evidently states can manage to delegate their powers, and in creating an effective workforce development system this may be virtually necessary.

      Other states have relied on supportive mechanisms and encouragement: As we have pointed out (see Box I.2), North Carolina has made extensive use of technical assistance. The state Workforce Quality Compact in Oklahoma hired staff to support the development of local Compacts. In Maryland, one purpose of the GWIB under the previous governor was to encourage collaborative planning and decisionmaking at the local level, particularly by encouraging collaborative planning for new programs, but the state did not dictate who would provide services. This worked well as long as programs were expanding, but the momentum of such efforts diminished when the 1990-1992 recession made less state funding available for new programs; as one local administrator noted, "joint planning for existingprograms didn't work as well." More recently, Maryland has started to use financial incentives and performance measures to drive local action, though these more directive efforts are just beginning.

      In these essentially voluntary efforts, newinitiatives can still carry the state's imprint, even if the state shies away from forcing oldprograms to coordinate. Thus, one-stop centers have provided opportunities to create local agencies concerned with coordination from the outset, and STW grants have also enabled states to provide incentives--particularly funding--for local collaboration even where none has existed before. Oregon and Oklahoma, with their essentially voluntary efforts, have also incorporated the one-stops into their broader efforts to increase coordination--though one-stops have also provided opportunities for old turf battles to re-ignite. In Maryland, the collaborative planning process has continued to operate with planning for one-stop centers and STW. But using new programs to carry the burden of coordination is not necessarily an effective approach because new programs, by definition, represent a small fraction of overall resources in workforce development. In addition, some new programs do not last long and, therefore, do not sustain collaboration.

Directive State Policies

      Some states have developed policies that are more directive, and--intentionally or not--require local communities to respond in various ways. The market-like mechanisms adopted in Florida and elsewhere are good examples: while performance-based funding was initially voluntary, participation will be mandatory in 1999 and will apply to 15% of state funding for community colleges and technical centers. Local institutions have no choice about responding to the incentives embedded in the funding system. As one local WDB director noted, "We're really just getting hit over the head. PBIF [Performance-Based Incentive Funding] and other measures are really driving performance. We have to do it."

      Similarly, provisions allowing programs to compete with one another set in motion a process of competition that local officials cannot control, and they may be forced into competitive relationships with one another. In Massachusetts, for example, the Michigan Jobs Commission's (MJC's) requirement that local Regional Employment Boards (REBs) use an open and competitive bidding process to establish one-stop centers not only created conflict among local agencies and providers, but also resulted in winners and losers. In part as a result of this local dissatisfaction, Massachusetts has modified its stance, allowing local REBs to choose either a competitive or a collaborative model for establishing one-stops. They are, thus, forced into competitive relationships. In Michigan, the state has required local workforce boards to contract out all services, generating local opposition as well. As one local official noted,

One of the state policies to ensure that a workforce board has complete autonomy in making policy is that they will sever relationships with providing direct services to clients. Our staff used to provide many services out of our office. The state then said we could not do it anymore because there was a conflict of interest. But what is upsetting is that they did not give credible institutions an opportunity to prove that they could do it without entertaining the appearance of a conflict of interest. So we had to farm out services to inexperienced agencies within the community to run the system; a viable delivery system was, in essence, torn apart. You can expect to see a drop in performance just because of the transition.

      When states have developed more directive policies, they are sometimes trying to change business as usual. For example, requiring local boards to subcontract large amounts of education and training accomplishes two goals: (1) it replaces the tendency to fund small, narrowly targeted mandates (like training for a specific entry-level occupation) with the resources to accomplish broader changes; and (2) it can break up conflicts of interest when members of a PIC represent providers bidding for funds. These are cases where local boards have ceased to represent the interest of local clients and employers, and state activities are intended to instigate more effective practices.

      In the current climate of devolution of authority to more local levels, there has been little appetite for more directive state policies aside from market-like mechanisms and the large exception of welfare policy, which we examine shortly. However, policymakers do recognize that the approach of central guidance and local direction allows some regions to coordinate while others do not. In Oregon, for example, local officials noted that if the state really wanted to achieve coordination more uniformly, "it's going to have to mandate it" in order to prod the more resistant individuals and organizations; mere encouragement might take too long compared to firmer state leadership and more "top down" strategies. Similarly, policymakers in Oklahoma have voiced some uncertainty about the effectiveness of purely voluntary efforts. As one local official noted,

The one big problem with the Compact right now, from what we've seen, is you've still got at the state and federal levels a lot of money in the form of grants. . . . As long as they do that and the state doesn't take a hard stand and say, "no more monies unless you cooperate," it's not going to work. And every time we turn around, there's going to be something else going on we didn't know about.

But the overall tenor of most state activities has been to forego such directive efforts on the grounds that they cannot be very effective anyway--at least not at this stage of system-building.

      The one great exception to the avoidance of directive mechanisms has come in welfare policy. States that adopted aggressive "work first" programs (like Florida, Massachusetts, Michigan, Texas, and Wisconsin) have given local agencies no choice about adopting such policies. Typically, the only activities that count as required work in these states are short (e.g., two-week) job search assistance activities followed by work placements--so local authority to provide longer education and training, or to tailor programs to the needs of individuals, or to accommodate individuals who have already enrolled in education or training programs and want to complete them is completely curtailed. In turn, this kind of state directive has alienated a number of local programs that have been committed to providing more education and training for welfare recipients, not less. In Michigan, one local official noted the conflict between the state's "work first" policy and its commitment to local autonomy:

When the state introduced its Work First program, it was pretty clear to most of us at the local level that there was a strong political agenda. The rule was to get people placed as quickly as possible with as little cost as possible. The state didn't care what type of job it was. That really went against the grain of what the board has been working on for the last 20 years, which is to provide quality services to individuals and to assist clients in obtaining long-term, self-sustained employment by providing good assessments up-front and addressing the barriers. Obviously this is an instance where the WDBs are not having much autonomy.

Similarly, officials at the local level in Texas objected to the state's "work first" policy. One complained that "the biggest complaint [from employers] has been that TWC sends people without a lot of skills." Another administrator at a local job center noted the conflict between local and state policy:

I don't think that is doing a service to the employer or to the individual. . . . And if I had that attitude of not wanting to seek retention on the job, I would lose the employers who are the customers of the center--and I can't afford to lose them. The [local] board will fire [us] if we're just throwing bodies at employers.

In Maryland, SDAs administered job training for welfare recipients for many years; but under the recent governor and "work first," the state decided that SDAs would no longer play that role. In turn, some SDAs have become highly critical of the recent welfare "reforms," arguing for the need for pre- and post-employment training despite the state's commitment to "work first." As one local administrator noted, the state in the past developed a coordinated workforce development system; now "the state has forced a parallel delivery system, one for welfare recipients and one for everybody else."

      It's still too soon to know what the resolution of this conflict will be; obviously the future of welfare "reform" will be a hotly debated topic at all levels. For the moment, however, changes in welfare-to-work programs have generated some of the most heated conflicts between local programs and state policy, and some of the most obvious contradictions between state commitment to local autonomy and the prescriptiveness of state welfare policy.

State Creation of Local Autonomy

      In between the two extremes of local control and more directive state policies, Iowa is an example of a state where policy has been centrally developed, though it is trying to create a more locally directed system that can respond to local conditions flexibly. One goal of recent legislation is to have the RABs create their own policies, and over time develop a new set of stakeholders who will then drive state policy--instead of having state policy drive local decisions. This overall plan has won some support from the local level--exemplified by the RAB member quoted above who said that "the fact that they did give regional control and regional input as to how the system is set up, how it will be monitored, is probably the best innovation in 20 years."

      However, realizing this vision will take a long time and will require substantial changes in the roles of local administrators. Because there is no history of local autonomy (except in community colleges), the RABs must be developed and nurtured to fulfill their new responsibilities. For their part, RAB members complained about inadequate funding for the requirements imposed by the state, lack of authority over programs (like the inability to force programs to co-locate in one-stop centers), different schedules and conceptions of purposes coming from different state programs, and the special problems of location and distance in rural areas--all except the last being problems created by the persistence of staterules and practices despite a decision to develop more localautonomy. Of course, the process of developing local autonomy will require a series of small tests of local decisions against state policies. With stability and time, such a locally driven system might develop, though changes and inconsistencies in state policies can easily undermine such a vision.

Local Anticipation of State Changes

      States can have some influence on local activities, even in the absence of encouragement, simply by discussing potential changes in state policy. In Michigan, for example, Governor Blanchard's efforts to create the Michigan Opportunity System (MOS) in the late 1980s and into 1990 caused many local areas to begin moving toward greater cooperation in anticipation of changes. Then, when Governor Engler unexpectedly won election in 1990, the MOS itself was eliminated but the local planning created the conditions for further local coordination, particularly around one-stop centers. Now, some localities, having moved to greater local coordination, perceive the state as "heavy-handed" and overly directive--particularly in the areas of "work first," competitive subcontracting, and other market-oriented reforms. However, others seem pleased with what the state has done. Thus, the train of local planning, once set in motion, may generate its own momentum independently of state efforts. Something similar has happened in those states, like Texas, that anticipated federal consolidation: their coordination efforts live on despite the failure of federal legislation.

      The independence of local efforts can also be seen in Maryland, which, like Michigan, reversed its state efforts. The local planning set in motion under Governor Schaefer seems to have had a lasting influence, particularly in local planning of STW and one-stop centers; several local policymakers we interviewed were indifferent to, and not fully aware of, changes at the state level and were continuing with local cooperation despite any changes. But others resented the fact that the state is "regressing" in its efforts; as one complained, the state, "which not too many years ago was seen clearly as a leader in workforce development, is going in the wrong direction." The comment already cited--that "integration takes energy" or "some force field" to maintain it--also came from a local Maryland official. Without the governor's commitment and backing, therefore, "things go back to the way they were."

The Special Role of One-Stop Centers

      Finally, federally funded one-stop centers have played a role in promoting local coordination, almost despite state policy. In many cases, state policy about one-stop centers has not been especially active. But the very process of forcing programs to come together, even around the provision of minimal information, has forced local programs to work together around a specific project,in ways that consultation requirements and sign-offs never have. The very act of agreeing to share information and location exceeds any previous level of communication; joint planning is a new activity for many programs, and a foundation on which other activities can be built. As a community college administrator in North Carolina noted about the local one-stop,

We've been living together before, but now we're married. There are different rules now. In a marriage, one set of strengths complements weaknesses in another partner. We use informal negotiations to reach decisions. Our matured partnerships overcome making sure everyone contributes exactly the same amount.

And where one-stops have moved beyond information provision to co-location, then the extent of interaction has increased even more. In this way, federal policy has contributed to greater coordination at the local level. As a local official in Michigan noted,

No Wrong Door is really forcing us allto sit down at the table and figure out how we can maintain a system and still provide what we think are essential services to a universal population with reduced budgets. . . . In a year or two down the line, I think that we'll really be doing more for the population with less effort and they'll still get the quality that they want.

      Now, it is easy to oversell the reality of one-stop centers. In some places, they provide information only in "self-service" mode, often in computer-based systems that are unlikely to be useful to unsophisticated consumers. In other cases, they have been so engulfed by responsibilities for welfare recipients that they are likely to be shunned by other potential clients and employers. But where states have managed to consider them more expansively, their potential for knitting together local programs--including those like community colleges and adult education that are poorly integrated at the state level--is substantial. The Newmark Center in Oregon, described above in Section I, provides an excellent example.

Local Responses: The Varieties of Resistance and Resentment

      When we examine local responses to state initiatives, we obviously find a continuum. Some communities are not particularly interested in cooperation and coordination, and of course they resist whatever the state is trying to do--particularly if the state uses any directive mechanisms. On the other hand, communities that are trying to coordinate actively are likely to be ahead of the state, and they may resent state policy for failing to clear away the inevitable barriers to coordination, or for failing to give them the freedom to cooperate more completely. There is a broad range of local disagreement with what states are trying to do--therefore, although it is important to identify the stage of local coordination before interpreting local reactions.

      In Florida, for example, there is noticeable resentment from local providers toward the state's imposition of performance-based funding, which is clearly interpreted as coercive. The same feelings, about the state being "heavy-handed," exist in Michigan toward the requirements for subcontracting services and in Massachusetts toward the requirements that job centers be created through competitive bidding. In Texas, local programs have resented the late and inconsistent state guidance about implementation, stringent contracting rules, slow turnaround on contracts, and the overbearing "work first" approach for all education and training.

      In Wisconsin, local reaction to state changes has been decidedly mixed, and there is considerable "state-bashing" by localities. One state official characterized it as an attitude of "leave the money at the border of the county and then go back to Madison," and another claimed that there had been collusion in some counties to thwart state efforts at uniformity across job centers:

It's been a studied decision and, you know, purposeful approach not to do things in an SDA-wide manner. . . . They're all very happy to sort of coexist next to each other, but separate from the state.

      In some cases, state policies that are initially resented by local providers develop their own constituencies. For example, performance-based budgeting was viewed with some trepidation in Florida; however, the community colleges that have increased their resources through high performance are quite pleased with themselves and with the new form of budgeting, and they will certainly continue to be supportive of performance-based budgeting. In Massachusetts, where resentment of competitive bidding forced the state to allow local REBs to use either competitive bidding or cooperative procedures to establish job centers, about half of the REBs continued to use competitive bidding. So, resented though these directive policies may be initially, they have ended up changing practices for at least some localities, and they create their own political support as well.

      On the other hand, localities that are trying actively to coordinate resent it when the state is not moving fast enough (or not moving at all). In Maryland, local officials generally resented the move "backward" in terms of state support for coordination. One mentioned that the state had previously "looked at setting overall policy," but under Governor Glendenning there are "almost six state agencies with a piece of the workforce development pie, and no one is in the lead. . . . [T]his makes it difficult to operate locally because I don't know who's calling the shots." In North Carolina, there was general agreement from both local and state officials that the real initiative for innovation is local. One state official noted, "I find that the locals figure out ways to do it. . . . [T]he locals are doing it, maybe because they have less resources or their communities are small. I think they're going to succeed in spite of the state." There was some sentiment that the state could be much more helpful. One local official commented, "the local partners call for state-level consolidation, but most of the innovative plans are coming from the local areas." Similarly, in Arizona, the state was viewed as a serious impediment to local innovation. As a local official noted,

We've taken the position that we ask for forgiveness, not permission. . . . We have all learned that if we ask for permission, it's going to take forever, and we can't wait. We used to ask the state, "Look at this and tell us what we can do." Now we say, "Let's look at it," and then wepropose a solution. This is how we can do it without the regulation.

But under these conditions, local efforts can push the state itself. A local one-stop director mentioned,

The local government and their community-based organizations always had a better link with each other because they were directly dealing with a whole person. But the state has a different view. It fragmented things. One office just did food stamps, or they only just did unemployment. They didn't look at the whole person at all. They only looked at their federal program requirements. So what I see as the biggest advantage of coordination is getting the state to talk to itself.

      In many of these ten states, one particular inconsistency in state policy causes near-universal resentment from the local level: requirements for local coordination, while policy encourages fragmentation at the state level. In one community in Iowa, for example, the efforts to create a one-stop center with co-located services were being thwarted by state policy which gave some local programs autonomy and enabled them to avoid being co-located: "If their administrator doesn't want to move their folks into a building that can handle the whole thing, how do you get it done? And that needs to be done at the state level--you can't do that at the local level." In Maryland, the state-level planning team originally established to promote greater integration of local services within one-stop centers was disbanded. There is now no state effort "beating locals into one-stop formation," and local officials complained that this has prevented them from integrating at the local level. Similarly, an official with a local Workforce Quality Council (WQC) in Oregon complained that they had "very little authority at the local level--very little control over the JTPA dollars, very little control over the ABE dollars"--in contradiction to the mandate to coordinate locally. In many of these states, education programs, in particular, enjoy local autonomy, since they come from a history of local creation and control. In contrast, many job training and economic programs originated at the federal level, without a history of local control. Thus, local WDBs confront local colleges and adult education providers for whom independence and "local control" have long been articles of faith. The continued separation of education from job training that we explore further in Section VII comes at least in part from this disjunction.

      A number of technical and bureaucratic details originating in state and federal policy also make local coordination more difficult. At one of the local boards in Texas, officials expressed frustration with the state's lack of clarity about governance models and with its failure to develop common intake forms and a common automation system. As one official noted, "It is frustrating to want to move ahead and have the infrastructure not be ready." The lack of common boundaries in regional units; the inconsistency in eligibility; different schedules, fiscal years, and accounting mechanisms; and different definitions of terms in separate reporting requirements--many of which are federal rather than state policies--are frequently cited complaints about state and federal policy, where states have been unwilling or unable to clear away these bureaucratic barriers to coordination. And unfunded mandates--an inconsistency between what a state requires and the funding it provides--always generate local resentment. For example, Iowa's requirement that job centers provide a list of specified services, and a presence in every country, has generated discussion about the merits of thinly spread services versus providing more concentrated services in population centers, since the state's requirements were not adequately funded.

      The finding that some localities resist state efforts to impose greater uniformity and coordination, while others trying to move ahead resent that states have not done more to remove barriers to coordination, is hardly surprising. Obviously there is a continuum of local approaches, some ahead of and some behind where a state wants to be. What seems to be happening, in the awkward and disjointed way typical of American federalism, is that the entire structure of local and state efforts seems to be lurching fitfully in the direction of greater coordination, pulled along by some localities who push their states, pulled along by some state and federal policies (especially one-stops), and dragged back by other policies and recalcitrant local communities. State policies contribute to this, by carrots and sticks. Even though some of these efforts are resented, they end up being adopted in some places, and championed by those who benefit in others. Local initiatives contribute to this process, too, as local communities try to stretch their own resources and rationalize services for their citizens and employers, and local initiatives then push the state to do more. One-stop centers are providing new forums for local discussion, and other new programs--STW and welfare reform are the most obvious examples--provide projects around which local programs communicate with one another. Data systems and performance targets help nudge the whole enterprise along, since they provide new information about what different localities and programs are doing. To be sure, some localities will always be ahead of others, and some will always resist change; it is always possible to undo changes, as Maryland and Michigan in particular have done, and to take different directions, as welfare "reform" has forced upon states. Overall, however, the direction of lurching is unmistakably toward greater coordination.

[23] See, again, the NCRVE reports cited in footnote 5, particularly Grubb and McDonnell (1996), which identified five local functions influencing the extent and nature of local coordination.

[24] In a few cases, states like Texas have developed clear visions for a workforce development system, though problems in implementation have prevented the vision from being realized. While the effect for the moment may be the same as a laissez-faire policy, over the long run such states may find ways to implement their vision.

Grubb, W. N., Badway, N., Bell, D., Chi, B., King, C., Herr, J., Prince, H., Kazis, R., Hicks, L., & Taylor, J. C. (1999). Toward order from chaos: State efforts to reform workforce development systems (MDS-1249). Berkeley: National Center for Research in Vocational Education, University of California.