NCRVE Home | Site Search | Product Search

LOOKING AHEAD

This guide has introduced a series of diagnostic steps that can be taken by anyone who is fortunate enough to collaborate with state employment security agency and state education entity colleagues. Many changes are in the air. Pending legislative and administrative actions promise to broaden the sweep of opportunities to participate in this advance of understanding. Data processing technologies and plummeting costs combine to favor a more democratic ability to pursue such diagnostics. All barriers to progress have not fallen. Continued caution is necessary to be sure that appropriate respect for confidentiality stipulations is practiced at all times. Today's members of the vocational education community, tomorrow's students, and all of us as beneficiaries of their motivation and talents will be winners if a better understanding of employment and earnings outcomes occurs.

A series of important events will occur in the next year:

The seven-state consortium sponsored by the Employment and Training Administration's America's Labor Market Information System (ALMIS) initiative will issue a number of reports that address many of the technical issues discussed in this guide.
The Texas State Occupational Information Coordinating Committee will release documentation about a series of consumer reports based in part on wage record data. This research is also sponsored by the U.S. Department of Labor.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics will move ahead in cooperation with the Employment and Training Administration to design and put in place a national distributed database capability.
There will be progress, albeit uneven advances, in state performance measurement systems. These will include more state systems that include a core of common data elements across human resources programs within the state.
There will be new pressures for vocational education accountability; these may emerge as state initiatives based on block-grant discretionary authority or as federal mandates in the pending consolidation legislation.

This guide responds to local and state administrative priorities for new and improved information sources no matter how these current unknowns play out.

NCRVE Home | Site Search | Product Search