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Advocates familiar with drafts of the bill say it would not make many dramatic changes to federal workforce programs — a disappointment for some, such as the National Skills Coalition, which would prefer to see strategies such as sector partnerships be formally incorporated into jobs training programs. But an update to workforce training, even if incremental, could at least help boost interest and investment in WIA programs, said Rachel Gragg, federal policy director at the National Skills Coalition.
“We have been hemorrhaging funding out of job training programs in general and WIA specifically” in recent years, Gragg said. “It has been vulnerable to funding cuts in part, I think, because it hasn’t been reauthorized.”
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