An Avenue for Alignment: Key Takeaways from WIOA and Perkins Combined State Planning

Lancy Downs

Morgan Polk

For decades, the federal government has funded both career and technical education (CTE) and workforce development programs. Today, CTE is governed by The Strengthening Career and Technical Education for the 21st Century Act (known as "Perkins" or "Perkins V") and the public workforce system by the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA). Perkins supports CTE at the secondary and postsecondary levels, while WIOA funds providing training and education services to youth and adults.

Though Perkins and WIOA have similar goals and serve overlapping populations, they support systems that are largely independent of one another. The nation's CTE and public workforce systems almost run in parallel, both pushing towards similar goals but without much, if any, coordination or interaction between priorities or the programs they support. This can create inefficiencies and inequities for young people navigating these systems as they transition into adulthood. Youth might, for example, struggle to receive recognition from one system for training completed under the other. And since WIOA primarily serves out-of-school youth, while Perkins largely supports in-school youth, a lack of alignment and coordination can make it hard to tell if the two systems provide equitable opportunities and programming to both populations of young people.

However, under recent presidential administrations, federal leaders have sought to promote greater alignment between the siloed systems to improve education and workforce outcomes.

When WIOA was enacted in 2015, for example, Congress created an option for states to combine their WIOA plans - mandatory plans that outline states' strategic and operational priorities for federal workforce development funding - with their Perkins plans, which are similar, federally-required documents that outline states' CTE priorities and performance goals. Prior to 2015, states submitted the workforce-focused plan to the US Department of Labor (DOL) and a separate Perkins plan to the US Department of Education (ED). After WIOA's passage, however, states could add their Perkins plans to the WIOA plans in a "combined state plan,'' or continue to submit separate, or "unified," plans. In theory, the combined option would prompt states to consider where WIOA's service population overlapped with those of other federal programs providing "educational, training, employment, or supportive services" - and to execute a plan for its workforce system that took into account those areas of alignment.

Initially, the required planning cycles were not aligned - WIOA plans were due every four years, while Perkins plans were due every six - making it difficult to take advantage of the new option. Still, governors in six states - Delaware, Minnesota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Virginia - directed their workforce and education agencies to submit combined plans. But in 2018, when Congress reauthorized Perkins, lawmakers sought to make combined planning easier and more appealing to states by aligning the Perkins planning cycle with WIOA's. And in 2020, when the next set of WIOA and Perkins plans were due, the number of states submitting combined plans grew from six to nine, with Alabama, Indiana, and Washington the six states that combined plans previously.

States' plans are due again this year, the third cycle for which combined plans have been an option. Yet little research exists on the impact of this tool. Does the combined plan actually help states align these two systems? Has it created better outcomes for young people and improved a state's career pathway infrastructure? To begin to answer these questions, we spoke with leaders in three combined plan states about why their state had opted for the combined option, what benefits (or lack thereof) a combined plan has offered them thus far, and how the combined planning process actually worked. Here's what we learned:

Takeaway 1: Combined planning improved coordination in some key areas but did not result in change in all cases.

State agency leaders reported that the combined planning process led to improved coordination between their state education and workforce staff. States we spoke with used the combined planning opportunity to do stakeholder engagement together: Multiple states hosted shared meetings across different regions to seek feedback on the plan, satisfying similar stakeholder engagement requirements that exist in both WIOA and Perkins. Shared stakeholder engagement allowed the two systems to hear feedback for both, and stakeholders to hear from each other about what is working or not working in each system.

Some states reported that the combined planning process led to greater alignment between youth and adult systems, including common definitions and credentials that allow smoother interaction between the two systems. In others, the combined plan proposed but did not result in changes necessary for true system alignment. Based on our initial interviews, it was not immediately clear why the combined planning process yielded alignment in some states and not others.

Takeaway 2: States pursued combined planning because it could help support ongoing alignment efforts - not because they saw it as a powerful driver of that work.

Our conversations with combined plan states revealed that efforts to improve coordination among their workforce, K-12, postsecondary, and CTE agencies were underway before the passage of Perkins V, when the combined plan became a more convenient option. It was this pre-existing work that led states to pursue the combined plan rather than a sense that the combined plan itself would drive systems alignment efforts.

In one state, the Perkins-eligible agency was integrated into the state workforce board, while in another, an influx of federal grants had prompted increased coordination among workforce, CTE, and education agencies. One governor created an office specifically focused on streamlining and better aligning federally funded secondary and postsecondary CTE programs to reduce overhead and put more money directly into career and training services. And these changes were underway prior to the decision to submit a combined plan in 2020.

State education and workforce leaders opted for the combined plan because they saw it as a tool to support the work that was already underway rather than as a driver for those efforts. In one state we spoke to, the governor's office was focused on efficiency and saw combined planning as a way to streamline this work. In other words, the states we spoke with had already recognized the importance of coordinating across education and workforce systems and the combined planning effort allowed them to further that work, rather than serving as the impetus for it.

Takeaway 3: Relationships matter for real change.

Combined plans necessitated building relationships. Agency leaders had to talk to each other to write a plan together. Once the necessary individuals were connected, they could talk about shared challenges, opportunities, and vision. State leaders we interviewed mentioned inviting their counterparts to particular meetings, asking for input and feedback on deliverables, presenting their work together, and more. In some cases, even if the governor chose not to combine plans in 2024, those relationships have proven beneficial in unified planning.

Takeaway 4: Combined plans are more challenging to execute and may need to be incentivized to increase uptake among states.

While the combined plan can help support improved outcomes and efficiencies down the road, interviewees said it doesn't provide any upfront time or resource-saving advantages. In fact, they said that the combined plan actually required more work and was more challenging to execute than the standard unified planning process.

States cited limited staff capacity to support the inter-agency coordination required as a major challenge in combined plan execution. In one state, agency heads and program representatives began meeting frequently to build the plan together. State CTE and workforce agencies also collaborated to host joint listening sessions with local stakeholders, and while these produced valuable feedback and built connections among local CTE and workforce leaders, they also required more staff time and energy to execute. One interviewee said that without any additional resources to support the necessary coordination, the combined plan added to the workloads of understaffed teams, exacerbating problems like burnout and high turnover rates.

Because the combined plan has meant more work for state agencies, interviewees felt the federal government should provide additional support to combined plan states to encourage states to choose the combined plan option and to implement it effectively. Interviewees suggested different strategies, including:

• financial incentives to support coordination capacity at the state level;
• more substantive technical assistance on how to design and implement combined plans;
• increased flexibilities or streamlined reporting requirements to reduce administrative burdens. (For an example of truly streamlined federal reporting, see the third installment in this series.)

Conclusion

Of the three states we spoke to for this blog post, two have submitted combined plans in 2024; the third does not intend to do so again this year. In that case, staff transitions and timeline challenges made it difficult, and state leaders did not feel it had been so beneficial that it was critical to repeat the combined planning process. We are aware of at least one state that will submit a combined plan for the first time this year.

Though the number of combined plan states remains low, our interviews suggested that the concept has promise and revealed opportunities to further improve the utility and attractiveness of the process. This is good news, especially given that changes to federal policy may necessitate increased alignment between state agencies. In WIOA reauthorization legislation, Congress is considering a new, expanded definition for "opportunity youth." DOL has also proposed apprenticeship regulations that would create CTE Apprenticeship, designed to "strengthen the connection with secondary and postsecondary education programs by bringing together the core concepts of registered apprenticeship and CTE." Regardless of whether these proposals are enacted, federal efforts to improve and facilitate systems alignment, through WIOA and beyond, can and should continue.

This blog is the fourth in a five-part series from New America authors exploring how federal funding can support efforts to better align our systems of education and work in support of career pathways for young people. This project is one of several publications from organizations that were convened by Bellwether to discuss challenges and opportunities in federal pathways policy in 2023 and 2024. You can read publications from other participating organizations here.