Customer Choice or Business as Usual: Promoting Innovation in the Design of WIA Training Programs Through the Individual Training Account Experiment

摘要

This paper presents the design for the ITA Experiment, which is being implemented in six sites with support from USDOL.1 It describes the approaches to be tested, the principal motivations for selecting these approaches, and the policy questions that will be addressed by the experiments results. In particular, the ITA Experiment should help guide future training policy by rigorously testing alternative ITA approaches with the potential to lead to different training choices, employment and earnings outcomes, returns on investment, and customer satisfaction. Findings from the experiment will establish which ITA approaches work best under different circumstances and thus provide federal, state, and local program managers with the evidence needed to design programs that offer enhanced customer choice and flexibility as mandated by WIA.