Building Essential Skills Through Training (BEST):
Massachusetts Responds to the New Skills Challenge

CATHRYN LEA, MISHY LESSER, AND JOHAN UVIN

New Skills Challenge Requires New Ways of Thinking About Worker Education and Training

AT DIFFERENT POINTS IN TIME and with varying degrees of success, Massachusetts has developed an assortment of policy initiatives, demonstration projects, and capacity building endeavours to support worker education and training. These initiatives have been designed to meet the demands of employers for skilled workers and employees for skill development.

From the mid-1980s to mid-1990s, Massachusetts created and operated an effective interagency workplace education system (i.e., The Massachusetts Workplace Education Initiative), which allowed for scores of practitioners and policy makers to come together for the purpose of building quality programming across the state. During this timeframe, a workforce development system that had historically focused its attention on the unemployed began to broaden its gaze to include the under-employed and the incumbent or employed workforce in need of new skills and career development.

In 1998, The Massachusetts legislature created the Massachusetts Workforce Training Fund, allocating $18 million annually to incumbent worker training. At the same time, several federal incumbent worker demonstration and system building grants, as well as skill shortage grants reached the state. Soon thereafter, a broad-based coalition of stakeholders from the long-term care industry came together, resulting in the Massachusetts Nursing Home Quality Initiative. One of the legislative achievements of this initiative was the enactment of the Extended Care Career Ladder Initiative (ECCLI) in 2000.

This influx of federal and state resources into the workforce development system was thanks to the effective partnership-building, strategic planning, and grant-writing skills of many education/training providers, union leaders, academics, workforce professionals, and employer associations. Although there is great variety in the precise configuration of each of the workforce partnerships, there are some common features that seem to help define their success. For example, employer involvement was deemed crucial, because all stakeholders agreed that their shared purpose went far beyond labour exchange or job placement. The ultimate goal was to link learning to work and use this as a tool to help people access prosperous, fulfilling careers. Without employer participation, no learning or career development infrastructure could be built. There were conversations about the regional nature of labour markets and therefore the need to involve regional stakeholders in the planning process for these interventions. In addition, the integration of adult basic education/ESOL and occupational training, and the importance of making wrap-around and support services available at the pre- and post-employment phase, became the preferred design features used by the practitioner community. As one group of researchers put it: