Adult Education and Literacy Performance Accountability Benchmarks for Program Year 2016

Adult Education and Literacy Performance Accountability Benchmarks for Program Year 2016

DISCUSSION PAPER

Background

Texas Workforce Commission (TWC) General Administration rule §800.68 provides that TWC will set performance accountability benchmarks that Adult Education and Literacy (AEL) grantees must meet to access up to 10 percent of their allocated funding, hereafter referred to as “performance allocation.”

On May 17, 2016, TWC’s three-member Commission approved a 2 percent performance allocation, to be received upon achieving performance accountability benchmarks.

Issue

Program Year 2016 (PY’16) will be the last year for current AEL contracts triggered by the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA). WIOA requires a competition for new AEL contracts for services starting on July 1, 2017, which will take place for Texas in the fall of 2016. This supports a performance allocation less than the allowable 10 percent to ensure that the maximum amount of funds is released to grantees during the program year in order to support continued service delivery and expansion prior to issuing these new contracts. Additionally, this competitive program year necessitates a performance funding benchmark achievable early in the program year in order to release performance funds for use prior to the June 30, 2017, end of current contracts.

Recommendation

Staff recommends repeating the 60 percent of Target Enrolled with 12+ Hoursenrollment measure, approved for the first two years of contracts, to signal the continued importance of enrollments.

Measure A: Enrollment with 12 or More Contact Hours in the Program Year and Pre-Test

Description: Programs are awarded 100 percent of performance funding (2 percent of their allocation) if they have met 60 percent of their proposed enrollment, baseline tested, with 12 or more contact hours in PY’16, by the end of Quarter 2.

Denominator: Unduplicated enrollment target for students with 12+ hours

Numerator: Students enrolled in PY’15 with 12+ hours by December 31, 2015—Students who were enrolled in PY’14–’15 will only count toward this measure if they earned 12 hours in PY’15.

Rationale: TWC would like to reflect a commitment to strong enrollments to meet the needs of individuals, employers, and local communities by helping adults with low basic skills improve their skills and transition to employment or postsecondary education.

DP_AEL PY’16 Performance Accountabilty Benchmark_Notebook_7.27.16