WIOA State Plan Common Elements

(E) Partner Engagement with Educational Institutions. Describe how the State’s Strategies will engage the State’s community colleges and area career and technical education schools, as partners in the workforce development system to create a job-driven education and training system. WIOA section 102(b)(2)(B)(iv).

Maryland maintains strong collaborative partnerships between educational institutions and other WIOA State partners to create a job-driven education and training system. These connections support a cohesive, integrated workforce system that prepares workers with the in-demand skills that Maryland’s employers need. To facilitate collaboration, Maryland houses adult education and literacy programs (WIOA Title II programs) within MD Labor’s DWDAL, alongside other WIOA programming. Program colocation fosters regular communication and shared strategic planning, which helps to ensure that local adult education service providers and the WIOA Title I providers in Local Areas are positioned to effectively coordinate services and resources.

With strong partnerships as a foundation, Maryland has employed a range of engagement strategies:

Policy Development

MD Labor’s DWDAL engages education partners in important policy initiatives:

• To reduce duplicative testing and streamline referrals between partner agencies, DWDAL worked with education stakeholders (including representatives from community colleges) to develop a policy on adult basic education (ABE) and English language assessments. This policy unifies requirements for Title I and Title II providers.
• DWDAL released a new policy on the State’s Eligible Training Provider process in 2017 to ensure that Local Areas have sufficient numbers and a diverse pool of quality providers of in-demand training. The ETPL policy was developed to: help Maryland create an effective marketplace for the training programs available to WIOA participants with Individual Training Accounts (ITAs); reduce burden on training providers to submit accurate performance information and to guide WIOA participants, in conjunction with staff, in selecting training in the State and Local Areas; prohibit discrimination by training providers in accepting and enrolling WIOA program participants; and, provide information on eligible training programs to WIOA participants in a way that helps them make informed decisions, along with staff and within local policy, on how to use their ITAs.
• In 2018, DWDAL released a Privacy and Data Security policy to provide statewide guidance on the management of Personally Identifiable Information, an important issue when sharing participant information between partners.

Career Pathways

In Maryland’s 2016 workforce plan, the State pledged to provide resources to establish a robust career pathways system that helps Maryland’s adult learners in increase their earning capacity. To drive action at the local level, the State required Local workforce partners to address in their local plans how they intended to implement a career pathways model to address their local workforce training needs.

At the State level, MD Labor fulfilled its pledge with the release of the Career Pathway Connections for Adult Learners Competitive Grant Proposal in October 2017 to solicit demonstration projects. The goals of the Career Pathway Connections grant initiative were to: increase WIOA Title II adult learners’ access to WIOA Title I training and career opportunities; focus on meeting lower-level adult learners where they are in education-level and support them in meeting career goals; increase adult learners’ co-enrollment in WIOA Titles I and II; address the needs of businesses; expand career pathways by piloting one or more proven interventions; support the creation of a Maryland WIOA Co-Enrollment and Career Pathways Guide to facilitate the distribution of information related to best practices, successes, challenges, and more; and achieve sustainability once grant funds were exhausted or projects ended. To ensure pilots were set up for success, MD Labor required each participating Local Area to identify a target industry and include partner engagement. MD Labor will continue to provide technical assistance through the Maryland Through the initiative, MD Labor invested over $1 million of WIOA Governor’s Set-Aside funds into innovative career pathway demonstration projects. Awards were distributed in 2018 to five of Maryland’s 12 Local Areas. In 2019, MD Labor awarded $0.5 million to two more sites, including one Local Area and one community college.

Youth Apprenticeships

Maryland has made great strides in building youth apprenticeship opportunities. Through the work of the Maryland Youth Apprenticeship Advisory Committee (the “Committee”) and the continued push by MD Labor, the MSDE, the Maryland Department of Commerce (Commerce), and the local school systems across the State, more students, parents, and employers understand the benefits of apprenticeship opportunities for youth.

During 2018, groundwork was put in place to make youth apprenticeship available statewide by the conclusion of the initial two-year, two-county pilot program. The Youth Apprenticeship Advisory Board worked with MD Labor and MSDE to craft the educational framework necessary for local public school systems to design and implement their own youth apprenticeship initiatives.  Local county school systems were invited to submit proposals to MSDE staff members to add the AMP as a career and technology education program of study for its students. As a Career and Technical Education (CTE) program, local systems can use Perkins Grant funds to support the program.  Both departments are hopeful that this approach will help to facilitate the future entry of additional participating school systems.

Expansion of AMP during this period of historically low unemployment is the ideal time for the program to become a proven, sustainable workforce development strategy. In 2018, the groundwork was put in place to expand youth apprenticeship to be available statewide. Labor, Commerce, and MSDE’s original goal for growing AMP during 2019 was to increase the program from the original two pilot counties to a total of six participating school systems.  As a consequence of combined efforts, since the June 2018 unveiling by MSDE of the AMP CTE Program of Study, 15 out of Maryland’s 24 local school systems have adopted the model.

As the program has expanded, MD Labor and its partners have taken steps to ensure adaptability by working with employers to identify a variety of training models for greater program flexibility.  This includes providing related instruction through any of the following formats:  through the local high school, through online programs offered either at the place of employment or at the high school, at the work site of a participating employer, through an industry association, through a Joint Apprenticeship and Training School, or through the community college. The learning component is designed to comport with the needs of the employer to include credentialing and certification.  Maryland also focuses its recruitment of employers from one of MSDE’s ten Career Cluster areas which are based on the high-demand sectors defined by Commerce.  Labor, MSDE, and Commerce aligned the program with federal, state, and local resources to ensure that AMP addresses Maryland’s workforce and economic development needs.    

During the 2017 – 2018 academic year, a total of 30 new eligible employers were approved by the Maryland Apprenticeship and Training Council, raising the number of eligible employers from 14 to 44. This represents nearly 215 percent growth versus the first year of the pilot program.  In the 2019-2020 academic year, additional employers have joined since the end of the pilot program, bringing the number of employers as of the printing of this report to 155.  More will be added moving forward.

MD Labor and MSDE are committed to growing the program to scale so that as many of Maryland’s young people as possible can utilize this innovative career pathway program. Over the next several years, both departments aim to add several local public school systems per academic year. Moreover, MD Labor will continue to explore ways to use youth apprenticeship as a springboard to post-secondary education and/or job training and career development.