Education and the New Economy: Views from a Policy Planning Exercise. Rand Issue Paper.

During the 1990s, policymakers have become increasingly attentive to the relationship between education and national economic health and society's need to upgrade and equalize workforce skills, talent, and wages. The U.S. education and training system is fragmented, decentralized, and in flux, as more responsibility moves from federal to state governments and the private sector. To explore how education might meet new economic challenges, the National Center for Research in Vocational Education joined with RAND to sponsor a policy exercise based on Department of Defense "war games." The June 1997 Policy Planning Exercise on Education and the New Economy assembled vocational-education researchers, federal and state vocational-education officials, leaders of interested nonprofit organizations, and business community representatives. Exercises required panelists to allocate funds for a January 1998 training program in a hypothetical "state," redesign a 2002 update of this education and training system, and apply what they had learned to federal policy in the near term. This paper synthesizes panelists observations about the nation's first-chance and second-chance education systems; standards, certifications, and institutional accountability; lifelong learning; teacher training and development; an integrated academic and vocational training system; and the federal government's role. (MLH)