America’s Job Centers of California Evaluation

The California Workforce Development Board (CWDB) and the Employment Development Department (EDD) are pleased to announce the availability of up to $750,000 in Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA) funds to assess and evaluate the America’s Job Center of CaliforniaSM (AJCC) system.

Created by the Workforce Investment Act of 1998, and continued in 2014 under the WIOA, AJCCs bring together local, state, private, and public entities to provide “one-stop” services to Californians in search of employment opportunities, work-related training, and education, while also serving as a resource to connect employers with qualified workers. WIOA significantly transformed the workforce system in California and, as a result, the performance of the AJCC system needs to be evaluated.

The purpose of this evaluation is to support the AJCC system’s efforts to effectively and efficiently provide workforce and education services to those who need it most, while advancing the three policy goals of the California’s Unified Strategic Workforce Development Plan:

  • Fostering demand-driven skills attainment. Workforce and education programs need to align program content with the state’s industry sector needs so as to provide California’s employers and businesses with the skilled workforce necessary to compete in the global economy.
  • Enabling upward mobility for all Californians, including populations with barriers to employment. Workforce and education programs need to be accessible for all Californians and ensure that everyone has access to a marketable set of skills, and is able to access the level of education necessary to get a good job that ensures both long-term economic self-sufficiency and economic security.
  • Aligning, coordinating, and integrating programs and services to economize limited resources to achieve scale and impact, while also providing the right services to clients, based on each client’s particular and potentially unique needs, including any needs for skills-development.

WIOA significantly changed the workforce system in California. As a result, the AJCC system needs to be evaluated to ensure it continues to meet the needs of its stakeholders, and has the ability to support future workforce development service delivery models.

Objectives

Objective 1 – To understand how the four different models of service delivery in use in California affect a) overall access to services and, more importantly, b) the mix of services provided to the client population served.

Objective 2 – To understand how investment decisions pertaining to AJCC infrastructure, staffing levels, and number of locations affect a) overall access to services and, more importantly b) the mix of services provided to the client population served.

Objective 3 – To understand whether there is any relationship between participant program outcomes and the mix of services provided to the client population served. Do some models of service delivery and some types of investment decisions pertaining to AJCCs appear to be systematically related to participant program outcomes?

The evaluator will collectively work with CWDB and EDD to develop an evaluation framework and work plan, timeline, interim deliverables, and co-produce a final report with policy recommendations based on findings. This work will also include meeting with stakeholders in the local areas.

The CWDB is pleased to announce that the Evaluation contract has been awarded to Corporation for a Skilled Workforce.

Any updates will be posted throughout the evaluation period.

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