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ICYMI: Foxx Touts Bipartisan Bills to Align Education Opportunities with Workforce Needs

WASHINGTON, D.C., April 2, 2024

ICYMI: Foxx Touts Bipartisan Bills to Align Education Opportunities with Workforce Needs

In Case You Missed It, Education and the Workforce Committee Chairwoman Virginia Foxx (R-NC) joined Ranking Member Robert C. “Bobby” Scott on a bipartisan panel discussion hosted by Business Roundtable on “Building America’s Ever-Ready Workforce.” Foxx discussed modernizing America’s workforce development system and emphasized the need for legislation like the Bipartisan Workforce Pell Act and  A Stronger Workforce for America Act to enhance skills development opportunities and bolster the workforce. 

On the current state of workforce development programs:
 
We need to make sure that what we’re doing at the federal level with the programs is that we really buttress what other business and industry [are] doing.
 
WIOA is a bit outdated, it’s 10 years old. The economy has changed a lot in the last 10 years, and I think one of the major things that we have come to agreement on… is that when we do implement these programs,…[these updated federal workforce development programs] are performance based.
 
We want the money being spent on these programs producing results.
 
[These programs are] not just [for] people coming into the workforce but [they’re for] people in the workforce whose jobs might be going away because of…changes that are occurring in the job market.
 
On getting the Bipartisan Workforce Pell Act and A Stronger Workforce for America Act across the finish line:
 
We need to be working together, but it’s going to take all hands on deck to do this… I tell every member of business and industry that comes in to talk to me, “You have a lot more power than you realize you have to change the minds of Members of Congress and to say to them, ‘look, here is legislation that…is really meaningful to individuals and to our country.’”
 
We need to get our economy going. We need to get people with the skills to fill those nine million jobs that are out there unfilled right now.
 
Workforce Pell is a big innovation…The reauthorization of WIOA into A Stronger Workforce for America [Act] is a big change because we are demanding performance-based [results].
 
We passed the reauthorization of WIOA in the same political situation we were in 10 years ago. So, I think…we can pass A Stronger Workforce for America [Act] and [Bipartisan Workforce Pell Act] and really make a difference in this country. 
 
On working with employers, business leaders, and educators to strengthen workforce development programs:

When I go out to tour major companies, I will invite high school principals and community college presidents to go too, to hear what’s being said. I think it’s important that we bring the people together who have the capabilities on the ground.
 
When I was a community college president, I went out to the businesses in my community and I said, “What can we do for you?” They said nobody has ever been out here from the college to ask us what to do. Every college president [and] every high school principal should be doing that.
 
I know in North Carolina we are doing a fantastic job of early college, dual enrollment, [and] working with community colleges to help the students leave high school with skills. And again, not just necessarily going on to college skills, but skills that will help them get a job.
 
Now we are doing job signing programs, so that students are going to come out of high school with the skills they need to fill a much-needed job in the community. They are bringing praise for doing that and those are the kind of things we need to be doing.

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