Evaluating Vouchers in WIN

Hope springs eternal in the public servant's breast, and, as evidence, we have two reports on an attempt to further both a program effort and a financing theory held dear by the federal establishment for at least a decade. I refer, respectively, to the program of training for low-income, unemployed workers to increase their skills and job prospects and the concept of financial entitlement--directing funds to the prospective student rather than to the institution as a method of increasing individual options. Most of us are somewhat familiar with the Work Incentive Program (WIN). It is a noble effort to develop in welfare recipients a repository of job skills and competencies to enable them to reenter the labor market with some expectation of success. The primary process utilized is commonly referred to as ETR, although I am at a loss to distinguish between education and training; anything that is learned is, as far as I am concerned, part of an educational process. The idea of an educational voucher first came to prominence during the Johnson administration and the War on Poverty. To develop flexibility within the system of public elementary and secondary education, it was proposed that students and their parents be given funds to enable them to shop around in both the public and private sectors and purchase the educational services they thought most desirable. The idea was to increase options for the individual and develop a greater responsiveness in educational institutions. Now we have reports of two studies of experiments in Portland and Baltimore that gave vouchers for ETR to WIN participants.