A ‘missed opportunity’: Does Newsom’s plan to get Californians into better jobs do enough?

California faces stark income inequality, its jobs are increasingly automated and the degrees from its state’s universities are no longer the asset they once were.

Gov. Gavin Newsom has a plan for all of it. Today at a press conference in Modesto, more than a year and a half after he first announced this initiative, he released the full Master Plan for Career Education, setting a new course for the state’s job training and education programs.

“This has been a point of pride,” he said. “This is long overdue.”

Yet certain aspects of the plan will need approval from the Legislature, and it’s not clear whether that will happen. Legislators and the Legislative Analyst’s Office have criticized the governor’s new proposals as “unproven” and “unclear.”

The plan highlights ongoing efforts, such as the state’s new education data system, its recent reforms to financial aid, and the expansion of skills-based learning at community colleges, known as competency-based education. That data system is behind schedule, and the financial aid reforms only arose after CalMatters wrote about the governor’s failure to implement them. Seven community colleges are moving forward with competency-based education, per the governor’s wishes — but at one school, Madera Community College, the reforms have stalled due to faculty opposition.

The governor’s career plan also includes three new budget proposals for this year, which could cost taxpayers over $105 million if they’re enacted:

• A digital “career passport” that will serve as a new kind of resume for students and workers
• More money to community colleges so they can offer college credit for students’ work experiences, a process known as “credit for prior learning”
• A new state body that will bring together education and workforce leaders to create “statewide goals” and help coordinate the distribution of state and federal grants 

All of these budget proposals require the Legislature’s approval, including from Assemblymember Al Muratsuchi, a Torrance Democrat and the chair of the Assembly’s education committee. At today’s press conference, Muratsuchi helped introduce Newsom and stood behind him, listening attentively, for most of the morning.

“I’m not familiar with any of the critiques,” said Newsom at the press conference in response to a question about the Legislature’s concerns. He then thanked Muratsuchi for coming to the event. “He’s a big champion of this broader effort.”

In an interview yesterday, Muratsuchi said he appreciates the governor for prioritizing career technical education, but he said the governor's plan is “missing an opportunity for significant reform” including the opportunity to streamline state funding.

What actually is a ‘career passport’?

The governor’s plan puts hiring practices at the forefront. “While many employers are interested in evaluating both academic credentials and skills earned outside the classroom, very few employers are adopting this approach,” the plan writes. “One barrier is lack of access to validated information that will help them evaluate candidates based on their skills.”

Enter the “career passport”: an online tool that allows workers to present their academic transcripts and their professional skills in a format that’s independently verified by universities and employers.

“When I go in to create my LinkedIn profile, I can write whatever I want about myself,” said Sharon Leu, an executive in residence at Jobs for the Future, a workforce nonprofit. “I can write that I have a Ph.D. in astrophysics from Harvard and you would not know.”

To be a teacher, for example, applicants usually must prove they have a bachelor’s degree, certain kinds of professional experience, and a state license. “All the data is owned by different people,” Leu said. “It’s scattered.”

Sometimes, accessing academic and professional records can take months — and those administrative delays translate into delays in hiring, she said.

The state has already embarked on a similar initiative to create authenticated, virtual records, she added: California’s mobile driver’s license pilot, which currently allows license holders to fly from certain airports or to buy liquor using a virtual ID. About 1.1 million people have already downloaded their licenses, according to Ronald Ongtoaboc, a public information officer with the DMV. He said the project was funded through a one-time, $10 million investment in the 2021–22 fiscal year.

In terms of costs, Leu said she didn’t think “the education project would be more than that.”

In his plan, Newsom is asking for $50 million for the digital career passport.

The Legislative Analyst’s Office wrote that the governor’s proposal doesn’t address how career passports would be better than using a resume and social networking websites, such as LinkedIn. The “proposed approach is largely unproven,” the office wrote…. “Moreover, it is difficult to assess whether the proposed funding level is reasonable for the proposal, as the administration has not explained how it arrived at the $50 million cost estimate.”

At the press conference, Newsom pointed to efforts in Alabama, which has rolled out a similar career passport. The Alabama career passport took about five years to develop, and launched in 2023.

A ‘disincentive to work together’

While the Legislature and governor may not agree on the solution, they agree on the problem: the state’s job training programs lack coordination. They’re “Balkanized,” Muratsuchi has said repeatedly. In this convoluted system, some people, such as first-generation college students and English-language learners, often struggle to figure out which job training programs are right for them or how to qualify, the plan says.

Newsom proposes using $5 million in state dollars to create a new coordinating body that would bring together college and K-12 leaders, as well as those from the state’s workforce agency. The body would use labor market data to align programs with demand, and it would “coordinate implementation of specific federal and state programs,” the plan says.

Stewart Knox, the secretary for California’s Labor and Workforce Development Agency, said some of that coordinating work is already underway, locally. The state allocated $250 million in 2021 to help K-12 districts, local colleges, and job training programs work together. That money has created programs like Sacramento’s K-16 Collaborative.

In an interview, Muratsuchi said he wants the state’s career plan to go further and streamline the various grants that fund career training. In the current model, different agencies — such as community colleges, K-12 school districts, adult schools and job centers — are incentivized to apply for their own grants, effectively competing against one another. State funding provides “a disincentive to work together,” he said.

The Legislative Analyst’s Office has its own critiques of the governor’s coordinating body, according to a summary of its remarks in a recent hearing agenda: “It is unclear whether a lack of existing coordination is the result of the lack of a venue for such coordination or due to differences in goals between the various workforce and education agencies.”

The Government Operations Agency, a state agency focused on innovation, would ultimately house the coordinating body, if the Legislature decides to fund it. During the hearing, Justyn Howard, the deputy secretary of the agency, noted that the coordinating body would lack authority to make most of the changes it recommends.

Sen. Roger Niello, a Roseville Republican, offered his own concern at the hearing. “This governor has less than two years left in his term,” Niello said. “We’re embarking on a significant organizational initiative without knowing what the next governor is going to think about this.”

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.