Topics Of Interest

The Office of Vocational and Adult Education within the Department of Education has just re-launched the newly redesigned LINCS website, to coincide with Adult Education and Family Literacy Week. "We are excited to share this new site to help inform, involve, and inspire the adult education community," said OVAE Assistant Secretary Brenda Dann-Messier. "Our nation's adult educators are playing an invaluable role in helping many thousands of Americans access greater educational and economy opportunity."

The new site features a redesigned look and enhanced functionality to provide a collection of evidence-based online resources for adult educators. A key feature is the LINCS Community, with16 topic area groups. It allows for real-time discussions with peers, a professional learning community with specific topic area groups, and additional professional development materials. These virtual communities are among the site's most exciting changes, allowing for on-demand professional development, and topic-specific networking. Educators now have an opportunity to come together and build on their collective experience, to share and obtain real-time answers to questions from their peers, and to receive the latest information, news, and events.

"The LINCS Community will enable educators and program administrators to inspire learners in their classrooms on a daily basis," stated Heidi Silver-Pacuilla, Division for Adult Education and Literacy. "We want adult educators to use LINCS to find new ideas, stay informed on the latest research and events, and most importantly, get involved in the discussions."

For more information on the re-designed site, please contact Mary Jo Maralit, in OVAE, at maryjo.maralit@ed.gov

Adult Education and Family Literacy Week

A September 25 Forum on "Regional Innovation Clusters and Economic Competitiveness" will be held in Minneapolis and feature presentations and lessons learned from regional innovation cluster initiatives in Minnesota, Oregon, Massachusetts, South Carolina, and Puebla, Mexico, and will explore job and economic development strategies through state, local and educational policies.

This forum is sponsored by the State and Local Policy Program of the University of Minnesota's Hubert H. Humphrey School of Public Affairs with support from the University of Minnesota's Metropolitan Consortium, the Harvard Business School's Institute for Strategy and Competitiveness, and the U.S. Economic Development Administration's Cluster Mapping Project

Agenda / Registration

The Department of Education has announced it is inviting publishers to submit tests for review and approval for use in the National Reporting System for Adult Education (NRS).

The Department''s regulations for Measuring Educational Gain in the National Reporting System for Adult Education include the procedures for determining the suitability of tests for use in the NRS.

Applications are due by October 1, 2012.

Click here for the September 6, 2012 FEDERAL REGISTER notice with full background and submission requirements.

The Employment and Training Administration has provided the following response to the question on the National Reporting System approved tests. This Q and A - along with a number of others - can be found on the agency's Program Reporting and Record Keeping Information website.

Q. Are there certain tests (used to assess literacy and numeracy gains in the WIA Youth Program) determined suitable for use in the National Reporting System that are expiring?

A. ETA would like states and local areas to be aware of the Federal Register Notice (FRN), Tests Determined To Be Suitable for

Use in the National Reporting System for Adult Education, posted on Monday, August 6, 2012, by the Office of Vocational and Adult Education at the U.S. Department of Education (ED). The FRN can be found at http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-2012-08-06/pdf/2012-19143.pdf. The Notice reminds people that a number of tests approved by the National Reporting System (NRS) may expire on February 2, 2013. It explains that the Secretary of Education will allow States a period of time to sunset an expiring test and transition to other tests suitable for use in the NRS. States may use the transition period to select new tests, purchase appropriate inventories of assessment materials, and provide training to staff. Specifically, tests with three-year NRS approvals expiring on February 2, 2013, may continue to be used during a transition period ending on June30, 2014.

It is possible for tests that were granted the initial three year authorization to provide additional information to ED in order to extend their approval. This NRS assessment review process begins each year on October 1. Which tests will be submitted or whether they will be determined suitable for use in the NRS is unknown. States and local areas should review this FRN and if states and/or local areas are concerned about tests expiring, they can contact the test publisher for more information.

The following blog/advisory from the Department of Commerce may be of interest to the workforce community.

The Bureau of Economic Analysis'' (BEA) new Web portal on the ocean and Great Lakes economy shows how the Bureau's Regional Input-Output Modeling System (RIMS II) can be used to provide answers to such questions. The new Web site stems from a joint project with the Commerce Department's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

RIMS II, a regional economic model, is used by investors, planners, and elected officials to objectively assess the returns to projects ranging from a new sports stadium to a new bridge. The returns include the short- and long-term increases in jobs and spending associated with the projects.

The idea behind the results of RIMS II is that an initial change in economic activity leads to additional changes in economic activity in other parts of an economy-for example, building a new bridge leads to increased production of concrete and steel. The increased production of concrete and steel leads to more mining. Workers benefiting from these increases may also enjoy bigger paychecks, so they may then spend more by eating out at nicer restaurants or splurging more on entertainment.

Planners and policymakers use RIMS II to compare the regional impacts that are likely to occur from proposed projects. That helps them make decisions related to the allocation of resources. That's why RIMS II appears on the new Web site, which showcases BEA's regional information on the ocean and Great Lakes economy. Findings based on the model are typically reported in "economic impact studies," which are cited to support major spending decisions by both the public and private sectors.

The new Web portal highlights the wide range of questions that can be answered with the help of RIMS II. Here are a few of them:

• How many jobs are supported by the fish processing industry in Bellingham, WA?
• How much will workers' earnings increase if an additional 500,000 tourists visited Myrtle Beach, SC, because of a developmental project to beautify its beaches?
• How much will workers' earnings increase solely from the new spending of these tourists at local retail stores?
• How much will workers' earnings increase if a new $2.5 million bridge was built to improve access to a public beach in St. Augustine, FL?

The examples also provide tips on how RIMS II can most effectively be used. The bridge example shows how the model can account for the specific details related to a particular construction project. Because the proposed bridge will be built out of precast concrete parts, the labor costs are relatively low for the cost of the project. By using the "bill-of-goods" method, the resulting estimate reflects the smaller impact the project will have on workers' earnings across the region.

You can find the answers to the questions posed above by visiting the new portal for the ocean and Great Lakes economy. Additional information for RIMS II is also available on the BEA Website.

The Economic Development Administration has announced that the National Advisory Council on Innovation and Entrepreneurship will hold a meeting on Tuesday, September 11, 2012. It will be open to the public via conference call. The meeting will take place at the U.S. Department of Commerce, 1401 Constitution Avenue NW., Washington, DC 20230.

The purpose of the meeting is to discuss the latest initiatives by the Administration and the Secretary of Commerce on the issues of innovation, entrepreneurship and commercialization.

The meeting will also discuss efforts by the Department of Commerce around manufacturing, exports and investment. Specific topics for discussion include manufacturing, investment, exports, innovation, commercialization, entrepreneurship, federal programs for commercialization and technology transfer.

The final agenda will be posted on the Department of Commerce Web site at www.commerce.gov.

The contact is Nish Acharya, Office of Innovation and Entrepreneurship, Room 7019, 1401 Constitution Avenue, Washington, DC 20230; telephone: 202-482-4068.

The Economic Development Administration (EDA) has launched a new online tool to help weigh benefits of economic development projects using the Triple Bottom Line (TBL) model. The new TBL Tool is designed to assist economic development practitioners, investors, and decision-makers assess, compare, and communicate the viability of potential investments.  In creating the TBL Tool, EDA collaborated with Portland State University and its project team and an advisory board of policy makers, practitioners, academics, and industry leaders, including the National Association of Development Organizations, the International Economic Development Council, and the Ford Foundation.

Traditionally, the effectiveness of an economic development investment has been measured primarily by the number of jobs created and dollars leveraged.  The new tool now takes into account a broader array of economic, environmental, and social impacts to more fully evaluate the potential impact of projects.

Matt Erskine, Acting Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Economic Development, notes:

While the TBL approach has been recognized as a valuable analytical tool among businesses -- including major U.S. companies such as General Electric, Unilever, Proctor and Gamble, among many others -- it has not been widely applied or considered within the public sector or by the economic development profession. The new TBL Tool developed through EDA's investment represents a significant step forward for expanding the application of the concept by planners, nonprofits, community organizations, and governments to help support the assessment and decision making of critical development decisions.

This open-source tool has many functions. By using its features to assess the economic, social, and environmental measures, communities can easily compare potential projects and identify their assets and gaps, plan for better outcomes, weigh various options, and make decisions about them. Further, by leveraging the data points, the TBL Tool can also facilitate more complete and robust accounting, help align economic development investments with other community priorities, and ensure that scarce resources are used as efficiently, effectively, and strategically as possible. 

The TBL Tool, which is in beta release and free to users, was designed to be easy to use and to respond to various sizes and types of communities and investments. It underwent a rigorous vetting process that included usability testing, one-on-one interviews, focus groups, and a national survey of economic development professionals.

Click here for more information and to view the TBL Tool. 

Also see:

Know Your Region Website

Also funded by EDA, this website explores regional and local approaches to economic innovation and competitiveness across the United States.