Setting the Standards: Performance Targets and Benchmarks

Abstract

The studies in this volume take advantage of data that are superior in scope and detail to some of the data used in the existing literature or available on a regular basis for assessing program performance.The research described in Chapters 4, 6, 8, and 9 benefitted from detailed longitudinal, microlevel data that were collected in the National JTPA Study (NJS) and through other administrative data sources.The NJS data also include information on JTPA-eligible nonparticipants in four experimental sites.These data have two important advantages over samples of eligible populations constructed from large public-use data sets: 1) they are collected from eligible nonparticipants residing in the same geographical area as participants, and 2) the data are gathered using the same survey instruments as those used for participants.In addition, the authors collect and analyze complete information about state-level variation in the JTPA and WIA performance standards systems.Chapters 4 and 5 show that state incentive systems are highly complex and differ widely across states and over time within states.They are not easily characterized by small dimensional summary measures as used in previous studies (see, for example, Anderson, Burkhauser, and Raymond [1993] and Dickinson et al. [1988]).This wealth of data is very helpful in assessing the implications of changes and differences in performance standard regimes, and a variety of analytical strategies are applied to learn from these data.Before addressing the key questions listed above, the contributing authors provide some basic information in Chapter 2 about the design and implementation of the JTPA and WIA programs to aid our readers' understanding of the research that follows.Chapter 2 describes the origins and organizational structure of these programs, eligibility rules and the types of services made available to participants, details of the performance measures, and other aspects of these performance standards systems' design.Chapter 2 also highlights some of the changes in these systems over time, particularly in the shift from JTPA to WIA.In Chapter 3, James Heckman, Carolyn Heinrich, and Jeffrey Smith set up a formal model of a performance standards system that theoretically frames many of the fundamental questions and issues that are

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