Jumpstarting the Economy: The Trade Adjustment Assistance Community College and Career Training Program

Congress created the $2 billion TAACCCT program in 2010 at the height of the deepest recession in more than a generation. The program was the largest targeted investment in community colleges that the federal government has made and was meant to increase the schools’ capacity for providing training for in-demand jobs. With unemployment approaching 10 percent, the idea was to build the country’s national capacity to get people retrained and back into employment. With each round of grants, the Departments of Labor and Education identified promising practices that applicants could implement as part of their grant, and prior learning assessment was encouraged in all four grant solicitations. Colleges created new or improved workforce focused programs integrating their choice of PLA, online and technology enabled learning, career pathways, and stacked and latticed credentials. After four rounds of funding, the Department of Labor had made 256 TAACCCT grants, reaching every state in the country, with each grant lasting four years. After the first round, the DOL required an external evaluation for each grant.

Prior Learning Assessment was a priority of the TAACCCT grants because—in theory—it helps people accelerate to a credential. The DOL required colleges to explain how they would measure credit for prior learning in every solicitation of grant applications it released as part of the TAACCCT grant. Through our review of more than 50 top-rated evaluations, we found that nearly half of the grants mentioned significant efforts on PLA, while only 11 did not include a prior learning component at all.