media/Files/Webinars/2 Web viewTARA HOLT: No. That's okay. I know Cheryl. MS.: Send me an ... that complete definition is in there and it's just directly taken word for word from

Workforce 3One

Transcript of Webinar

Understanding TAACCCT Performance Metrics

Tuesday, October 20, 2015

Transcript byNoble Transcription Services

Murrieta, CA

ERIC BELLINO: And to kick things off, again the phone number is in the top left of your screen now so if you do want to dial in, please use that phone number. I'll turn it over to Cheryl Martin who's the TAACCCT program manager at the U.S. Department of Labor. Cheryl?

CHERYL MARTIN: Hi. Thank you, Eric. And welcome everybody this afternoon. This is Cheryl Martin and as Eric said, I'm the program manager for the TAACCCT program at Department of Labor. And I have with us today Kristen Milstead who is somebody that most of you – many of you may have already talked to in the past, but if you're new to performance reporting, she's your new best friend.

Besides your FPO, your FPO is always your best friend on these things, right? And I don't say that just because we have Tara Holt in the room but because it's true. So Tara Holt is one of our federal project officers from Region 6. She's working with us on a detail right now, so we are lucky to have her here today. As well, she may jump in at times if it's helpful to help us try to interpret questions and that kind of thing.

So this webinar is one in a series of webinars to answer questions about performance reporting, and, of course, it's timely because right now is performance reporting season. If you have – obviously if you're on this call you're starting to think about it, but I just wanted to put a plug in for not waiting until November 13th at midnight to do your performance reporting this time, because, in fact, like a week before that you might want to make your own personal deadline.

The reason for that is that this is the largest reporting volume that we have ever had and will ever have for TAACCCT. We have all four rounds of TAACCCT reporting this year for both their annual reports and their quarterly reports, and so that's a lot of volume. We have the largest grant at ETA. There are a lot of you. That means that the system is going to get kind of slow and sluggish towards the end and could be a little bit frustrating if you wait until the last minute.

So especially because the 15th is on a Sunday, we're looking for things by the 13th. You're welcome to put it in on the 14th and the 15th, although there will be nobody to help you available on those days should you need that. So that's just a little plug to get things done a little bit on the early side this year; always, but especially this year.

Last week's call, we answered 13 questions, numbered 1 through 13, and this week we're going to pick up with question number 14. If you want to go to the webinar from last week to look at those questions and you can breeze through the transcript for it. If you want to look at that last week, we are putting that URL in the – is that what's on – that's not on the slide, right? We're going to put that in the chat room here in just a moment.

Also, on the page that has the description of today's webinar, we've already added the webinar from last week at the related resource. So you can find it either of those ways or you can find it on our TAACCCT CoP, community of practice, under the calendar section up above. That would be for the 13th, I think, right? Today's the 20th. Yes. We do so many webinars that sometimes I lose track.

Understanding TAACCCT Performance MetricsTuesday, October 20, 2015 Page 2 of 22

So anyway, the way we're going to do this is that I'm going to start out with question number 14. We'll pull it up on the slide in just a minute and then if – and I'm going to mention who asked the question and if that person is on the call with us today, I will give that person the opportunity to ask any follow-up questions that they might have after Kristen gives you a response. If that person is not on the call today, if anybody else wants to do a follow-up response to that, we ask that you type it in to the chat.

And we will do our best to pull the follow-up questions over from the chat into the main window where everybody can see them, and so that you can see them that way. So that worked pretty well last time. If you are the person answering – or – yes, asking the question and you wanted to do some follow-up, you would need to press *6 to unmute your phone at that time and then press *6 again after that to mute it so that the dog's barking or the sirens or whatever don't come through to the rest of us.

And if people have additional questions, that we'll get to as many of these as we can today. I think we have flagged up through question 31, so if we get through those, great. If not, we'll pick up where we left off on next week's call, and you can also submit additional new questions to the TAACCCT mailbox by Friday's COB if you want those to be on next week's call. At this point in time, we plan next week's call to be the last one that we do out of this series. However, if we have a gazillion questions we will look into doing another one following that.

So let's begin with question number 14. This question comes from Danielle Bilyeu, who is with the Institute of Northern Engineering in Alaska. And Danielle asks, "How do we account for a career pathway program where at any point there is an expected ability to leave the pathway and obtain employment in the industry? When a student leaves the pathway to obtain employment in that sector, is he or she a completer? Is that a credential?" Well, Kristen, there's a lot of questions in there.

KRISTEN MILSTEAD: Yeah. So good afternoon everyone. Again, thanks for joining us. My first thought is that I want to find out is Danielle here with us today? OK. Because the first thing I would want to know is pertaining to that first question is, what Danielle specifically means just to make sure that I would be addressing the question correctly.

What Danielle means by how do we account for? That could be a lot of things. If it's to lead into the second question, since Danielle's not on the line, I'm going to move on to the second part of the question. "When a student leaves a pathway to obtain employment, is he or she a completer?" Well, if we go directly to the OMB package and read what would need to happen in order for a participant to be counted as a completer, the participant needs to complete a program that leads to an industry recognized credential.

So if the career pathway is made up of, let's see, some sort of stackable credentials or they complete some form of credential before they leave, once they complete that first credential, they would be counted as a completer, even if they don't complete the entire career pathway before leaving. And as far as employment goes, if they – just backing up a little bit, if they have obtained employment before they leave and still have it when they leave or they obtain it in the


first quarter after they leave, they could be counted as having obtained employment as well. And there's this third question here, "Is that a credential?" So again we have a – the credential needs to be industry recognized.

MS. MARTIN: And so if there are three of them, maybe let me just guess that the question might be, "Can I count that under the credentials box that they've completed one?" And say there's three in this program, let's just say, and they got the first one and they – there's three credentials that you could get in this career pathway and they got the first one and then they left and they went and got a job. So they would get credit for having received one credential at that point, right?

MS. MILSTEAD: Yes.

MS. MARTIN: OK.

MS. MILSTEAD: So you would count them as a completer. You would count them as a student having earned a credential, and you would count their credential. And if they went on to get employment, you could count them as also in B8, which is being placed into employment.

MS. MARTIN: OK. Great. So that's – if, if, if, there's lots of ifs for all of these things, so that's that one. This is a good opportunity for me to say maybe once again that in the file share section, there's actually seven handouts there, depending on what your screen looks like, you may not be able to see all of them unless you slide it down, but these seven handouts are all on our community of practice, but we also put them here today because at times we want to refer to them.

So the whole issue of completer, Kristen, this is the one where it could be useful to look at the flowchart for –

MS. MILSTEAD: I would say – for just talking about what we're talking about today in terms of where to put people, it would be a good idea to probably look at the OMB package.

MS. MARTIN: OK. So that would be the best resource for this kind of a question.

MS. MILSTEAD: Right. And also just want to point out that there are seven handouts and six were on the call last week, if you were there for that. There's an additional resource today. I can't see exactly what's it named but what it is is a

MS. MARTIN: TEGL 15. I bet it –

MS. MILSTEAD: No. It's not that. But it's an attachment to TEGL 15-10 that lists – gives some more specific information about credentials. So if you can see – I'm looking at a slightly different screen than most of you are, so I don't know specifically what it's named there, but if you were there last week and have all of the documents from last week, there's one additional that you can pick up here.


MS. MARTIN: And also I think if you just pull down TEGL 15-10 it would refer you to the attachment that has the credential resource guide, right?

MR. BELLINO: And I just uploaded that guys, it's TEGL 15-10(A)(2), right?

MS. MILSTEAD: Yes. That's correct.

MR. BELLINO: Yep.

MS. MILSTEAD: I think the PowerPoint –

MS. MARTIN: There it is. Got it.

MS. MILSTEAD: Yeah. OK.

MS. MARTIN: OK. Thank you. So those are – I forgot to mention that earlier, that we have these things and we will be referring to them as they're relevant to the questions that we're answering. So since Danielle's not on the line, did we get any other questions in our chat box that relate to number 14? I'm not seeing any specifically that relate to 14.

If you have a follow-up question to one of these on here, if you could put like 14 at the beginning of your chat thing, then we will know that you are asking to follow-up on 14, and we will go back to that if you do it down the road as well, to the best of our ability. There's a lot of things to juggle here.

Meanwhile, I'm going to go on to question number 15 which also came from Danielle. That question is, "How do we account for a multi-year program," in this case, a AA/AS that has participants graduating on a rotating basis? This program is partially TAACCCT funded, how to we attribute the appropriate numbers to the TAACCCT grant?" I think there's a lot of question embedded in that, aren't there?

MS. MILSTEAD: There are a lot of questions and, again, Danielle isn't on the line. So just to kind of give you –

MS. MARTIN: Oh, Danielle, looks like maybe she is on the line now.

MS. MILSTEAD: OK.

MS. MARTIN: Danielle, are on – let me just test this. If Danielle, if you're on the line, could you press *6 and unmute yourself and say hello.

MS. MILSTEAD: Danielle Bilyeu.

MS. MARTIN: That's true. There may be more than one Danielle.


MS. MILSTEAD: Or if you're not on the phone line, you can type in to the chat and let us know you're here.

MS. MARTIN: Just one moment. OK. So it sounds like the majority of you are listening through your computers, which is fine. If you want to ask a verbal question to follow-up on a question that you asked before, or that you sent to us before, if you would please dial in to the phone number and that was up there earlier. Can we put it back – we'll put it – it's still there? OK. And –

MR. BELLINO: And Danielle, if you just dialed in, press *6 to unmute your line.

MS. MARTIN: OK. If that happens Danielle, let us know and if not we will go forward. So Kristen, back to question 15.

MS. MILSTEAD: Yes. So there are a lot of questions that I would –

MS. : Hello.

MS. MARTIN: Is that you, Danielle?

MS. : Yes. I'm sorry. I thought I had hit the *6 and it unmuted. The phone kept not letting me dial in and so I was trying to type in the type box and –

MS. MARTIN: I know, it's crazy, isn't it? Thank you. Thank you. I'm glad you persisted and I'm glad you found us.

MS. : Yeah.

MS. MARTIN: So did we answer your question, number 14, in the way that was useful to you?

MS. : I think so. I came half-way through the 14 so I actually had asked if the transcript from the closed captioning would be answered because I was running late from another meeting.

MS. MARTIN: There will be a transcript. It won't be the exact same thing as the closed caption. It will be actually a cleaner one.

MS. : OK.

MS. MARTIN: As much as we appreciate how quickly the closed caption person is doing right now, thank you for doing that, it's always fun to see how that comes out, but anyway, there will be a transcript. It's usually posted two business days after the call.

MS. : OK.

MS. MARTIN: OK? So going back to 15, did you want to get any clarifications from her on this, Kristen?


MS. MILSTEAD: Yes. Yes. Danielle –

MS. MARTIN: Just stay on, Danielle.

MS. MILSTEAD: – thank you for joining us. I wanted to know a little more about just first, when you say how do you account for those students, what specifically do you mean by account for them?

MS. : So in the table it has all of the completers and the participants and – well, what if part of the program started before the TAACCCT funding and they were enrolled, but now they're participating now. Do they count as a participant or what if they graduate part of the way in, does that count as a completer?

MS. MILSTEAD: OK. So you have a lot of questions.

MS. : Attribute them to the appropriate years and such.

MS. MILSTEAD: OK. So you have a lot of questions packed into this.

MS. : Yeah.

MS. MILSTEAD: OK. So this may not be one that would be good to handle online, just because there's a lot of questions packed into it. Or if you want to basically break them out for next week. So I think it would be really good for everybody to be able to see what specific questions are so then we can go through them one at a time and see – and that would help me help you as well because if there's additional resources we want to put up and then I can see what it is, and we can go through together what you might want to know a little more about. We can do that. But we can move on to the second part of your question, if you'd like to.

MS. : Sure.

MS. MILSTEAD: OK. "The program is partially TAACCCT funded so how do we attribute the appropriate numbers to the TAACCCT grant?" So tell me a little more about what you mean by partially TAACCCT funded. What part is TAACCCT funded?

MS. : Some of the instructors but not all.

MS. MILSTEAD: OK.

MS. : Stuff like that, so like it's split out.

MS. MILSTEAD: So that's fine. As long as you have a TAACCCT program and you have one course that's added or modified in some way, but that course is required for the program, meaning everybody who's in that program has to take it, then that program is considered a grant funded program.


So for example, if you have a course, it's just like a prerequisite that some people might have to take if they don't have the necessary skills to maybe get into the program, you just have some students they got to take this course before they can then move on to the actual program; that would not be considered a TAACCCT funded program. It would just be that particular course that's granted funded.

So that would not be a partially TAACCCT funded program, but you've got, let's say just one or two courses that you've TAACCCT funded because you hired instructors for the course, as long as everybody has to take that course, that's in that program, now you have a TAACCCT funded program. So every student that goes through the program can be counted as a participant, and as soon as they enter the program and you have some sort of documentation of that, you can count them as a participant. So this would be a good place you can look at the who counts as a participant flowchart.

MS. : OK.

MS. MILSTEAD: And it kind of goes through all the things you would need to look at in order to determine if they're a participant. So they have to be in a program or course that's grant funded and that program has to lead to an industry recognized credential. And they have to be enrolled in a course or a program where they have to – sorry – they have to be enrolled in a – if they're in that particular course, that course, again, has to be required in order to get the industry recognized credential.

And it's got to be something that's in your statement of work. And – well, that's not part of this question. We won't go into that. I can go on and on –

MS. MARTIN: It's getting really complex –

MS. MILSTEAD: Yes. But as far as what you're asking here, as soon as somebody is accepted into this program or takes this course, they can be considered a participant. So if you have somebody who's, for example, declared a major somehow, you have some documentation of this but they haven't yet taken the grant funded course that you're referring to, you can go ahead and count them as a participant as long as you have some sort of documentation.

MS. : OK.

MS. MARTIN: OK. Does that get you where you need to be, Danielle?

MS. : I think so.

MS. MARTIN: OK. And if you need more help with that, you can always ask your FPO or you can send a question to the TAACCCT mailbox and copy your FPO. That's our standard format there. OK? Very short pause before we go on to question 16.


Just to let people know, question 16 is going to be from Drew Hatfield (sp) and 17, 18, and 19 are from Cheryl Olson (sp), so if you all are on the call and you want to possibly do some follow-up here, make sure that you've called in to the number and then we'll be right with you. I'm going to put on hold for just one second. (Pause.)

OK. We're back. So number 16 comes from Drew Hatfield at the ICE Healthcare Partnership, TAACCCT round four. Drew asks, "If your statement of work stated that the course or programs of study would be presented using interactive video conferencing (IVC), the classroom that the grant-funded equipment is installed in is also used for other courses that are not included in the grant programs of study, would those additional students be considered participants?"

MS. MILSTEAD: OK. So in this case, it sounds like the equipment itself is what made the course or program a study grant funded and not the classroom space. So in other words, you didn't modify – sorry – you didn't renovate any space, it was the equipment.

So the question you would need to ask is, are the students in the classroom using that equipment or not. If they're not using the equipment, then, no, they wouldn't be considered participants. But if they're using the equipment, then they would be considered participants because the equipment itself was grant-funded.

MS. MARTIN: OK. Thank you, Kristen. Drew, if you – I see somebody named Drew on the list. Did you have any follow-up questions to that? OK. We are going to keep going. Let us know if you are still trying to get in, send us a little chat and we'll come back to you. OK, so question number 17, 18 and 19 all come from Cheryl Olson. Hi to another Cheryl, who is – oh, wait. Excuse me one moment.

OK. Question 17, "Is a student a TAACCCT participant if he or she takes a TAACCCT-funded course but is not enrolled in a TAACCCT program? For example, the student is taking a quality control course from an instructor paid by TAACCCT but they are enrolled in a logistics program that is not a TAACCCT program in our Statement of Work." Kristen.

MS. MILSTEAD: So the answer here is yes. Again, this is a good place to bring up – to plug again the who counts as a participant flowchart. A student is a participant when they enroll in a course that's grant funded – let me say that again. A program that's grant-funded or a course that's part of such a program.

So this flowchart takes you through this – again, the things that need to be considered when you're trying to determine who is a participant, because I say those two things but there are a couple of other things that you need to consider. Again the programs have to lead to industry recognized credentials and if you're talking about a course, the course has to be a required part of the program.

And then there's also – if the student is in the course, they have to stay beyond the add-drop period. And the programs that we're talking about have to be in your statements of work.


MS. MARTIN: OK. So Cheryl Olson, are you on the call and do you want to ask any follow-up to question number 17? OK. We will –

MR. BELLINO: And I'm seeing a message from Cheryl saying yes.

MS. MARTIN: OK.

MR. BELLINO: So yes can mean a lot of things. So yes, Cheryl, we see that you're logged in and yes, Cheryl, if you want to verbalize a question, please dial in to teleconference line. That information's sitting at the top left hand of your screen. And if you are dialed in, press *6 to unmute your line.

MS. MARTIN: OK. Let's give her just one moment there. We'll be – to see if that works. OK.

OK. I'm going to go on to the next question, number 18, while you're doing that and then we can come back to 17 if needed. OK? So this one is number 18 is also from Cheryl Olson at Truckee Meadows Community College. Welcome. "A student successfully completes a TAACCCT program" – sorry – "Is a student a TAACCCT participant if he or she successfully completes a TAACCCT program of study but does not earn an industry-recognized credential aside from the institution's certificate? For example, a student completes a CNC machining program at the institution but does not pass a NIMS exam for a credential."

And by the way, I just want to say, thank you, this is helpful to split these out this way and to give examples. Kristen.

MS. MILSTEAD: OK. This is a good question because we're going to pull it apart a little bit and, again, this is a good one to look at the flowchart with. The question itself has a little contradiction in it. "If a student completes a TAACCCT program of study," by definition they have to earn an industry recognized credential because that's part of the definition of a program of study.

So all these things kind of go together. To be a participant you have to be enrolled in a program of study and a program of study has to be something that leads to an industry recognized credential. So all of those things are kind of like the triad of how you start counting things in the APR.

MS. MARTIN: It's the TAACCCT way of looking at the world, which we recognize is not necessarily the same way –

MS. MILSTEAD: Ideal.

MS. MARTIN: – that everybody else does. It's not truly ideal nor is it the way that everybody else looks at the world. So Cheryl, were you able to get on?

MS. : I am finally here. I apologize for the delay.


MS. MARTIN: No problem.

MS. MILSTEAD: No problem.

MS. MARTIN: Thanks for joining us. Did you have any follow-up questions to number 17 or 18 and, if so, which one would you like to start with?

MS. : Actually, with 17. You mentioned that the courses have to be approved as far as within our statement of work, so if we make any adjustments to our curriculum and change the certificate requirements, do we need to do a modification to account for that?

MS. MILSTEAD: Generally, but I don't want to make a firm statement on that because it's going to depend on the circumstances of exactly what's changing. So the first step would be go to your FPO and say, "Here's what we want to change and here's what's going on." And then your FPO will give you further instructions on that. But definitely, if you're going to make any changes or have been doing anything differently, you need to contact your FPO and let them know what's going on.

MS. MARTIN: OK. And then if they need concurrence from the national office on that, they'll get us involved on that.

MS. MILSTEAD: Do you want to say anything else about that, Tara?

TARA HOLT: No. That's okay. I know Cheryl.

MS. : Send me an email.

MS. HOLT: OK.

MS. : I'll be following up with you, Tara.

MS. MARTIN: Good. OK. Did you have any follow-up on question 18, Cheryl?

MS. : I don't believe so.

MS. MARTIN: OK. All right, good. Then let's go to 19, which is also yours, so just stay on the line for this.

MS. : OK.

MS. MARTIN: 19, "Is a student a TAACCCT participant if he or she is enrolled in a TAACCCT program, earns an industry credential, but does not finish the TAACCCT program because he or she got a job?"

MS. MILSTEAD: OK. This is also a really good one. I recognize that a lot of you define program differently than DOL and the OMB package does because you're developing really


interesting and innovative – see, I'm going to use it differently than we do, but really interesting and innovative programs or career pathways, where people can get these stacked and latticed credentials where they can gather things – I've used this example before, but it's kind of like thinking of a ladder where you have rungs and then people may or may not go to the top. They can stop, they can get one, they can come back.

But the idea is, it's envisioned that the entire thing is the program or program of study. But the way that it's defined just for reporting purposes is, that once you reach that first rung on the ladder, that is one program. And then you kind of have this bigger thing that's another way of looking at a program, but for reporting purposes the first rung is the program, so you can stop and count that person immediately as a completer. And it's really a good thing; it's really to your benefit because you can automatically just right there start getting credit for people in your outcomes.

But then there's people can keep going and you can count all their additional credentials and things like that. But we recognize that out in the field at the institutions the bigger and more important way of looking at it is the entire programs that you are developing. But just in terms of reporting, the first rung on the ladder, the first credential is a program for reporting purposes.

So in terms of this question, when it says not finishing the tech program, if they got an industry-recognized credential to TAACCCT reporting, they have completed a program. So they would be counted as a completer.

MS. MARTIN: OK. Any follow-up questions on number 19, Cheryl?

MS. : Yeah. Can you verify that that's for all rounds of the TAACCCT or is that specific to just certain rounds?

MS. MILSTEAD: No, that's for all rounds.

MS. : OK.

MS. MARTIN: Good question though.

MS. : Thank you.

MS. MARTIN: OK. We're going to take a question that came in in the chatroom related to question number 18 and Gary's going to put it up here on our screen, so that question is, "Sometimes," – so question 18 was this whole business about who's a completer; if they've done this much but not that much, can we count them.

Question 18 – or related to that, "Sometimes problems arise when a student completes a BSN, Bachelor of Science and Nursing program, and gets a four-year diploma, but then can't pass the state certification exam. She has a BSN, a recognized credential but not the state certification, which means they can't get a nursing job." Just one moment please. Sorry. I should have asked Kristen about this first. Kristen wants me to ask this individual to send that question to the


TAACCCT mailbox and she will handle that with you separately offline. OK. We are going to, after 19, did Cheryl – so, Cheryl Olson, did you get your follow-up questions answered?

MS. : I did. Thank you.

MS. MARTIN: Great. Thank you. OK. So we are now going to move to question 20, "A participant completes a program" – this question comes from Barbara Walden, the grant project director from Western Nevada College. Tara says hello if you're on. So if you're on the call and you want to do some follow-up make sure to call in to that phone line, Barbara.

MS. : OK. I'm here.

MS. MARTIN: Great. OK. So Barbara asks, "A participant completes a program and exits the college in December but does not enter employment until April, which is the second quarter after the quarter of exit. Can this student ever be counted under B8?"

MS. MILSTEAD: Oh, this is a good question. They can't be counted in the standardized outcome B8, no, but this is an excellent candidate for a customized measure, because a lot of grantees have various ways that they're counting employment and they want to count all employment.

So for example they have – again, I'm just talking about programs. So you may have students who are enrolled in a career pathway and they don't exit before the grant ends, for example, but they got a job after they completed one or two of the certificates, and they want to be able to count that, so they've created their own measure. Or they didn't get – and this is another example – they got a job but not within the first quarter after exit.

And so what you might want to do is create a customized measure that captures any form of employment before – that can't be captured in the standardized outcome and that's a way that we can talk here – that you can just talk about what's happening employment at your grant, but we can also talk about employment at the national level and how it's happening outside of the standardized outcome.

So this is a really, really good candidate for a customized measure if you'd like to try that. And if you're interested in doing that and need some assistance with that, you can send a message to your FPO or to the TAACCCT mailbox and copy your FPO.

MS. MARTIN: OK. Does that answer question 20 for you, Barbara?

MS. : Yes.

MS. MARTIN: Great. Thank you. OK. Just a minute, we're going to go on a slight pause. (Pause.) OK. We're back. As Kristen says, at just about every question, that's a good question, so there are a lot of good questions.


So we're going to go on to number 21. I know that some of you are asking questions in the chat box and a couple of those we're going to hold until next week because we want to get through the questions that are this week and we want to have time to make sure that we understand them.

MS. MILSTEAD: All right.

MS. MARTIN: So for now we're going to go to 21. Still with Barbara Walden. So Barbara asks, "If a participant does not enter employment in the first quarter after completing or exiting, then we are no longer required since," – then – I think it's "then are we no longer required to follow-up on this participant for placement or retention because he or she did not meet placed in the first quarter criteria?"

MS. MILSTEAD: Yes. That's correct. You can only be counted in the retention outcome if you're counted in the placement outcome, so retention outcome – sorry – replacement outcome is an exit point and if somebody doesn't exit at that point, then you wouldn't also count them in the retention outcome.

So you can think – look at the flowchart, it's called, I think, Table 1 Flow Chart there, and it just shows where you count people with exit points in reporting. And if someone doesn't – isn't counted in employment at their exit point, then you wouldn't follow the flowchart down into the retained employment.

MS. MARTIN: OK?

MS. : OK.

MS. MARTIN: That answer it, Barbara?

MS. : It does. But we can follow them and do – and report them under customizable measures, correct?

MS. MILSTEAD: Yes.

MS. : OK.

MS. MARTIN: OK. Great.

MS. MILSTEAD: Yes. Let me clarify. If you create a customized measure for them, then you wouldn't count those people in your customized measure in retained – back up in the standardized measure B9.

MS. MARTIN: That make sense, Barbara?

MS. : Yes.

MS. MARTIN: OK.


MS. MILSTEAD: OK.

MS. MARTIN: Sometimes I feel like we're playing bingo here except that all we want is the prizes, right? I guess the prizes that we get are the educated and job placed students. All right. Going on to question number 22, also from Barbara. "A participant completes and exits in August, he or she immediately enters employment in the same quarter as completion, then he or she is counted as a completer, B2, on that year's annual report. So can we report that participant as entered employment in B8 also in that year's annual report or do we wait until the next year due to the first quarter after the quarter language?"

MS. MILSTEAD: OK. That's a good question as well. It can be really tricky to figure out what year to count individuals. You would want to count them on that year's report, so for all the individuals – in your report, all your participants you always want to count them in every outcome in the year that they actually occurred.

MS. : OK.

MS. MARTIN: That get you the answer, Barbara?

MS. : Yep.

MS. MARTIN: OK. Well, Barbara, you have a lot of questions.

MS. : (Inaudible) was on a roll, I'll tell you.

MS. MARTIN: OK. Well, I trust that this is helpful to other people as well. So number 23 –

MS. : That's actually not a question; it was the background piece to my follow-up question.

MS. MILSTEAD: Oh, okay.

MS. MARTIN: Oh, okay. So shall we just go on then?

MS. : Yeah. You can skip that one.

MS. MARTIN: We're going to skip 23; we're going to go to 24 –

MS. MILSTEAD: OK.

MS. MARTIN: – in which Barbara asks, "If a participant completes and exits and gains employment in the first quarter after the exit quarter but does not retain employment in the second quarter, then do the colleges not report that participant under retained even if the participant is employed in the third quarter?"

MS. MILSTEAD: OK. Now, I'm trying to follow this. Hold on.


MS. : OK. So they get a job, they lose a job, they get a job again, it happens actually more than you think.

MS. MILSTEAD: Oh, yeah, I'm sure.

MS. MARTIN: So they get a job, they lose a job and they get another one.

MS. MILSTEAD: As long as the participant is employed in the second and third quarter, it doesn't have to be the same job, but you can count them as having retained employment and it doesn't have to be for the entire quarter either.

MS. : OK.

MS. MARTIN: Yeah. OK. OK. Sometimes the questions are harder than the answers.

MS. MILSTEAD: Yeah. I mean I feel like that too when I'm giving a response, I feel like I'm trying to be thorough but also –

MS. MARTIN: Concise?

MS. MILSTEAD: Yeah. And it's hard to find that balance sometimes.

MS. MARTIN: It is. It is. Having listened to Kristen for a while giving answers to these questions, I always admire her ability to understand because my eyes sort of glaze over at a certain point. All right. Question number 25 –

MS. : And again, that was the background –

MS. MARTIN: OK.

MS. : – that's what happened in webinar one which wasn't transcribed.

MS. MILSTEAD: Yeah. I felt like I would go ahead and give the answer again since it wasn't –

MS. MARTIN: Sure.

MS. MILSTEAD: – transcribed.

MS. MARTIN: Let's do that.

MS. MILSTEAD: Oh. Since it was – and so this time it would get on the transcription –

MS. MARTIN: OK.

MS. MILSTEAD: – or maybe for people who weren't there.


MS. MARTIN: OK. Do you want to repeat the question, then, or just –

MS. MILSTEAD: Yeah.

MS. MARTIN: – I'll repeat it. So Barbara spoke with some other TAACCCT directors and said, "Some count class rosters, others require participant enrollment. What is the requirement to count somebody as a participant? Are we required to get participant packets to count them?"

MS. MILSTEAD: Yeah. So DOL doesn't have an official policy on this in terms of what is needed in order to count them. It's up to the institution to determine how they want to track it: It can be electronic records; it can be just the class rosters; it just has to meet the source documentation requirements, and so the source documentation toolkit is – should be, I think it is, one of the attachments that's up here.

And the toolkit should have for every single item that you have to report on, just what sort of documentation is acceptable for that. So yeah. So you're not required to have any particular type, just something that you can back-up for every participant that you're counting in your APR.

MS. MARTIN: And that you should be internally consistent, right? Like your institution should pick one way to do it and keep doing it that way?

MS. MILSTEAD: Yes.

MS. MARTIN: OK. All right. Does that answer that question, Barbara?

MS. : Yes. That wasn't actually my question, that was somebody else asked from the –

MS. MARTIN: Oh, got it.

MS. : – and it led to more questions. You gave that same answer, but then I said, "OK, but I thought we had to have on file for monitoring business an authorization to disclose information and EO statement signed for every participant."

MS. MARTIN: Which is question number 26, please.

MS. : Yeah.

MS. MILSTEAD: Right. Right. So that's the next one. Yes. Again, I was just leading into that because I thought since we didn't have a transcription for the first one, that we would go ahead and get that one on the record.

So the college does not need to have the authorization to disclose according to DOL or the equal opportunity information. This has to do with the fact that TAACCCT is not actually paying for student tuition; it's going to pay for capacity building information, and so you don't actually have to have that information on file for your participant.


MS. MARTIN: Just one moment, please. (Technical difficulty.) OK. So it sounds like there is a little chatter that we're having background here on this particular question that people are hearing certain things from their FPOs related to this that might be for different reasons, like Kristen said for the purposes of reporting, that's not necessarily but for other reasons it may need to be available.

So I'm going to say that we will come back to this question next week and add this back to the questions that we handle next week, and do a little bit more research on it before we give you a more comprehensive answer. How about that?

MS. : That works. Thank you.

MS. MARTIN: All right. Thank you. All right. So let's go to question number 27. "Because the participant will not complete a grant funded program of study they will not be followed for – will they not be followed for placement retention or wage gain?"

MS. MILSTEAD: OK. So I assume – I think this was a follow-up to the previous question. In other words, students who didn't complete one of these –

MS. : It could be a student that, for example, would have been enrolled in a class that was a prerequisite class or they used the grant funded equipment as part of their class.

MS. MILSTEAD: OK. That's correct. So they would be considered participants because they took a grant funded – or they're in some sort of a grant funded course, but they wouldn't be considered completers. They would be counted in the item B4 because they would be – sorry, I'm looking – pulling up the – I want to get the precise language – the total number retained in other education programs. So you have students who – participants who were touched by TAACCCT funds in a grant funded course, but not in a grant funded program. As long – remember, talking about the course itself, it has to be something that's required of all the students in the program that – of which they took the course, even if they are not in the program.

MS. MARTIN: OK. Does that answer that for you, Barbara? If not, I think we'll take this one offline and you can go –

MS. : I'll ask – yeah, I'll follow-up.

MS. MARTIN: OK. All right.

MS. : It would have helped if I could have given you better examples, sorry.

MS. MILSTEAD: Oh, there's no need to be sorry.

MS. MARTIN: But yeah, but in your follow-up maybe you want to give some other examples because that can also be helpful. So one moment please. All right.


Let's go to question 28. "A student is enrolled in a grant funded program of study but refused to sign the release or authorization to disclose educational information. So should we: A, count them as a participant but not as a completer and do no follow-up; B, count them as a participant and a completer but do not follow-up; or C, we don't count them at all?"

MS. MILSTEAD: OK. This is another good question. So you would definitely count them as a participant and a completer because, again, the TAACCCT funds are not paying for their tuition. They just enrolled in a course, or a program that was somehow modified with grant funds and you know that course or program meets all those other requirements that we've talked about. So they've gone into these courses, they've been touched by grant funds, they meet the requirements to be counted in the OMB package and be reported.

As far as the follow-up goes, again, DOL doesn't specify whether they have to sign these forms, you don't have to show them for monitoring purposes and whether or not you have to have them is probably going to be more locally determined whether your institution has some form of requirements or whether your state has some form of requirement. So if you're not able to follow-up because of these circumstances, that's really good to let us know that in your narrative information, because if you can't tell us that your student got employment and you can't even follow-up with him, that's just missing data for us.

Again, it doesn't mean that you don't have poor employment numbers; it just means you can't go out and find out. So hopefully this doesn't happen too often. I don't know if it happens or not but, again, you just let us know if in your narrative section of your APR that you have this number of students that you can't follow-up on for this reason.

MS. : Thank you. And it doesn't happen very often but it does happen.

MS. MILSTEAD: OK. Yeah. That's good to know.

MS. MARTIN: OK. Good. Thank you. And then finally for Barbara, question number 29. This is a clarification question from the October 13th webinar. "If we use a class roster approach to count participants who are enrolled in a grant funded course or are receiving grant funded services, however, that is not in a grant funded program of study, do they count?"

MS. MILSTEAD: OK. So this is another really good question. So let's unpack this one a little bit. In terms of what classifies someone as a participant, we have to remove part of what's in here because if they're only receiving grant funded services, they wouldn't qualify as participants.

They have to be enrolled in a grant funded program or a course that's part of such a program, so the course would have to be something like the instructor was paid for with grant funds or there was some equipment or renovation for classroom space or something of that nature. If you have students who are receiving services and that's all that's happening to them, they're also enrolled in these courses, those students wouldn't be considered participants unless and until they then go on to enroll in a program or, of course, part of such a program.


MS. : I'm going to have to take this up with Matthew because we have – (inaudible) –consortium there were three programs that specified zero dollars for it, they're receiving services but yet they were counted in our outcome numbers, so I'll follow-up with our FPO on that one.

MS. MILSTEAD: OK.

MS. MARTIN: OK. Good.

MS. HOLT: Yeah, Barbara, we were just talking about that today with the CFMs, so we'll be in touch about that.

MS. : Thanks, Tara.

MS. MARTIN: OK. Great. So just one moment please. All right. Let's go to question number 30. And this one comes from Brenda Shurer (sp) from ACT for Healthcare in Chippewa Valley. Welcome Brenda, if you're on. If you are, let us know by saying hello and doing #6 and letting us know if you want to do any follow-up.

OK. "What is meant by portable in regard to a program leading to an industry recognized credential? Or specifically, what criteria must be met for a local certificate to be considered portable?"

MS. MILSTEAD: OK. Thank you. That's a great question as well. If you were on last week, I talked about TEGL 15-10 and I've added an additional handout that – it's an attachment. Sometimes I refer to it but I've actually added the attachment this week to that TEGL and it goes into a little more detail. It's called the credential resource guide and it actually defines what is meant by portable there. If you want to look at it or if not, I'm going to talk about it a little bit, but it's on page 7.

And it says, "A credential is considered portable when it's recognized and accepted as verifying the qualifications of an individual in other settings, either in other geographic areas, at other educational institutions, or by other industries or employing companies."

So some examples where that wouldn't work is, if you have one specific employer that comes to you and says, I want to you to develop this certificate for me so students can come and work for me, and it wouldn't necessarily be something that they could then take somewhere else. It would be something very, very specific to that particular company. And so the idea is that you just want people to be able to take this credential and move anywhere, and it would be recognized, widely recognized in other areas; recognized and respected, that they could go and get a job with this.

MS. MARTIN: OK. Brenda, are you on the line? Does that answer your question or do you want to do any follow-up there?

MS. : We are on the line and that is helpful. Thank you.


MS. MARTIN: OK.

MS. MILSTEAD: No problem. Thank you.

MS. MARTIN: Thank you, Brenda, and Brenda had a second question from Chippewa Valley, which is number 31. "When designating a student with veterans status, do we follow the college policy on what that means or is the eligible spouse considered veterans status if they provide a DD-214, a marriage certificate, even though they are not receiving or eligible to receive benefits?" Going on, "Do all veterans and spouses of veterans need to be certified to receive veteran benefits for us to count them as a veteran or by just providing their DD-214, license ID with veteran identifier and a marriage certificate sufficient to count as a veteran?"

MS. MILSTEAD: OK. There's a specific definition in the OMB package of veterans status. It's actually comes from the United States Code 38, Section 1012 and it may or may not be the same one that's at your institution, but the one in the OMB package should be the one that you use to determine who qualifies there.

And they don't have to be receiving benefits or eligible to receive benefits according to this definition, that's not – DOL doesn't determine that. It's just once again what's in this code, that's how it would qualify. And again, you would to determine what documentation they would need, just take a look at the source documentation toolkit for that.

MS. MARTIN: OK. Does that – any further questions on that, Brenda?

MS. : Can you repeat, it's Code 38 and then what was the rest of it?

MS. MILSTEAD: Section 1012.

MS. : Section 1012.

MS. MILSTEAD: Yeah. But again, this is in the reporting package which is also up there.

MS. MARTIN: It's in the OMB reporting package?

MS. MILSTEAD: Yes. And let's see if it's round 2, 3, and 4 – page 12. I think it's page 12.

MS. MARTIN: We think it's page 12.

MS. MILSTEAD: Yeah. There's a new – (inaudible) – so don't take my word for that page number, but it is in there. It's C4B is where you report it, so if you look for C4B, that complete definition is in there and it's just directly taken word for word from the code.

MS. MARTIN: OK. Great. All right. Thank you. So here's the deal. We – Kristen, you did great. You, Kristen, make it through. I feel like this is a game show, right? You made it through questions 14 through 31 with a couple that we're going to take off to the side. I'm


actually surprised that we did make it through that. It is 4:57 in our time zone, so we're going to stop here for today.

Those of you who had questions in the chat, we are going to take those questions and do them next week. So if you want to clarify those questions in any way or add some examples to them, please take that question yourself, stick it in the TAACCCT mailbox, say I'd like this to be on the October 20, whatever next week is, 27, performance webinar and here's an example or something like that, because I know you're typing quickly while you're trying to listen and all of that.

And then we will – but if not, we'll just take the questions that you put in here and we will start with those next week along with any other questions that we get in for that time. So I wanted to say thank you very much to Kristen. Thank you to Tara for joining us. Thank you to all of you for joining us and for caring so much about getting the answers to these questions right, because, if we don't, then the data isn't accurate and valid, and it doesn't all serve us well in terms of the whole point of collecting it.

So thank you so much. Meanwhile, you don't have to necessarily wait 'til next week to get other questions answered. You can just send them to the TAACCCT mailbox and copy your FPO or talk to your FPO. However, you should be aware that there are many, many, many dozens of them pouring in, so please be a little bit patient with us as we try to get to all of you with your questions.

Thank you so much. I'm going to turn it back over to Eric to close out the webinar.

(END)


Documents

media/Files/Webinars/2 Web viewTARA HOLT: No. That's okay. I know Cheryl. MS.: Send me an ... that complete definition is in there and it's just directly taken word for word from