Job Corps backers assail stats used to justify shutdown
CHICOPEE — Closing Job Corps programs like the one in Chicopee would be 'irrational,' a Wednesday court filing said.
Backers insist the Department of Labor's case against the 60-year-old nationwide anti-poverty program is rife with falsified or misleading numbers.
This week's complaint persuaded a federal judge to block a shutdown for now, setting up another legal test of the Trump administration's ability to write its own rules for executive branch agencies.
As supporters fight to save the program, they are pointing to statistical errors the Department of Labor made in building a case to ax the program.
The U.S. labor secretary said last week the Job Corps is failing its original mission and wasting taxpayer money. But supporters say the Department of Labor cherry-picked statistics it used in an April 'transparency report' in order to make the program look bad.
On Capitol Hill, a New England lawmaker confronted Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer about that analysis a week before she announced the shutdown of 99 sites around the country, including the Westover Job Corps program in Chicopee.
On Wednesday, a federal judge in New York City temporarily halted the closing, pending a court hearing June 17.
Sen. Jack Reed, D-Rhode Island, zeroed in on use of enrollment numbers depressed by the pandemic.
'All these numbers are based upon data from really the heart of the COVID epidemic, in which, because of COVID, enrollment was at 34%,' Reed said May 22 to Chavez-DeRemer, as she sat before members of a Congressional committee.
'Today enrollment is at 75%. And if you ran those numbers today, the cost per student would go down dramatically,' Reed said.
'So your argument that this is just a waste and too expensive is a direct result, a calculated result, of picking the most favorable point you could to reinforce an argument I would suspect the administration had before you even got there, which is 'Let's get rid of this program,'' he said.
'That's not a true statement,' Chavez-DeRemer replied.
Chavez-DeRemer then shared with senators concerns about Job Corps participants being unduly 'in harm's way' because of incidents of rape and murder on program sites around the U.S.
That claim is one of many challenged this week by the National Job Corps Association, a trade group representing five companies that contract with the labor department to run Job Corps sites.
When announcing a pause, Chavez-DeRemer said in a statement that the programs collectively faced 14,913 'serious incident reports,' including 372 instances of 'inappropriate sexual behavior and sexual assaults' at campuses that are home to more than 25,000 participants.
The trade group notes that under DOL terminology, 'serious' includes power failures, bad weather, athletic injuries that needed treatment and adult students leaving Job Corps sites without approval.
The trade group said Job Corps centers must report 'incidents as minor as being late to class or using profanity.'
'In fact, 98% of reported incidents are similarly minor incidents. Job Corps students experience assaults and sexual violence at far lower rates than their peers in their home communities and on college campuses,' the group said in a fact sheet.
The Republican asked a labor department spokeswoman Thursday whether it stands behind its use of statistics in the report. The official did not reply as of 6 p.m. Thursday.
In this week's court complaint, lawyers for program operators argued that the 'transparency report' used flawed methods 'and reflects selective and inaccurate performance measures, costs, and statistics, intended to significantly understate Job Corps' performance and overstate its costs.'
The filing argues further that the labor department does not have the authority on its own to close the Job Corps program without consulting with Congress (which created the program in 1964), holding hearings and following its own regulations.
As for alleged misleading statistics, the following are examples cited by the National Job Corps Association in its court filing and publications:
— The report does not take into account that participation in the year reviewed was depressed by pandemic-era limits, resulting in higher costs per student, which the DOL says averaged $80,284 for the 2023 program year.
Only a footnote on the report acknowledges this, saying, 'As with other programs, Job Corps' performance was significantly impacted between (Program Year) 2019 and PY 2021 due to COVID-19. PY 2022 and PY 2023 are considered transition years as Job Corps increases student enrollments (and) population builds back up ….'
– The report claims that participants earn an average of $16,695 a year after leaving. But the trade group notes that average includes zero earnings for people who did not reply to the survey, are enrolled in college or serving in the military — depressing the true figure. During the program year reviewed, the trade group says that students placed in jobs earned an average wage of $17.13 an hour and that graduates received 'annualized' wages of more than $31,000.
'Comprehensive studies indicate Job Corps increases participants' earnings and decreases their future reliance on public assistance,' the trade group said in a statement.
— The report lists the total cost per graduate at $155,600. But the trade group cites other labor department figures showing a cost of under $50,000. And it notes that during the first Trump administration, the cost per participant was found to be $34,301.
– The report says just 38.6% of Job Corps students graduate in the year reviewed. The trade group says the current graduation rate is higher and claims that historically, the graduation rate has been above 60%.
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