I draw attention to the article in Tuesday’s Herald about the Workforce Training and Education Coordinating Board’s report on Workforce Training Results-2004 (“Other programs outperform career schools, report says”). The article makes several comparisons between private career schools, community colleges and the various other programs this agency tracks for performance.
Regrettably, the article neglected to mention two salient points: many of the differences between training programs at private career schools and community colleges are well within the survey’s margin of error. Equally, the report contains a caveat that inappropriate comparisons should not be made between programs. The reader, when viewing such data, should make allowances for the differences in individual characteristics of the students participating in such programs (i.e. what was their previous level of education and work experience).
The purpose of the report is not to compare programs, but to analyze whether individual programs are improving over time and what aspects are most in need of improvement.
Bryan Wilson
Workforce Training and
Education Coordinating Board
Olympia
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