CA DWC Advises Injured Workers And Claims Administrators To Use U.S. Department of Education Web Site To Access Accredited School Information

Oakland, CA (CompNewsNetwork) - The Division of Workers' Compensation (DWC) regulations for supplemental job displacement benefits (SJDB) require that private schools used by injured workers for retraining meet certain requirements through accreditation. Because the Bureau of Private Postsecondary and Vocational Education (BPPVE), which was part of the California Department of Consumer Affairs and regulated degree-granting and vocational schools, was abolished effective July 1, 2007, individuals are no longer able to determine if the school meets the BPPVE's standards.

However, the SJDB regulations provided two other avenues for finding accredited schools: through the Regional Associations of Schools and Colleges authorized by the United States Department of Education or through the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). The U.S. Department of Education's Web site provides access to a master list of accredited colleges, universities and career and trade schools. The database lists approximately 6,900 postsecondary educational institutions and programs, each of which is accredited by an accrediting agency or state approval agency recognized by the U.S. Secretary of Education as a "reliable authority as to the quality of postsecondary education."

The U.S. Department of Education Web site is at http://www.ope.ed.gov/accreditation/ and the FAA's site is at http://www.faa.gov/.

Any training outside of California must still be approved by an agency in that state that is similar to the BPPVE. The BPPVE has also posted information on the sunset of its program on its Web site at http://www.bppve.ca.gov/sunset_updates.htm.