CTE Policy Watch: A blog for CTE advocates

State of the Union Focuses on Skills, Education Issues

President Obama’s delivery of the annual State of the Union address on January 23 highlighted “an economy built on American manufacturing, American energy, skills for American workers, and a renewal of American values,” The president asked for additional funding and support for education and referenced the skills gap that many employers face.

To address the skills gap, the president requested a national commitment to train two million Americans with skills that will lead them directly to a job and said that community colleges need more money to become community career centers. He also shared his desire to develop a one-stop Web site to help Americans “cut through the maze of confusing training programs.”

Noting that “teachers matter,” the president said that commitment to skills and education has to begin earlier, although he was not specific about when or how that commitment should be implemented. He noted the low pay and sacrifice of educators while he advocated for rewarding good teachers and an end to teaching to the test.

The president commended states for their work on standards-based reform and noted the need to address the cost of higher education by increasing budgets and cutting costs so that student tuition is more affordable. The president also proposed a Veterans Job Corps to help communities hire veterans for law enforcement and firefighter positions.

While the speech contained a number of postsecondary and job skills references, the content did not reference any CTE-specific secondary level issues. Look for additional details regarding the initiatives mentioned in the president’s speech when his FY 2013 budget proposal is announced on February 13. The Republican response to the State of the Union was delivered by Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels. Though he made no specific reference to education and workforce development policies, the full text of his address is available here.

Job Council Releases Road Map to Renewal

By: Chris Hemmelman

President Obama’s Job Council recently released its Road Map to Renewal report, which looks at “the broader factors influencing American prosperity and competitiveness in a global age” and makes policy recommendations that include investing in education and innovation, building the energy and manufacturing sectors of the economy and making tax and regulatory reforms.

As it relates to education, the report calls for continued investment in education along with continued educational reform initiatives. The report notes that investment and reform are especially important in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) education. Recommendations for improving education include:

• Form partnerships between businesses and educational institutions to ensure that training for students and workers meets the demands of the labor market
• Provide clear performance data for the full spectrum of educational institutions to empower parents, students, education providers, government and employers to drive systemic improvements in education
• Empower students, parents and teachers to make data-driven improvements to education

The report notes that the United States’ highly-educated manufacturing workforce, unrivaled intellectual property protections and relatively low energy costs give ample reason “to be bullish about American manufacturing.” The report recommends that the United States work to achieve the goal of adding three to four percentage points to its global market share in manufacturing. To that end, the report suggests a number of strategies, including:

• Build U.S. competitiveness across the board in the areas of skills, regulation, taxes and infrastructure
• Develop a national “Gold Standard” for strong local industry clusters
• Leverage the government’s procurement power to promote scale-up in emerging industries
• Develop programs to help new manufacturers find the workforce they need

What do you think of these policy suggestions? In what ways can CTE be integral to accomplishing these goals?

House WIA Bill Threatens Perkins Funding

By: Jamie Baxter

In December, the House Education and Workforce Committee released a bill from Rep. Foxx (R-NC) that, if enacted, would consolidate workforce programs into four funding streams. ACTE has been tracking this bill closely due to the fact that it allows each state’s governor to include Perkins in a broad workforce plan and, most importantly, use Perkins funds for any activity that is included in that plan—even if the activities are not authorized under the current Perkins Act.

ACTE is fearful that a governor’s priorities may not be in CTE programming and he or she may use Perkins funds for other pressing workforce issues in the state. This consolidation into a larger workforce fund could jeopardize funding for local CTE programs. ACTE has been and will continue to meet with Capitol Hill staff and other education groups that work on CTE in an attempt to address this issue. The bill is expected to be marked up in committee in late February. Stay tuned because ACTE will likely ask you to contact your Members of Congress on this issue. We will alert the CTE field when your action will have the most impact. Please contact me with any questions.

House Ed and Workforce Committee Releases New ESEA Bills

On January 6, the House Committee on Education and the Workforce released draft legislation to reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA). The two bills released on Friday, the Student Success Act and the Encouraging Innovation and Effective Teachers Act, address reforms to teacher effectiveness and accountability systems in the current law. Additionally, two other ESEA bills that had previously been passed by the committee, one of which eliminated over 40 federal education programs and the other which provided greater flexibility for states in using federal education dollars, were incorporated into this latest legislation, a move which effectively ended the piecemeal ESEA reauthorization strategy of committee Republicans. 

Chairman John Kline (R-MN) said that the legislation will “change the status quo and put more control into the hands of the teachers, principals, superintendents, and parents.”  One of the major highlights from the new legislation is the elimination of the Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) accountability system that is currently in place. States would instead be tasked with developing their own accountability systems. The bill also eliminates federally mandated interventions for poor-performing schools, turning over the responsibility to the states. It removes the “highly qualified teacher” requirement, but mandates that school districts must develop their own teacher evaluation systems that will be partially based on student achievement.

The efforts of committee Republicans to limit the role of the federal government in education have drawn the criticism of some Democrats. Rep. George Miller(D-CA), ranking member of the committee, stated that the draft legislation “abandons students, parents and taxpayers alike by failing to hold school systems accountable for improving achievement.” It seems unlikely that this latest measure will be able attract bipartisan support, reducing the chances that reauthorization of ESEA will happen this year. So far, the only portion of the Republican ESEA plan to pass the full House, with the support of House Democrats, was a bill to expand access to charter schools.