The Department of Education published a blog post on Monday, July 28, about its new public-private partnership to increase access to the middle class through job training, which it has dubbed "upskilling." The initiative was motivated by Vice President Joe Biden's review of job training programs that was requested by President Obama during his 2014 State of the Union address and reported on by ACTE's Policy Watch blog here.
The post broadly describes a few of the steps that the Administration hopes to take under the initiative, including federal investment in an online skills center that will offer open online courses and opportunities for students to earn credentials at accredited institutions, as well as the development of partnerships between public and private sector organizations to create job training opportunities for low-wage and entry-level workers.
The Obama administration has often expressed its commitment to increasing economic mobility in America, and has cited this commitment as its motivation for the upskilling initiative. The post states that "[The administration's] goal is to get 24 million low-wage, hard working Americans the training that puts them on pathways to fill hundreds of thousands of vacancies employers have right now in mid-skill, better paying jobs."
ACTE has worked continuously to build support for CTE programs in opportunities for professionals to obtain continued education opportunities, including those that will provide them with increased earning potential and career advancement. To learn more about ACTE's work on these topics, please visit our CTE Prepares the Qualified Workforce page and read our Worker Retraining Issue Sheet. We will continue to monitor the initiative as additional information becomes available, and keep our members informed through the CTE Policy Watch blog.
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