CTE Policy Watch: A blog for CTE advocates

U.S. Department of Labor Publishes Final WIOA Regulations

On Thursday, June 30, the U.S. Departments of Labor, Education, Health and Human Services, Agriculture and Housing and Urban Development released the final regulations for the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA). These regulations mark an important step in the WIOA implementation process, and will shape the way the law is enacted on the ground.

The final regulations were published after the Administration received input from a wide range of stakeholders (including ACTE) through a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking last year. The new regulations will soon be published in the Federal Register, and become effective in the coming months.

ACTE will review the new regulations to determine their impact on the CTE community and will publish additional updates on the Policy Watch Blog. The Department of Labor has also published an overview fact sheet on the regulations, which can be accessed here.

Perkins Rewrite Reactions Roundup

On Tuesday, June 28, the House Education and the Workforce Committee released the Strengthening Career and Technical Education for the 21^st Century Act, a bill to reauthorize the Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education Act. The legislation, sponsored by House CTE Caucus co-chair Rep. Glenn Thompson (R-PA) and Katherine Clark (D-MA), marks the first step in the Perkins reauthorization process.

ACTE Executive Director LeAnn Wilson and Advance CTE Executive Director Kimberly Green released a joint statement Tuesday applauding the bipartisan approach taken in drafting the legislation, as well as the progress to reauthorize this critical law.

Several other education and workforce stakeholder organizations responded to the bill’s introduction as well:

• The American Federation of Teachers called the bill “an important display of bipartisanship,” and said “CTE programs offer a way for schools and businesses to coordinate to provide well-trained future employees with good middle-class jobs.”
• The National Governors Association said the legislation “builds on states’ efforts to prepare students for high-tech, in-demand jobs.” They went on to note the importance of alignment between Perkins, the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act and the Every Student Succeeds Act.
• The National Skills Coalition published a blog outlining the bill’s major changes.

In addition to published statements, several policy-focused media outlets have carried the story forward. POLITICO included a summary of the action in its daily rundown, Morning Education, and Education Week published a full story on the new bill on its Politics K-12 blog.

To learn more about the bill’s text and major changes, click here to read our previous coverage. ACTE will remain engaged on this important issue and continue to report on the process on the Policy Watch Blog.

House Unveils Perkins Reauthorization Bill

On June 28, the House Education and the Workforce Committee announced its much-anticipated bill to reauthorize the Perkins Act, the Strengthening Career and Technical Education for the 21st Century Act, sponsored by Reps. Glenn Thompson (R-PA), co-chair of the House CTE Caucus, and Katherine Clark (D-MA). The bipartisan committee bill is the first comprehensive reauthorization of Perkins to be considered by Congress in a decade.

“The importance of career and technical education has grown exponentially across the country since the Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education Improvement Act was passed unanimously by Congress in 2006,” said Thompson. This well-engineered and robust reauthorization aims to close our nation’s skills gap by creating clear pathways to education and training for students eager to pursue careers in vital technical fields.” ACTE Executive Director LeAnn Wilson applauded “our partners in Congress for their work to begin the Perkins reauthorization process in releasing this bill, as well as the spirit of bipartisanship that has made that work possible.”

The bill text, detailed summary and fact sheet are available online.

The bill seeks to streamline Perkins and better align it with other education and workforce development laws, including the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act and Every Student Succeeds Act. It incorporates many of ACTE’s Perkins reauthorization priorities. ACTE is still reviewing the full text of the bill and will be providing more information in the coming days, but highlights from the bill include:

• Maintaining the Basic State Grant as a formula grant program, and maintains the current federal-to-state and state-to-local formulas
• Establishing formal definitions for “CTE concentrator”, “Program of study,” and “Work-based learning,” and emphasizing programs of study throughout the law
• Simplifying the current accountability indictors, aligning where possible with other education and workforce reporting requirements
• Increasing the amount of funds states can set aside as part of their “reserve fund” from 10 percent to 15 percent to assist rural areas or areas with a significant number of CTE students
• Repealing the requirement that states must negotiate levels of performance with the Secretary of Education, and prevents the Secretary from withholding funds from a state for not meeting targets
• Introducing a new local application process and a biennial needs assessment to be conducted in partnership with local stakeholders; this new process significantly streamlines the local plan process from current law
• Streamlining local uses of funds, with an emphasis on career exploration and awareness activities, educator professional development, and implementing elements of high-quality CTE programs of study
• Authorizing $1.133 billion in funding for the Basic State Grant program for the first year the law takes effect, an increase over current levels, with increases for each of the five remaining years of the authorization

The committee is expected to take up the bill in the coming weeks. Check back to the CTE Policy Watch Blog for more analysis and updates.

Community College’s Workforce Mission

What makes a community college successful at preparing the local workforce? Recent research says that the school’s mission is a major factor.

According to an analysis conducted in the North Carolina Community College System, students from community colleges that promote career preparation in their mission and messaging earn more than students from colleges that state their mission to produce transfer students or students from colleges that take a dual approach. The researchers conclude that a college’s mission to prepare the future workforce is a major factor in student labor market success; however, other factors largely outside the school’s control—such as the local unemployment rate—also impact how well students do in the workplace.

Another study takes a look at how labor market returns vary between those who complete and do not complete a postsecondary program. The analysis looks at nursing, in particular, and finds that just accumulating credits in nursing does not necessarily lead to higher earnings and is no different from earning general credits. This is more evidence that completion is critical.

New Education Opportunities for Justice-involved Individuals

In recent weeks, the Administration has focused extensively on increasing the opportunities for education and training of justice-involved individuals in an effort to reduce recidivism. First, 67 colleges and universities were selected to participate in the Department of Education’s Second Chance Pell Pilot Program. The experimental program, originally announced last summer, will allow the selected postsecondary institutions to partner with federal or state penal institutions to offer education programs, and allow incarcerated individuals who qualify and expect to be released within five years to receive federal Pell grants to cover the costs.

"The evidence is clear. Promoting the education and job training for incarcerated individuals makes communities safer by reducing recidivism and saves taxpayer dollars by lowering the direct and collateral costs of incarceration," said U.S. Secretary of Education John B. King Jr. as he announced the institutions selected to participate. A number of community and technical colleges are among those institutions, and many plan to offer programs utilizing online education or a hybrid of online and classroom education. There are also requirements for additional wrap-around services.

The Department of Labor has also been active on this issue, awarding $64.5 million in grants under four different programs that focus on better preparing those involved with the criminal justice system to gain employment post-release. The grants focus on providing in-demand skills, access to good jobs, and a stronger foundation of community support upon re-entry.

The programs include Reentry Demonstration Projects for Young Adults, Training to Work, Pathways to Justice Careers and Linking to Employment Activities Pre-Release. While most of the recipients are community-based organizations or municipalities, we encourage CTE providers to reach out to determine the appropriate role for education and training providers.

DOL Announces $50.5 M in Apprenticeship Grants

Last week, the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) announced $50.5 million in federal discretionary grant funding to expand the availability of registered apprenticeship programs. The ApprenticeshipUSA State Expansion Grants will award 33 grants ranging from $700,000 to $3.2 million to states in order to help expand and integrate apprenticeship opportunities, including through connections with education and workforce systems. The grants will enable states to increase their efforts to market apprenticeship programs to new sectors and populations, increase their outreach to business and industry partners and innovate new approaches to the model.

“The Obama Administration is ‘all in’ on apprenticeship for a simple reason: it works,” said DOL Secretary Thomas Perez in a release on the announcement.

States applying for consideration must submit their applications by September 7, 2016, and can access additional information here. The funds are a part of DOL’s broader $90 million funding strategy announced in April to strengthen the apprenticeship system nationwide, and build on the Obama Administration’s previous investment of $175 million in 2015.

ACTE values the contributions of apprenticeship programs in preparing more students for college- and career-success, and will continue to monitor federal grant opportunities to expand both these and other promising models of CTE.

New Guidance on Gender Equity in CTE

On June 15, the Department of Education released new guidance in the form of a “Dear Colleague” letter on gender equity in CTE, particularly focused on both Perkins and Title IX requirements. The letter was written jointly by the Department’s Office of Career, Technical, and Adult Education (OCTAE) and Office for Civil Rights (OCR), “to make clear to recipients that all students, regardless of their sex or gender, must have equal access to the full range of CTE programs offered…This letter serves to support and inform recipients by clarifying the legal obligations to ensure equitable access to CTE programs, and by providing examples of issues that may raise concerns regarding compliance with these obligations.”

The requirements in the letter are not new, as it goes on to state, “This guidance does not add requirements to applicable law, but provides information and examples to inform recipients about how the Department evaluates whether covered entities are complying with their legal obligations.” Topics covered in the letter are comprised of federal funding Recipients’ obligations to prevent and remedy sex discrimination in CTE programs, including:

• recruitment and promotional activities
• admissions and access to classes and schools
• counseling and appraisal materials
• Title IX procedural requirements
  • notice of nondiscrimination
  • Title IX coordinator
  • grievance procedures
• Title IX Requirements related to enrollment, retention, and academic of students of the underrepresented sex
  • pregnancy and parental status
  • sex-based harassment

In addition, a set of examples is included around recruitment and promotional activities, admissions, access to classes and schools, counseling, pregnant or parenting students, and sex-based harassment. Additional technical assistance resources and information on promising practices is expected to be released soon.

If you have any questions or concerns about how this guidance might affect your programs, please let us know!

Honesty: A Critical Employability Skill

Honesty is rated the most important of nonacademic skills by supervisors and employees in the ACT National Curriculum Survey 2016.

Other important nonacademic skills rated highly include sustaining effort, cooperating and maintaining composure. In addition, lacking conscientiousness and lacking problem-solving ability can have particularly negative impacts on employees, across both nonacademic and academic skills.

The survey also delved into technology skills. Supervisors responded that they want employees with:

• Basic computer terminology skills
• An understanding of information security
• The ability to use email
• An understanding of information ethics, such as copyright, attribution and piracy
• The ability to use operating systems

Improving Federal Workforce and Postsecondary Data

ACTE and its partners in the Workforce Data Quality Campaign (WDQC) recently made recommendations to the Commission on Evidence-based Policymaking about workforce and postsecondary data issues.

The commission was mandated by the Evidence-Based Policymaking Commission Act of 2016, which was passed with bipartisan support in March, to make recommendations on the use, integration and funding of federal data. The WDQC put forward the following topics to the Commission for its review:

• expanding access to wage information
• improving information on postsecondary progress and outcomes
• providing more accessible labor market information for a variety of consumers
• harmonizing definitions and metrics across federal laws
• clarifying and using evolving best practices on privacy and security protections

By next fall, the Commission is expected to submit findings and recommendations to the President and Congress.

Resource Center for CTE and Career Readiness

Advance CTE (formerly the National Association of State Directors of CTE) has launched a new online resource center with publications and tools on CTE and career readiness.

The resource center houses a variety of resources —research reports, case studies, state policies, guides and tools—organized around key topics such as Access and Equity, Work-based Learning, Credentials and Assessments, Employer Engagement, Instructor and Leader Quality, and Graduation Requirements.

This project came out of the New Skills for Youth initiative, a partnership between Advance CTE, the Council of Chief State School Officers and the Education Strategy Group, funded by JPMorgan Chase & Co.