On January 24, Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona announced a new Education Department initiative called “Raise the Bar: Lead the World” in a what was called a “major address” at the Department’s headquarters.
The new initiative outlines the Secretary’s priorities and direction of the agency for the coming year in three major areas: achieving academic excellence, improving learning conditions and creating pathways for global engagements. The Department emphasized that these were not new priorities, but rather “a call to strengthen our will to transform education for the better, building on approaches that we know work in education.”
CTE was featured prominently in the section of the speech focused on global competitiveness and college and career pathways, and we’ve included the text of that portion of the speech below for reference. It is a positive sign to hear the Secretary speaking specifically about CTE as a key education and economic solution, and over the coming weeks, we will be working closely with the Department on ways to strengthen their work. Stay tuned for more information about this new initiative!
Excerpt from Secretary’s speech:
Currently, our Pre-Kindergarten through Grade 12 system and college systems are disconnected.
For too many students, the gaps between the systems are too big to cross.
For example, the skills for the high paying jobs that will be made available through the CHIPS and Science Act, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, and the climate provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act must be better infused into our K-12 education system, especially STEM and Career Technical Education courses, so our students graduate with options for success.
This means that dual enrollment courses for local colleges should start at 11th grade and that ambitious high schoolers can graduate with an associate’s degree or credential without paying a penny.
Already, we’ve secured over a billion dollars in funding for career and technical education through the Perkins Grant program and $25 million for career-connected high schools. Now is the time to build on that.
To help get there, in November, we launched a new pathways initiative called Raise the Bar: Unlocking Career Success – together with the First Lady and the Secretaries of Labor and Commerce. As we roll out this initiative, it will include very specific plans on how our high schools should be evolved to meet the career and college pathways of today and tomorrow. Look out for our plan: Better yet, put it to good use.
It also means that Career Pathways in high schools can lead to micro credentials for the jobs of today and tomorrow. We have the students for the careers needed to build America. We just have to better align our systems and clear the path for our students.
We must challenge our myopic view that emphasizing the importance of career pathways is about limiting students, or the view that it’s four-year-college or bust.
Advancing career pathways in high schools is about more options for students, not less. What it does is prepare them for the careers of today with options, and in some cases, their employer will pay for their future education.
If we do this well, our graduates will be able to compete on a global stage.
It’s my intention to Raise the Bar so we can lead the world in advanced career and technical education.
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