Tuesday’s State of the Union address by President Biden highlighted several initiatives relevant to CTE, including the necessity of recruiting and retaining workers to fill many of the jobs created by legislation such as the CHIPS and Science Act and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, and the importance of increasing teacher salaries.
Most notably, President Biden called out the importance of connecting students to career opportunities. “Let’s finish the job, connect students to career opportunities starting in high school and provide two years of community college, some of the best career training in America, in addition to being a pathway to a four-year degree.”
Giving the GOP response, Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders announced a plan to increase Arkansas teacher pay, stating that the plan “improves career readiness and helps put a good teacher in every classroom by increasing their starting salary from one of the lowest to one of the highest in the nation.”
Spotlighting CTE even further, Rep. Marie Glusenkamp Perez (D-WA) hosted CTE teacher Cory Torppa as her guest at the speech. He is a construction, engineering design and manufacturing teacher at Kalama High School in Washington and a 2022 grand prize winner of the Harbor Freight Tools for Schools Prize for Teaching Excellence. Photo courtesy of Rep. Glusenkamp Perez
Kate Foley, a 10th grade computer-integrated manufacturing student at Rolling Meadows High School in Illinois High School District 214, also attended the speech as a guest of First Lady Jill Biden. Rolling Meadows is a public high school that prepares students for future careers through partnerships with the local community college, work-based learning opportunities with employers and career advising programs.
You can read the full State of the Union speech here.
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