Building on themes raised in the President’s FY 19 budget request, Department of Education leaders recently announced plans to restructure the agency at an internal meeting. Much of the reorganization is in response to an Executive Order in 2017 calling for reorganization plans, and a follow-up order directing agencies to reduce staffing.

It is being widely reported (EdWeek, Inside Higher Education, Washington Post) that one of the Secretary’s many proposed changes is to merge the current Office of Career, Technical, and Adult Education with the Office of Postsecondary Education in a new “Office of Postsecondary and Lifelong Learning.” Such a merger would eliminate the Assistant Secretary position for CTE and significantly reduce the visibility of CTE within the Department of Education.

ACTE is very concerned about the impact of the reorganization proposal and is reaching out to both Administration and congressional leaders. The department has suggested that some of their proposals will require congressional approval, while others can be accomplished internally. The Department of Education Organization Act, originally passed as Public Law 96-88 in 1979, and last amended in 2015 by Public Law 114-95, establishes key components of the department. This Act explicitly states that there “shall be in the Department an Office of Career, Technical, and Adult Education” and requires an Assistant Secretary for Career, Technical, and Adult Education to be appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate.

It appears that based on this Act, the merger of the Office of Career, Technical, and Adult Education into a larger postsecondary office would be one of the changes that would require congressional approval, but there may be interim changes or ways the department can address their goals outside of the legislative process.

We will gathering additional information as more details emerge and alerting you to opportunities to weigh in on this important issue!

From career decision-making influences to education and workforce data governance to the impact of loans on community college student outcomes, the following publications address topics of relevance to CTE.

Adding Skills to the AA: The American Enterprise Institute has published research and recommendations on how community colleges can make associate of arts (AA) degrees more marketable. The report describes how the AA as a terminal degree typically has less labor market value than career and technical associate degrees. One way to improve the labor market success of AA graduates is to add skills to program curricula in occupation-specific software, business and management, and sales. Community colleges can also use their connections to local employers to increase awareness of skills needed and provide students with employment options.

Career Decision-making Influences: Data analysis from the National Center on Education Statistics confirms prior research demonstrating that students are primarily influenced in making postsecondary and career decision by family members and by themselves, far more than by teachers, counselors, friends, employers or recruiters.

College Student Career Readiness: Only one-third of more than 32,000 postsecondary students surveyed by Gallup and Strada Education Network^SM are confident that they will graduate with the skills and knowledge to be successful in the job market (34 percent) or in the workplace (36 percent). Only slightly more than half believe their college major will lead to a good job. In addition:

• Confidence in job prospects is higher among STEM students (62 percent), following by students in education, social work and criminal justice (58); business (51); and liberal arts (40).
• 39 percent have never visited their institution’s career services resources.
• First-generation, older and minority students rate career services and advisors as more helpful.

Washington State CTE: An audit of Washington secondary CTE programs found that the most-highly-enrolled program areas need to more strongly align with high-wage, high-demand occupational areas. The audit identified areas of improvement, including career guidance, employer engagement, review processes for using labor market data and dual-credit expansion.

Loans Lead to Better Outcomes: A recent experiment found that community college students randomly offered a loan and who subsequently borrowed had higher GPAs and earned more credits—a 30-percent increase in both cases—than students offered a loan for $0.

Data Governance: The Data Quality Campaign has provided state leaders with a roadmap for cross-agency governance of state longitudinal data systems, including recommendations on vision and mission, composition and membership, roles and responsibilities, data decisions, committee processes and sustainability. Examples are included from Kentucky, Maryland, Minnesota, Mississippi, Utah and Washington.

Problem-solving Skills: U.S. 15-year-olds performed higher than average on the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) collaborative problem-solving assessment. Students in 10 systems scored higher than U.S. students: Singapore, Japan, Hong Kong, South Korea, Canada, Estonia, Finland, Macau, New Zealand and Australia.

Over the past year, the Administration has repeatedly expressed interest in addressing the country’s infrastructure needs. Earlier today, a full proposal to accomplish the Administration’s goals was finally released. According to the memo accompanying the framework, it is designed to “stimulate at least $1.5 trillion in new investment over the next 10 years, shorten the process for approving projects to 2 years or less, address unmet rural infrastructure needs, empower State and local authorities, and train the American workforce of the future.”

However, the framework only calls for $200 billion in federal spending over 10 years, with the largest portion of the proposal built around an incentive grant program to spur state and local investments. While there is much discussion on the merits of such incentives and other elements of the plan, the portion of most interest to the CTE community is the workforce development component.

Unfortunately, no funding was designated for this portion of the plan. Instead, four proposals are included under “Part 4—Workforce Development”:

• Expand Pell Grant Eligibility to High-Quality, Short-Term Programs
  This section focuses on “expanding Pell Grant eligibility to high-quality, short-term programs would allow individuals to use Pell Grants to pay for short-term programs that lead to a credential or certification in an in-demand field.” This idea already has bipartisan support through the JOBS Act (which ACTE has endorsed) and a version of it was included in the House Higher Education Act reauthorization bill.

• Reform Career and Technical Education
  This section presents, for the first time, some of the Trump Administration’s ideas for the reauthorization of Perkins. It includes criticisms of high school CTE in particular, noting Perkins as “in dire need of reform” and the activities it funds as “unlikely to improve student outcomes” and “often not aligned to local workforce needs.” We’ll be going into more detail in a future blog post on the reauthorization specifics, but in general, they propose activities already allowed under current law or emphasized in the House bill. 
• Strengthen Ties to the Workforce for College Students
  This section focuses on revamping the federal work-study program, including its funding formula, to better distribute funds to schools serving low-income students, and to focus more on funding career pathway-related programs. Like the Pell Grant proposals, similar reforms have already been included in the House Higher Education Act reauthorization bill.
• Reform Licensing Requirements for Individuals Seeking a Job on an Infrastructure Project
  This section focuses on changing federal award rules to require that States accepting federal funds for infrastructure projects accept workers with out-of-state licenses to work on those projects.

While the HEA proposals mentioned above have broad, bipartisan support, and a reauthorized Perkins will help to address the economy’s broader skills needs (despite some concerns about the specifics here), none of these proposals actually address the workforce development needs that are specific to infrastructure development. Last year, the Senate CTE Caucus held a briefing to talk about the links between CTE and infrastructure, and we hope to continue to work with Congress to strengthen any infrastructure legislation’s focus on specific workforce development needs.

Today, the White House released President Trump’s budget request to Congress for Fiscal Year (FY) 2019. This document outlines the Administration's spending priorities for the coming fiscal year, including federal education and workforce training programs. The budget proposes to fund the Perkins Basic State Grant at the FY 2017 level ($1.118 billion). It also requests an additional $13 million for Perkins National Programs to establish a new grant that would support only certain CTE program in STEM fields that are able to compete for funds. This budget request continues the trend over the past decade of underfunding CTE state grants. Funding at the FY 2017 level will represent a 13 percent reduction—nearly $170 million less in federal CTE funding to states—since FY 2007. Read our full statement here.

Overall, the budget would cut the Department of Education’s discretionary funding by $3.6 billion from the FY 2017 enacted level. The Department of Labor would be slashed by 21 percent. Many programs supporting students and job seekers would be drastically cut or eliminated under the president’s budget plan, including:

• Adult education would be cut by $96 million.
• Teacher Quality Partnership Grants for teacher education would be eliminated.
• ESSA Title IV grants that can support career guidance programs would be eliminated.
• ESSA Title II funds to support effective educators would also be eliminated.
• WIOA youth, adult, and dislocated worker state grants would see a combined cut of over $1 billion.

Recently, Congress approved a budget agreement that increases the overall discretionary funding caps for domestic programs, which includes federal support for education and job training. The House and Senate must now begin the task of setting funding levels for individual programs, like the Perkins Basic State Grant. It is a critical time for lawmakers to hear from CTE advocates about the importance of funding Perkins. Please take a few minutes to contact your Members of Congress and let them know that investing in CTE is a top priority!

Tell Your Senators: Cosponsor the CTE Month Resolution!

The co-chairs of the Senate CTE Caucus, Sens. Tim Kaine (D-VA), Rob Portman (R-OH), Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) and Todd Young (R-IN) have introduced a resolution honoring February as CTE Month. This is at least the fourth year in a row that a CTE Month resolution has been introduced in the Senate. Last year, a record 31 senators signed on as cosponsors, and this year we are trying to get even more.

CLICK HERE to ask your senators to cosponsor the CTE Month Resolution. The deadline for senators to cosponsor is 5PM ET on Monday, February 12.

The resolution raises awareness about the many benefits associated with high-quality CTE programs. Your advocacy makes a difference and encourages senators to cosponsor the resolution, so please contact your senators today!

What strategies are states using to promote career advising and development? Are counselors using effective career advising strategies? Advance CTE and the American School Counselor Association have investigated these and other questions in the recently published The State of Career Technical Education: Career Advising and Development, including these research findings:

• 58 percent of states believe they are only somewhat effectively serving K-12 students with career advising and development systems, and 55 percent believe they are somewhat effective or not effective at serving postsecondary CTE students.
• States, on average, engage in a multitude of strategies at the K–12 level for career advising and development. The most common strategies relate to funding professional development, experiential learning, career advising positions and career planning tools; providing professional development; and developing curriculum.
• Only 27 percent of middle school counselors connect students with CTE coursework or career pathways, although 87 percent of the school counselors who do use this strategy see it as effective or extremely effective.
• 60 percent of high school counselors connect students with CTE coursework and career pathways, and 91 percent of the school counselors who use this strategy find it effective or extremely effective.

The report recommends providing more effective professional development and resources to school counselors and evaluating the effectiveness of that professional development; ensuring that career advising and development is a coordinated school- and community-wide effort; engaging in partnerships among institutions and across education systems; and examining and improving current strategies as part of a system-wide approach.