This week in Washington continued to revolve around the appropriations process as Congress made last-ditch efforts to avoid a government shutdown at the end of the fiscal year. On Thursday, the Senate voted 76-22 to continue moving forward on a continuing resolution (CR) to keep the government open, but procedural rules could delay an actual vote until the weekend. Meanwhile, the House approved three of its FY 24 appropriations bills in a partisan fashion, including legislation for foreign affairs, homeland security and defense spending. However, these bills will not be able to pass the Senate, and the House has failed on votes to pass its own CR. A shutdown of some length now appears increasingly likely with little time remaining on the clock before the midnight Saturday deadline. You can read more on the appropriations process from early this week here, and we will share the latest updates on Monday! Further news and notes below:

• Department of Education Announces Final Gainful Employment Rules: ED has released final regulations that establish new metrics that all certificate programs at public community and technical colleges and all programs at for-profit institutions must meet to remain eligible for financial aid. Read more on the blog.
• White House Hosts Event on Increasing Diversity and Opportunity in Higher Education: On September 28, the White House Domestic Policy Council joined ED to host a virtual event with postsecondary leaders focused on increasing diversity and opportunity at their institutions, including community colleges. The event also highlighted a new report from ED: Strategies for Increasing Diversity and Opportunity in Higer Education. 

• Department of Labor Announces Funding to Train and Expand Pathways for Women in Registered Apprenticeships, Nontraditional Occupations: DOL has announced an award of $5 million aimed at increasing the number of women in registered apprenticeship programs. The grant will be dispersed across seven different states and has the goal of connecting more women to good-paying jobs in nontraditional occupations.

• Department of Labor Announces Funding to Improve Job Quality and Expand Access to Jobs in Critical Sectors: DOL has announced multiple grants totaling $16 million aimed at improving job quality and increasing the availability of jobs in the care, climate resiliency and hospitality sectors. The grants will support organizations across 12 states in their efforts to pilot strategies to guide employers, local workforce systems and other partner organizations to enhance the job quality of local communities across the nation.

• ACTE and Advance CTE Submit Comments on Unemployment Compensation Information Data: ACTE and Advance CTE have submitted comments to the Department of Labor (DOL) in response to a request for information (RFI) regarding unemployment compensation (UC) records and related access to these sources of data. Our comments emphasized the importance of UC records as a key source of information on the labor market outcomes of learners enrolled in CTE and other workforce development programs. They also encourage DOL to make UC information more explicitly accessible to CTE stakeholders as they work to better support learners, workers and employers regularly served by CTE programs across the nation.

• Department of Education Releases Updated Data Strategy Handbook: ED has released its annual data strategy handbook that describes its vision for accelerating progress toward becoming more data-driven to fully leverage the mission and the purpose of the Department. The strategy is intended to help ED realize the use of high-quality data in advancing priorities and improving education outcomes, policy insights and excellence for the nation’s learners.

On September 26, the Department of Education released its final Gainful Employment (GE) rule. The rule is set to take effect July 1, 2024, with the first data reported in early 2025. 

The final GE rule, which is largely unchanged from the draft rule that the administration released in May, would apply to all certificate programs at public institutions, including community and technical colleges, and all programs at for-profit institutions. These programs would be subject to two new measures of performance.  

First, there is  a new debt-to-earnings rate that compares the median annual payments on loan debt borrowed for the program to the median earnings of its Federally aided graduated. For a program to pass, the debt payments must be no more than 8 percent of annual earnings or 20 percent of discretionary earnings.  

The final rule also includes a new earnings premium test, which would require at least half of program graduates to have higher earnings than a typical high school graduate between the ages of 25 and 34 in their state’s labor force who never enrolled in a postsecondary institution.  

If a program fails either metric in a single year, they will be required to provide warnings to current and prospective students that their program could be at risk of losing federal funding. If a program fails the same metric in two of any three consecutive years, it will no longer be eligible to participate in federal student aid programs. The department estimates that about 1,700 programs serving nearly 700,000 students would fail the debt-earnings ratio test or not pass the earnings threshold. 

The final GE rule also contains a new Financial Vale Transparency (FCT) framework that will “provide information to all students in all programs on the typical earnings outcomes, borrowing amounts, cost of attendance, and sources of financial aid to help students make more informed choices.” 

As the department moves forward with the implementation process, ACTE will continue to keep you informed on what this rule means for your programs and the postsecondary community. 

On September 26, the Senate moved forward on a bipartisan continuing resolution (CR) that would keep the government open when the current federal fiscal year ends on September 30. The vote puts the Senate on a path to pass the CR later this week. 

The Senate legislation will fund the government until November 17. According to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), funding will continue at the same levels as fiscal year 2023. The CR will also provide approximately $6.15 billion in funding for Ukraine and $5.99 billion in disaster relief. The legislation will also temporarily extend the expiring authority of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and a few other expiring programs 

If the CR passes the Senate, it will then move to the House where it faces an uphill battle. Many House Republicans came out against the bill citing its lack of border protection policy. Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) indicated on Tuesday evening that he would seek a meeting with President Joe Biden to try to work out a deal that would keep the government open while also including language on border protection, and the House may try to vote on their own CR later in the week. However, both the House and Senate must pass the same bill and send it to the President to be signed into law to avoid a government shutdown. Most Washington insiders are not optimistic at this point that this can occur, so agencies are starting to prepare for a potential shutdown. We will have more on that potential and new developments as the week unfolds! 

Today ACTE has released CTE: Developing the Manufacturing Workforce, the fifth in our revamped series of Sector Sheets describing CTE’s role in growing the workforce for vital industry sectors. The Sector Sheet series is published with support from ACTE's long-time partner Pearson. 

These revised Sector Sheets include job opportunities in each sector and descriptions of how CTE prepares learners for the workforce in each sector, all in a new format featuring streamlined text and additional graphics to make these advocacy tools even more effective. 

This Sector Sheet describes how CTE supports the critical manufacturing workforce, which employs almost 13 million people nationwide with countless more workers needed each year to meet industry demand. It also shares information on occupations, earnings and credentials that give readers guidance for how to enter and progress within fields such as semiconductor manufacturing, electric vehicle and battery manufacturing, and supply chains. Finally, the Manufacturing Sector Sheet demonstrates the importance of CTE in developing the workforce by describing how CTE prepares learners through courses, industry credentials, work-based learning, career and technical student organizations and more. 

As we move forward with the revamped Sector Sheets, both the newer and older Sector Sheets will be available on the ACTE Sector Sheet webpage for download and use. We encourage you to share these tools with students, counselors, policymakers and others to spread the message about CTE and its benefits for students and the workforce. 

This week Congress continued its efforts to fund the government and avoid a shutdown before the end of the month, without much progress. The House continues to struggle to pass appropriations bills on the floor and has also been unable to come to an agreement on a continuing resolution (CR) to keep the government open after the fiscal year ends on September 30, which is needed if the appropriations bills aren’t complete. Appropriations work in the Senate remained stalled most of the week as well, but they are now planning to take up their own version of a CR next week. Even with that step, the odds of a bill the passing the House remain low, increasing the potential of a government shutdown on October 1. Read more news and notes below:

• Department of Education Announces Funding to Improve Career Opportunities for Students with Disabilities: ED has announced nearly $199 million in funding for the Pathways to Partnerships disability innovation fund that aims to support individuals with disabilities in accessing self-advocacy training, career pathways and independent living. The funding will go towards 20 model demonstration projects focused on increasing economic self-sufficiency and decreasing the unemployment disparity between youth with and without disabilities.

• Biden-Harris Administration Awards Funding to Support Hispanic-Serving Institutions: ED and the Biden-Harris Administration have announced an award of more than $40 million being dispersed to Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSIs) across the country, including community colleges. The funding will assist these institutions in providing supports, expanding postsecondary attainment and opportunities and preparing Hispanic and Latino learners to enter the workforce.

• Department of Education Issues Details for ARP Spending Extension Requests: ED has announced a 14-month deadline extension for spending American Rescue Plan money in a letter sent to state grantees this week. Grantees can request the extension through state education agencies, which would allow for a spending deadline of as late as March 2026. Applicants will need to explain how a longer spending period would contribute to the acceleration of student learning and expand the continued path of academic recovery.

• Committee on Education & the Workforce Holds Hearing on Strengthening the Workforce Development System: This week, the Committee on Education & the Workforce held a hearing on the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA) in which leaders discussed the legislation’s progress and needed areas of improvement since its enactment in 2014. Legislators discussed issues such as the high unemployment rate and the persistent shortage of skilled workers that have not sufficiently been improved since the passing of WIOA. The hearing also touched on reforms for WIOA’s bureaucracy, accountability mechanisms and provisions for better outcomes needed to fulfill the programs’ potential. Read more about the hearing on the blog here.

On September 20, the House Education and Workforce Subcommittee on Higher Education and Workforce Development held a hearing titled “Strengthening WIOA: Improving Outcomes for Jobseekers, Employers and Taxpayers.” This hearing examined the issues at play at the heart of the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA) as lawmakers work on reauthorizing the legislation. 

Those testifying were Mr. Scott Sanders, president and CEO of the National Association of State Workforce Agencies (NASWA); Ms. Rya Conrad-Bradshaw, vice president of corporate markets at the Cengage Group; Mr. Rick Beasley, executive director of the South Florida Workforce Investment Board; and Mr. Mason Bishop, nonresident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. 

Subcommittee Chair Burgess Owens (R-UT) opened the hearing by identifying many issues in the economy that need reform. “In July of 2014, the United State had 4.8 million unfilled jobs. In July of this year, there were 8.8 million unfilled jobs, an increase of four million. Further, the labor force participation rate has not improved a bit since WIOA was enacted.” 

The witnesses stated that the law often stymies innovation among states and other organizations, dissuades employers from participating because of bureaucratic red tape and does not do enough to reach and encourage individuals to use the training services. “We are trying to operate in an iPhone economy with programs that were created and modeled from the New Deal and Great Society — and continue to do so,” said Bishop. “We must modernize this program and provide the governance and service delivery improvements and flexibility that will allow innovation and new ideas.”  

Several of the speakers also noted the need to provide more performance data on the programs and to make the information more accessible and less confusing for potential program participants and employers. Conrad-Bradshaw cited a Harvard study that finds there are more than 7,000 eligible training providers encompassing about 75,000 eligible programs in more than 700 occupational fields nationwide. 

Notably, Rep. Bobby Scott (D-VA), the ranking member of the full committee, used his time to talk about short-term Pell. In a question directed to Beasley, Scott asked, “If they had access to a Pell Grant, they’d be able to train a lot more people in your programs, is that right?” Beasley responded by saying that if Pell covered the training costs, his organization would use the other resources for support services to help individuals complete their programs. 

A recording of the hearing can be found here. 

Guided Pathways Adoption by Community Colleges: The Community College Research Center (CCRC) recently published a report on guided pathways implementation across community and technical colleges in Ohio, Tennessee and Washington. Researchers found that CTE pathways were the most likely to be mapped and scaled in all three states, regardless of the total level of guided pathways adoption in each state.

The following list details how community and technical colleges are implementing guided pathways:

• In Ohio, 89% of all colleges have mapped out requirements and course sequences for CTE program pathways.
• Colleges are increasingly organizing their programs by meta-majors to help students’ direct entry into the workforce or career advancement education.
• Advising and onboarding practices like students taking career-relevant courses early in their postsecondary education and mandatory education planning were usually adopted in tandem across each state.

Researchers recommend that any institutions interested in following the model discussed in this report design their practices, policies and systems parallel to the four pillars of the guided pathways system.

Reforming Government-supported Job Training: The American Enterprise Institute recently published a series of reports analyzing the effectiveness of federal programs funded through the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA) and presenting options for experimentation at the local level. In the first of these reports, researchers share that job training programs are struggling to show positive outcomes for participants and that job training funding has been declining since the 1970s.

Researchers suggested the following changes to fix WIOA program operations for increased outcomes, success and efficiency:

• Reduce administrative red tape for participation in a WIOA program to improve opportunity for individuals who are in the reentry process following incarceration, are economically disadvantaged or have disabilities.
• Clarify which agencies must co-locate in a job center to share costs and provide local WIOA officials with the ability to enforce cost-sharing rules.
• Hold annual meetings at the start of each program year allowing local, state and federal workforce development administrators to provide input into setting goals and discuss systems improvements.
• Expand sector-based training programs, allowing workers without degrees to earn living wages and receive training for key sectors of the economy where labor demand is strong.

The report also suggests that increased WIOA funding would lay the groundwork for improving programs and lead to better outcomes.

Addressing Equity Blockers to Work-based Learning: A report recently published by the Education Strategy Group examined how leaders are identifying and effectively addressing equity blockers affecting students in work-based learning on the secondary and postsecondary levels. Researchers found that offering equitable work-based learning opportunities was a key focus area for each of the six communities within the New Skills Ready Network (NSRN) as leaders across the country increasingly look to erase barriers and improve meaningful experiences for all students.

The report highlights some of the following issues, barriers and circumstances limiting students’ participation in a work-based learning program:

• Geographic proximity and transportation challenges, with a lack of effective transit routes convenient enough for economically disadvantaged individuals.
• Scheduling constraints owing to existing part-time employment for students with financial needs as well as limited availability for students with caregiving responsibilities.
• Minimum requirements for participation that lead many types of students to self-select out of applying for a work-based learning experience.
• Lack of local staff capacity to identify, vet and engage industry partners; provide support; and collect data.

To combat these barriers and target increased access to students who need it most, researchers emphasize the importance of information sharing and recommend that districts ramp up their efforts to formalize and publish their policies, which may serve as examples to others.