It was a relatively quiet week on the federal education policy front, with the House on recess and no major Committee activity. The House returns this week though, and Washington will be celebrating National Apprenticeship Week, so there is likely more activity in the future! In the meantime: Progress on... Continue reading

The biggest education news this week on Capitol Hill was the House Education and Labor Committee’s marathon mark-up of its Higher Education Act reauthorization bill, which lasted for three days! You can read more about that markup on the blog at https://ctepolicywatch.acteonline.org/2019/11/democrats-pass-hea-reauthorization-proposal-out-of-house-committee.html. In other news: Work on Education Appropriations Remains... Continue reading

Male students who attend a Connecticut technical high school have shown to have higher graduation rates, improved wage-earning potential, higher attendance rates in 9th grade and higher 10th grade test scores, a new study from the CTE Research Network reports. These findings are based on data collected from the admission... Continue reading

Most of the education attention in Washington was on the Higher Education Act this week, as work moved forward in the House on the reauthorization of that bill. The House Education and Labor Committee has scheduled a mark-up of the legislation introduced earlier this month for October 29. We will... Continue reading

After a two-week-long break, Congress has returned and will be back in session until November 21 to, among other things, try and pass a spending bill for Fiscal Year 2020. The current continuing resolution expires then and an agreement for moving forward has yet to be reached. Visit ACTE’s Action... Continue reading

Guide for Educational Institutions with Federal Contracts: The Department of Labor released a new Technical Assistance Guide (TAG) for educational institutions to use to provide compliance assistance for federal government contractors. This guide is designed to help contractors strive for equal employment opportunities and meet legal requirements and responsibilities set... Continue reading

More new grants for Education and Workforce Development: In addition to the Perkins Innovation and Modernization grants released this week (read the full blog here), several other new grants have been awarded related to CTE. The Department of Labor awarded workforce development grants to 18 organizations in the Appalachian and... Continue reading

Recent publications describe various CTE topics ranging from perceptions of having students participate in workforce preparation to a proposed five-pillar framework to ensure high-quality career development systems. Views on workforce preparation: PDK Polling found in their survey that few parents, teachers and other adults think that preparing students for work... Continue reading

Eguene Scalia Confirmed as New Labor Secretary: On Thursday, the Senate confirmed Eugene Scalia to replace Alex Acosta as the Secretary of Labor by a vote of 53-44. Son of late Supreme Court justice Antoine Scalia, his background is in cooperate law. Scalia will take over the lead of the... Continue reading

WorkforceGPS has released long-term employment projections for 2018 to 2028 that cover more than 800 occupations and 290 industries at the national level. The report presents trends and projections for in-demand industries, and the growth and decline in different sectors. The first key trend is the slowing population and slowing... Continue reading

Addressing equity in middle-skills jobs is essential for the growth of the nation’s businesses, economy and workers. In order to advance racial equity, the National Skills Coalition recommends nine steps that states can take to increase the diversity in the workforce. These recommendations include adopting racial equity goals; investing in... Continue reading

On Thursday, the Senate passed H.R. 4378, the Continuing Appropriations Act, 2020, and Health Extenders Act of 2019, by a vote of 82 – 15. This bill, known as a continuing resolution (CR), extends government funding at the current Fiscal Year (FY) 2019 levels, with several exceptions, until November 21,... Continue reading

U.S. Department of Education Back to School Tour: Scott Stump, the assistant secretary for career, technical and adult education, visited New Mexico, Arizona (1 and 2), Nevada and West Virginia schools as part of the Education Department’s National Back to School Tour. He was visiting to see the CTE work... Continue reading

The National Science Board (NSB) released a report titled, The Skilled Technical Workforce: Crafting America’s Science and Engineering Enterprise. Its findings are based on stakeholder engagement meetings with relevant organizations in the Washington, D.C. area, as well as nationwide listening sessions that NSB conducted with workers, students, businesses and educators.... Continue reading

New America has released a report titled, Varying Degrees 2019: New America’s Third Annual Survey on Higher Education. The report is based on a survey of 2,029 Americans and their perceptions of education after high school and education’s contribution to economic mobility. Relevant to CTE, the report found that Americans... Continue reading

Appropriations Bill Markup Postponed: On Tuesday, the Senate Appropriations Labor, Health and Human Services, Education and Related Agencies Subcommittee postponed its scheduled markup of the Fiscal Year (FY) 2020 Labor-H appropriations bill. The postponement was due to a disagreement between both parties around a healthcare-related provision. There has been no... Continue reading

The National Center for Education Statistics recently released a new fact sheet in its “Data Point” series on the patterns of CTE coursetaking among students from different locales, including cities, suburbs, towns and rural areas. Titled “Career and Technical Education Coursetaking in 2013, by Locale,” the fact sheet draws data... Continue reading

A new study published by CALDER, the National Center for the Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Education Research, adds to existing research by examining the trends of students with disabilities participating in CTE courses. To study these patterns, the researchers evaluated three different data sets, which included nationally representative data... Continue reading

New Video on Coordination Between Perkins and WIOA: The Office of Career, Technical and Adult Education (OCTAE) recently released a new video on joint Perkins Act and Workforce Innovation and Opportunities Act (WIOA) plans. The video has been added to OCTAE’s online video library. This brief video explains the history... Continue reading

The DC Digest is a new, weekly policy blog that provides more coverage of the news and activities related to federal CTE policy. Since we cannot post a lengthy blog on every policy item that could impact CTE, this blog allows us to post additional relevant material that might be... Continue reading

Advance CTE has released a series of papers on how states can address key accountability measures, specifically the new Perkins V indicator of secondary CTE program quality. These papers use information from a 2018 national survey of state CTE directors. Perkins V mandates that states choose at least one of... Continue reading

In a recent study, The Evolution of Career and Technical Education: 1982-2013, researcher Nat Malkus observes trends in 30 years of secondary CTE coursetaking and describes differing student outcomes between “New Era” and “Traditional Vocational” CTE concentrators. Malkus defines “New Era” CTE as courses in engineering, computer science, communications, health... Continue reading

CTE courses provide opportunities that appear to positively affect students’ lives after high school, according to researchers Dan Kreisman and Kevin Stange’s new study published in EducationNext, an update of prior research ACTE shared back in 2017. Kreisman and Stange researched two questions: What is the relationship between CTE coursework... Continue reading

I recently joined ACTE as a Policy Research Associate. In this role, I will be working with the Public Policy team to help keep members informed about policy and advocacy, and conducting research about trends, federal and states policies, workforce development, and much more, which I will communicate to members... Continue reading