President Barack Obama today released his FY12 budget, which proposed increasing Department of Education funding by $2 billion, or 11%, but there were significant cuts to Perkins programs. As he did in last year’s budget, the President merged Title II Tech Prep with the Title I Basic State Grant. However, this year he also proposed cutting $264 million from Title I, bringing the total appropriations for FY12 to $1 billion (13.9% decrease).
The Department’s rationale for the cut is that:
- CTE programs across the country are inconsistent in their quality;
- Too few CTE programs prepare students for postsecondary education;
- Not enough data to prove the effectiveness of CTE programs and
- Too few programs aligned to high skill, demand occupations.
You can see a breakdown of the impact of cuts on each state here.
Secretary of Education Arne Duncan this afternoon at the Department’s Budget Briefing said that “While we know that high-quality career and technical education strategies have the potential to prepare students for jobs in the knowledge economy, many career and technical programs haven’t lived up to their promise of preparing students for careers and college.†It is vitally important that we have the data and examples to back up our assertions that CTE programs do prepare students for college and careers. Please send any information you have on postsecondary going rates and programs linked to high skill, high demand careers to Nancy Conneely at nconneely@careertech.org.
Tags: advocacy, appropriations, budget, Data, federal legislation, funding, Perkins, Secretary Duncan