Last week, Rep. Leonard Boswell (IA) introduced H Res 474, a resolution recognizing “the valuable contributions of community colleges and encouraging local partnerships with such institutions to train and revitalize the United States workforce, inspire entrepreneurship, educate skilled workers and invest in local communities.†The resolution has been referred to the House Education and the Workforce Committee.
Nancy Conneely, Public Policy Manger
An increasingly competitive economy is forcing Career Technical Education (CTE) and workforce leaders to “do more with less.†A new resource launched by the U.S. Departments of Labor, Education (through the Office of Vocational and Adult Education), and Health and Human Services this week encourages workforce leaders and partners to maximize their efforts by sharing innovative ideas and best practices on career pathways.
According to the Department of Labor, the resource, called the “Innovation Forum,†is geared towards organizations serving adults and youth, and was designed as a platform for sharing ideas on “new ways to govern, invest and manage funds, and deliver services.â€
The forum is set up as a blog, and participants are encouraged to submit blog posts and to comment on posted blogs. The most recent post, “Career Pathways Come to Life,†highlights the recent National Career Pathways Network Conference in Florida. Read more about how to submit a blog post here.
Kara Herbertson, Education Policy Analyst
As the country still struggles with the effects of the Great Recession, employment opportunities for less-seasoned workers are the hardest to find. Without prior job experience, teenagers face particularly bleak prospects. The current level of unemployment for teenagers is at an all-time high. Yesterday, Jobs for America’s Graduates, a non-profit organization, convened several governors, corporate executives and organization leaders to brainstorm ways to boost academic and economic outcomes for high-risk youth in the midst of the unemployment crisis.
U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan kicked off the event by reiterating a point that he frequently makes: successful local programs need to be taken to scale. When an attendee asked how to prepare high school students beyond academia, Duncan pointed to “great†Career Technical Education (CTE) and early college programs as ways to make school more relevant to students. Though the Secretary acknowledges the benefits of CTE, states and localities scramble to prepare for major funding cuts to CTE effective later this year.
A staffer from Senator Harkin’s office commented that Senators are now working on the Workforce Investment Act (WIA) to better leverage government resources and increase alignment between programs. He noted that many Senators were struck by the results of a recent Government Accountability Office (GAO) report that identified many areas of wasteful spending due to program overlap.
Speaker Boehner’s Assistant on Policy echoed that Republican Members feel justified in making cuts to job training programs because of the GAO report. She also stated that Perkins is not on the schedule for review in the near future.
Panelists and participants agreed that skilled positions must be presented as respectable career options for students. Many followed Duncan’s suggestions to replicate best practices, and some suggested that states make high-impact practices mandatory. Other ideas included: increasing service learning opportunities, raising the compulsory age for dropping out from age 16, and including graduation rates as an accountability measure. Though CTE was not a central part of the conversation, most participants agreed that job training and education, key aspects of CTE, must be further integrated.
Career Technical Education (CTE) should be expanded and promoted to address the skills gap and to staff the American workforce, according to a new report.
The HR Policy Association, an organization representing the chief human resource officers of major employers, produced the report to lay out specific changes to ensure the competitiveness of the American workforce and fulfilling careers for job seekers.
The organization’s members recommend the following changes that can be addressed through CTE:
The report states that “Americans are not being educated in sufficient numbers to meet the demands of today’s highly technical work processes and products.†Our country increasingly relies upon ever-changing technology, and workers need skills to develop, repair, and maintain it.
CTE provides a solution. Comprehensive CTE programs prepare students to be college and career ready and to effectively fill vacancies for skilled jobs.
The shifting economy requires highly-skilled workers in areas of job growth, such as manufacturing, energy, information technology, and health care. But while job vacancies exist, employers continue to report that applicants’ skills do not match those needed to fill the empty positions. ACT, Inc., an education and workplace assessment company, recently released a framework that provides a first step to tackling this mismatch.
ACT’s report proposes the creation of a national credentialing system for workforce skills.
The report suggests reorganizing the credentialing system so that workers’ skills and credentials better align with the needs of industry. This would streamline the current approach by creating a nationally-recognized, stackable credentialing system. ACT suggests that workers begin by earning a “foundational skills credential,†and subsequently layer on more focused, job-specific credentials.
Ideally, implementation of the national workforce skills credentialing system would result in:
Click here to view the full report, Breaking New Ground: Building a National Workforce Skills Credentialing System.
An automotive manufacturing technical program that joined governors, industry and community colleges to develop comprehensive education training could serve as a scalable model for other sectors to answer the high-demand for technical workers in the global economy.
The Automotive Manufacturing Technical Education Collaborative (AMTEC) program demonstrates how governors, industry and community colleges can work together to transform America’s workforce with better technical skills, according to a recent National Governors Association Center for Best Practices report. Through this model AMTEC has brought together automotive manufacturers and community colleges to identify and implement potential improvements within technical education, noted in the report, A Sharper Focus on Technical Workers: How to Educate and Train for the Global Economy.
AMTEC is a collaboration of community colleges and industry partners working to align automotive manufacturing programs to the growing needs within the automotive manufacturing technology field.
Some of the major lessons within this case study include:
An example within this report highlights the collaboration efforts between Toyota, located in Kentucky, and the Kentucky Community & Technical College System. Toyota partnered with the Kentucky Community College system because other schools were not providing the training Toyota was looking for. They challenged the school system to create a rigorous curriculum that would reflect the needs of their company, and the needs of the economy, so that students were better prepared for the workplace.
AMTEC’s model can transferred to other sectors of technical education because it focuses on meeting the needs of industry, employers and students by creating a standard for technical education, within each specific sector, where student performance can be assessed.
As the United States continues to advance with our global economy it is imperative that we recognize the importance of producing skilled workers. These kinds of partnerships are vital to the success of CTE, and America’s future workforce, as they demonstrate the value of CTE and how these programs will ensure the United States a place in this competitive global economy.
Without a dramatic change in how our nation prepares individuals for the workforce and to obtain necessary postsecondary education, the nation will fall dramatically short in cultivating a workforce to fulfill demand, according to a recent report by Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce. Help Wanted: Projections of Jobs and Education Requirements Through 2018 projects that by 2018, 63 percent of all jobs will require a degree in higher education, leaving only 37 percent of jobs to individuals who did not finish high school or did not go on to college.
This report — authored by Anthony P. Carnevale, Nichole Smith and Jeff Strohl — underscores why we must ensure that students are equipped to enter into this competitive workforce in which postsecondary education and training will be requirements for a middle class job. CTE can provide support in this area by offering students the opportunity to obtain training and skills and a postsecondary degree. These credentials will allow individuals to gain a competitive edge that will make them more desirable in the current and future job market.
Other highlights from the report include:
NASDCTEc recently joined the Data Quality Campaign (DQC) as an endorsing partner. The DQC is comprised of organizations that work together to encourage and support state policymakers to improve the collection, availability and use of high quality education data. The DQC also conducts an annual survey that measures states’ progress towards building and implementing the DQC’s 10 essential elements of a longitudinal data system.
Shortly after joining, NASDCTEc was asked to take part in the Workforce Advisory Group, which will help provide expertise and counsel to the DQC Partners as they develop tools, resources, and messages to inform state policymaker efforts to link education and workforce data. The group will meet quarterly over the next 18 months and provide input on how to best educate policymakers on the importance of linking education and workforce data and to assist states with their work in linking systems.
To get more information on the work that the DQC is doing, you can sign up for their bi-monthly newsletter here: http://www.dataqualitycampaign.org/mail_subscriptions/new
The Data Quality Campaign (DQC) recently released Education and Workforce Data Connections: A Primer on States’ Status a policy brief that addresses the development of statewide education longitudinal data systems and how they are being used to connect education and workforce data. What DQC has found is that few states have the systems in place to link data across the Pâ€20/Workforce spectrum. Survey results show that only eight states are able to link data across the Pâ€20/Workforce spectrum; only 10 states are able to link Kâ€12/Workforce data; and only 29 states are able to link Postsecondary/Workforce data. There is much work to be done.
The brief also has useful charts and graphs detailing the following information:
