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CTE Research Review

Thursday, November 21st, 2013

Research Image_6.2013Over the past few weeks, a number of new reports and research papers came out with with implications for Career Technical Education and state leaders. Below are summaries of a few of particular use.

The National Center for Education Statistics released a two-pager, Trends in CTE Coursetaking, showing a decline over the past 19 years in CTE enrollment at the secondary level, from about 4.2 credits earned by public high school graduates to 3.6 credits in 2009. In part this is due to higher enrollments in core academic courses, such as science, foreign languages, and mathematics, and it is also due to a change in NCES data collection and coding for CTE enrollment. Importantly, this NCES dataset does not take into account any CTE credits earned by high school graduates at the 1,200 area technical centers across the country.

Achieve released Closing the Expectations Gap: The 2013 Annual Report on the Alignment of State K-12 Policies and Practice with the Demands of College and Careers, its 8th report in this series. The report, based on surveys of the 50 states and the District of Columbia, notes significant progress on the adoption of college- and career-ready (CCR) standards (in English and mathematics), with every state having met that milestone, largely driven by the Common Core State Standards (CCSS). It also finds that progress on adopting graduation requirements and assessments aligned to those CCR standards has slowed, although the two consortia developing assessments aligned to the CCSS should accelerate progress over the next few years.

Finally, Achieve finds that no state has a reporting and accountability system that fully values (academic) college and career readiness for all students, as defined by the collection and use of a number of key indicators (e.g., percent of students completing a CCR curriculum, percent of students scoring at the CCR level on a high school assessment, percent of students earning college credit in high school, and the percent of graduates enrolling in remedial coursework upon entrance to a postsecondary institution). Achieve also surveyed states about their use of “career-ready” indicators, although this research was not reported out (NASDCTEc will follow up!).

The report also delves deeply into a number of policies and practices to support the implementation of the CCR standards and aligned assessments, including the state role in developing and/or supporting professional development and instructional materials, and provides a handy CCSS implementation timeline for all 46 states.

The American Association of School Administrators (AASA) obtained a comprehensive dataset detailing school district revenues and expenditures for every school district in the nation for federal fiscal year 2011  to determine the impact of sequestration and other budget cuts on school districts. The result of this analysis – Unequal Pain: Federal Public Education Revenues, Federal Education Cuts and the Impact on Public Schools – was released in November 2013.

Briefly, the report finds that about 12% of school funding comes from the federal level but that the distribution is unequal across the country:

Cut another way, over a third of schools received a federal share of 12% or more, about a quarter of schools had operating budgets in which federal revenues represented more than 15% of total budget revenues, and about 6% of schools had operating budgets in which federal funds represented 25% or more of total budget revenues. All of this is to say, sequestration and budget cuts will disproportionally impact schools and districts educating large number of high-need students. AASA partnered with ProximityOne to create a map where users can examine school district revenue and expenditure patterns.

Weighing in on the very real debate over whether states should primarily support credit-bearing postsecondary programs that lead to a degree, Learning Works in California offers a new brief urging a deep look at what the authors identify as “skills-builders,” or students taking (and passing) community college courses without earning a degree or certificate.  The Missing Piece: Quantifying Non-Completion Pathways to Success cites research showing that about a third of all students  in the California Community College system meet this construct of “skills-builders,” many of whom took courses in high-skilled areas and enjoyed a salary bump as a result. The brief encourages states to reconsider the ways they measure a community college’s success to not limit the full range of community colleges’ benefits.

Finally, the National Center for Education Statistics recently updated its State Education Reforms webpage, which compiles research from a wide range of organizations to provide a one-stop site for information on states’ accountability systems; standards, assessments and graduation requirements; staff qualifications and development; school choice policies; and students’ readiness and progress through school.

Kate Blosveren, Associate Executive Director

By Kate Blosveren Kreamer in Research
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Friends of CTE Blog Series: Career Technical Education’s Role in Achieving Talent Sustainability

Thursday, November 7th, 2013

Jorge Perez is senior vice president of Manpower North America, overseeing ManpowerGroup’s staffing business in the United States and Canada. Perez, recently named one of the 100 most influential leaders in the staffing industry by Staffing Industry Analysts, is an expert in workforce trends and is passionate about equal employment opportunities.

Jorge Perez, senior vice president of Manpower North America

Jorge Perez, senior vice president of Manpower North America

Historically, the world’s focus around sustainability has been on environment and natural resources. But in a time of unprecedented unemployment, combined with critical talent shortages, there is also a great need and opportunity for the world to shift its focus to talent as a critical resource for sustainability. At Manpower, this is at the core of what we do – connecting people to jobs to improve a person’s employability, which also builds communities, countries and the lives of individuals.

Part of talent sustainability is equipping people with the tools, opportunities and training they need to achieve their goals. For many years, we have been telling our young people that the training they need to achieve their goals is only in the form of a four-year degree. Unfortunately, we’ve been doing our young people a disservice with this advice. As a result, many young professionals are graduating from college with astronomical student loan debt and diminished career prospects due to the high unemployment still lingering from the recession.

It’s Time for a Mindset Shift
According to ManpowerGroup’s 2013 Talent Shortage Survey, 39 percent of U.S. employers are having difficulty finding staff with the right skills. In the same survey, employers report that the most difficult jobs to fill are skilled trades positions. Drivers, technicians and mechanics also make the list. There is at least one thing each of these positions has in common – all require technical or vocational training, not a four-year college degree. Knowing the skills that are in demand, why are we guiding the vast majority of students toward a university education?

There needs to be a collective mindset shift in how society views Career Technical Education (CTE). We have to acknowledge that the four-year university experience is not for everyone, and we’ve made the mistake of steering too many kids in that direction in the past. There was a perception that the jobs accessible to students who did not go the four-year college route, like manufacturing jobs, were dirty and dangerous. That’s an outdated idea, and we need to bring honor back to manufacturing and the skilled trades. Parents, teachers, guidance counselors and students themselves need to understand what it’s really like to work in a modern manufacturing environment – it’s clean, it’s high tech, there is upward mobility. It’s very rewarding – personally, professionally and monetarily – for those who choose this path.

Getting back to CTE – it is a critical component of the educational system. We need CTE because it prepares students for both college and career readiness. CTE is focused on preparing students for their career path of choice, with the understanding that most careers require some postsecondary education and training. Right now, this country needs students to be made aware of the demand for careers that call for skilled training as plumbers, welders, carpenters, machinists and the like. Students need to know that these career paths offer employment security at a time when job security is no longer a guarantee. It’s time to reinvent the image of technical training and associated technical careers so we can move toward talent sustainability.

The Friends of CTE Guest Blog Series provides advocates – from business and industry to researchers and organizations – an opportunity to articulate their support for Career Technical Education. The monthly series features a guest blogger who provides their perspective on and experience with CTE as it relates to policy, the economy and education.

Are you interested in being a guest blogger and expressing your support for CTE? Contact Melinda Findley Lloyd, Communications Consultant, at [email protected].

By admin in News
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Fall Meeting Recap: Common Core State Standards & Career Technical Education

Tuesday, October 29th, 2013

CCSS LogoLast week, the National Association of State Directors of Career Technical Education Consortium (NASDCTEc) held its annual Fall Meeting,  which featured a panel of state CTE leaders sharing their strategies for implementation the Common Core State Standards (CCSS).

Kicking off the panel was Meredith Liben, Director of Literacy at Student Achievement Partners (SAP), who described the three major instructional shifts within the CCSS in English Language Arts/Literacy, which in essence boil down to “texts worth reading, questions worth answered and work worth doing.” Liben highlighted the challenge among CTE teachers who often don’t have a literacy background in internalizing such shifts within their classrooms, and gave a sneak peek into the work SAP plans to take on in this space moving forward.

Next up was Katharine Oliver, Assistant State Superintendent of Career and College Readiness at the Maryland State Department of Education who described the state’s efforts to identify ways to measure student growth in CTE through the development of student learning objectives (SLOs), as well as the professional development that brings interdisciplinary teams of teachers together to collaborate to understand and identify complex texts. An early lesson learned is the importance of keeping teachers in “like groups,” as CTE teachers want to be able to see literacy through the lens of their own content areas rather than for all CTE subjects. Oliver also mentioned a new Blackboard site where the state will be posting lessons in “those difficult to teach areas” including CTE.

Russ Weikle, Director of Career and College Transition Division at the California Department of Education framed much of the work in his state as “deliberate” alignments to the CCSS. The approach California took when modifying their CTE standards framework was to create anchor standards (a term borrowed from the CCSS’s ELA/Literacy standards) that are consistent across all Career Clusters, making them “CTE standards that CTE teachers can own, while still teaching CCSS.” Under the anchor standards are performance indicators that are specific to the state’s Career Pathways. Next, the state convened educators to review the Career Pathway-level standards and look for “substantial and natural alignment” between them and the CCSS. The task put before them was to determine if a pathway standard would enhance, reinforce or apply a specific core subject standard.” The result of this effort are Academic Alignment Matrices for each of the state’s 15 Career Clusters.

In addition, 500 educators in California have gone through a train the trainer module around disciplinary literacy and are not replicating the training in their schools and districts. The module can be found here.

Sharing Wisconsin’s efforts to date, Sharon Wendt, Director of Career and Technical Education at the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction discussed the state’s efforts around literacy, jumpstarted by the adoption of the CCSS and the launch of a Governor’s Task Force on literacy in 2010. With CTE engaged in the task force from the get-go, it has allowed for that work to inform the revision of the state’s CTE standards and for CTE to inform the broader statewide discussion of college and career readiness.   One major takeaway Wendt shared is how the CCSS are helping core academic teachers better understand what happens within CTE classrooms through such inter-disciplinary professional development and resources being developed. Wisconsin has some terrific materials for disciplinary literacy, which can be found here.

Most of the conversation was focused around the ELA/Literacy standards and the panelists did admit much less work had been done in mathematics to date in part because they are not technically required for CTE educators and because there is more resistance from the mathematics community to integrate. Maryland is working to develop senior year transition courses in mathematics, particularly for students who do not meet the college- and career-ready determination on the state test, with a heavy emphasis on mathematics applications. Another idea on the table in Maryland is to identify where a CTE course or sequence of courses with enough math may count as a fourth-year math requirement.

While it is too early to measure results with implementation still underway, all of the panelists noted “appreciative teacher”s and “positive feedback” from core academic educators as early signs of success.

Kate Blosveren, Associate Executive Director

By Kate Blosveren Kreamer in Advance CTE Fall Meeting
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Fall Meeting Recap: State Policy Update

Thursday, October 24th, 2013

Earlier this week, the National Association of State Directors of Career Technical Education Consortium (NASDCTEc) held its annual Fall Meeting, which had a strong focus on state policy. To lay out some of the major trends being led by legislatures, state agencies and state boards across the country impacting Career Technical Education (CTE), Amy Loyd, from the Pathways to Prosperity Network at Jobs for the Future, Jennifer Dounay Zinth, from the Education Commission of States, and Robin Utz, from the Office of Vocational and Adult Education (OVAE) at the U.S. Department of Education participated in the State Policy Update session.

Dale Winkler, Associate Commissioner, Kentucky Office of Career and Technical Education, moderated the panel and opened by describing three major pieces of legislation passed over the last few years in Kentucky impacting CTE, strengthening the state’s CTE standards and accountability, pathways and governance. Jennifer Dounay Zinth provided an overview of cross-state legislation and governors’ agendas citing five overarching trends: career-ready performance indicators, governance structures to facilitate better CTE and industry alignment, finance through accountability and incentives, CTE pathways or industry-based credentials being embedded into high school graduation requirements, and greater coordination between K-12, postsecondary and workforce development/industry.

Amy Loyd shared some highlights from the eight states working within the Pathways to Prosperity Network to better connect their education and workforce development systems to support more seamless student transitions. An early takeaway from that work is the importance of cross-agency efforts. The most successful states are those that bring together the major state agencies – such as state departments of education, higher education commissions, workforce development boards, governors’ offices, and economic development commissions – to develop common language, common goals and metrics, and even common funding as possible.

Finally, Robin Utz discussed some of the work OVAE is supporting in states and trends emerging around career pathways and programs of study. Specifically, she mentioned performance-based funding, graduation requirements recognizing or even requiring programs of study, legislative support for Career Technical Student Organizations, and dual and concurrent enrollment as some of the major levers being pulled across states in support of CTE. She, along with the other panelists, all agreed that this widespread interest in CTE and improving career pathways is the result of the economic uncertainly and persistent skills gap, along with the broader support for the college- and career-ready agenda, which has led to CTE being “invited to the adults’ table.”

Among the common themes that emerged as policy areas that still need more attention were dual/concurrent enrollment, credit transfer and articulation agreements, career guidance and counseling, and structures and incentives for more work-based learning experiences.

Kate Blosveren, Associate Executive Director

By Kate Blosveren Kreamer in Advance CTE Fall Meeting
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State CTE Policy Update: Two More States Adopt Next Generation Science Standards

Wednesday, September 25th, 2013

State MapThis month, two additional states, California and Delaware, joined Kansas, Kentucky, Maryland, Rhode Island and Vermont in adopting the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS).  In both cases, the state boards of education voted to adopt the NGSS, which were released in Spring 2013.

Both California and Delaware were among the group of 26 Lead Partner States, playing a significant role throughout the development of the standards. Now, both states are turning their attention to the  implementation of the new standards, no simple feat as the NGSS are, purposefully, organized differently than traditional science standards, with a greater emphasis on cross-cutting concepts that reach across all science disciplines. Delaware is planning to develop a multi-year implementation strategy soon and the California State Board of Education will take up an initial implementation challenge, middle school course requirements, this Fall.

For more on the NGSS and their development and design, see www.nextgenscience.org

Kate Blosveren, Associate Executive Director

By Kate Blosveren Kreamer in Public Policy
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Common Core State Standards & CTE Roundup

Thursday, August 15th, 2013

CCSS LogoWith nearly every state in the country working to implement the Common Core State Standards in mathematics and English/Literacy, and more and more resources and information being generated by states, districts, schools and education-focused organizations to support implementation, NASDCTEc is excited to present a blog series on the Common Core State Standards and Career Technical Education! The blog features news and resources that directly impact CTE educators as well as other materials we think are useful to the field. This edition features many communications-focused materials and resources.

In the News…
As you may have seen, New York State just released the results from its first year of administering CCSS-aligned assessments administered and, as expected, scores dropped fairly dramatically statewide. (Read more about it here). Kentucky experienced a similar drop in scores last year when they first moved to a CCSS-aligned assessment.

Featured Resources & Tools
The Center for Education Policy released “Year 3 of Implementing the Common Core State Standards: State Education Agencies’ Views on the Federal Role,” the third annual survey and report on states’ progress in implementing the Common Core State Standards. Major findings include:

A number of pro-CCSS websites were launched this summer, most notably Conservatives for Higher Standards, which highlights a range of right-leaning political leaders’ positive positions on the CCSS and debunks many of the false claims about the CCSS currently being spread in some political factions, and iAdvocate for Students, a website managed by three PTA volunteers, who are classroom teachers and/or mothers of K-12 students that features positive stories on the CCSS.

To both promote a number of their own tools for supporting the implementation of the CCSS and to better coordinate related resources, Achieve, the Council of Chief State School Officers and Student Achievement Partners released a joint Toolkit for Evaluating the Alignment of Instructional and Assessment Materials to the CCSS.  This Toolkit features the Instructional Materials Evaluation Tools; the EQuIP rubrics for evaluating lessons and units; the Assessment Evaluation Tool; the Assessment Passage and Item Quality Criteria Checklist; Publisher’s Criteria for the CCSS; and a list of additional resources relevant to evaluating instructional materials’ alignment to the CCSS.

The Data Quality Campaign (of which NASDCTEc is a partner organization) has released a number of short resources to help leaders explain how education data can be utilized and to help dispel myths that CCSS will somehow require the sharing of any student-level data. Notable resources include What Every Parent Should Be Asking about Education Data  (co-developed with the PTA) and Talking about the Facts of Education Data with Policymakers and Parents.

Finally, the GE Foundation hosted its third annual Business and Education Summit last month, bringing together business and education leaders from across the nation to discuss the Common Core State Standards, Next Generation Science Standards, college- and career-ready assessment and accountability systems, and how the business community can best support state and local efforts to implement such policies and practices.  In advance of the Summit, GE Foundation conducted a survey of the business participants. Among the 52 executives who responded:

Updates on Common Core Assessments
Consortia Musical Chairs: Georgia has withdrawn as a PARCC governing state, while North Dakota and Wyoming officially became governing states within Smarter Balanced.

Also major news is that cost estimates are now available from both consortia. PARCC’s summative assessments are priced just below the $29.95 per pupil median level of spending on summative tests in those two subjects in the consortium’s states. Smarter Balanced is offering two pricing options for states, $22.50 per student (which includes only summative tests) and $27.30 per student (which includes summative as well as interim and formative tests). The higher price tags are associated with more meaningful test items (aka no more “fill-in-the-bubble” tests).

The Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC)
PARCC released information on the field testing that will occur in 14 states and Washington DC in the Spring of 2014, for about 10% of all potential test takers. The field test will allow the states to test the accommodations policies and tools, assessment items and the technology.  Over this past summer, small-scale item tryouts occurred across ten states to begin to garner critical data. Tested items are expected to be released to the public in coming weeks.

PARCC recently released the first edition of the Accessibility Features and Accommodations Manual, along with a set of supporting communications materials.

Finally, PARCC has formally amended its grant for Race to the Top funding to fully operate as an independent 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization with its own funding, board of directors, staff and programs. This change aims to provide PARCC with a long-term sustainable architecture to support states in the operations of the assessment system beyond 2014 when the Race to the Top grant comes to a close. For more, see here.

Have a good CCSS-CTE resource to share? Contact us at [email protected]!

Kate Blosveren, Associate Executive Director

By Kate Blosveren Kreamer in Public Policy
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Report Shows Successful Journey Toward Deeper Learning with Roadtrip Nation

Wednesday, July 10th, 2013

Roadtrip Nation is a non-profit organization that helps students explore pathways they never knew existed, through programs and resources focused on self-discovery. Their approach shows positive results and encouraging outcomes for students, as shared in the research report Journey Toward Deeper Learning: An Evaluation of the Roadtrip Nation Experience in the San Jose PLUS Academies.

rtn-logo

This study was conducted by Educational Policy Improvement Center (EPIC). The results of students participating in the Roadtrip Nation (RTN) study show several benefits to students, and among those include:

According to Dr. Patrick Ainsworth, former State Director of California, “It is an approach that really resonates with high school aged students of all abilities and backgrounds. The schools participating in RTN love the model and are enthusiastic about the changes they see in their students’ attitudes and performance.”

In a keynote presentation and breakout session at the 2011 National Career Clusters® Institute, members of Roadtrip Nation shared the story of their movement – how they support, empower, and encourage individuals who want to define their own roads in life –and also shared stories that related to the Career Technical Education (CTE) vision as outlined in Reflect, Transform, Lead: A New Vision for Career Technical Education.

Ramona Schescke, Member Services Manager

By admin in News, Research
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CTE Research Review: Work Readiness in the U.S.

Wednesday, July 3rd, 2013

Research Image_6.2013ACT’s The Condition of Work Readiness in the United States, analyzes results from 4 million WorkKeys examinees to see if individuals with a given level of education have the skills needed for jobs requiring that level of education. The report looks at three areas of assessment – reading for information, applied mathematics, and locating information – and concluded the following:

Career Technical Education (CTE) was among the strategies suggested for encouraging collaboration to develop real-world learning experiences that incorporate work readiness standards into educational instruction.

Recent poll results from Gallup indicate that most Americans identify “the percentage of graduates who are able to get a good job after graduating” as the most important factor when choosing a college or university to attend. The cost of attending the college or university ranked second most important. Gallup researchers found that, “Americans care a lot about whether the graduates of a college end up in good jobs but find it hard to find this type of data. If more data were available, it could help those currently weighing their options to make a quality choice based on likelihood for a strong return in the future.”

The National Center for Education Statistics released its annual Nation’s Report Card, which has monitored students’ academic performance on the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) since the 1970s. Though 9- and 13-year-old students scored higher in reading and math in 2012 than students of the same age in the early 1970s, the report shows that 17-year-old students have not earned higher scores. The reasons for the stagnant scores were not explained, but while the overall cohort of 17-year-olds did not make gains in reading or math, 17-year-old students at the 10th, 25th, and 50th percentiles scored higher in 2012 than in 1978.

Kara Herbertson, Research and Policy Manager

By admin in News, Research
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State CTE Policy Updates

Tuesday, June 18th, 2013

State MapThis past month, there has been overwhelming action on the Career Technical Education (CTE) front across states, with major bills passing in Texas, Colorado, Vermont, Alabama, Washington and Oklahoma as well as bills pending in Michigan and North Carolina. As Texas had a number of CTE-related bills pass in the last few weeks, we’ll post a separate blog on Texas’ CTE policy changes later this week.

CTE Funding in Alabama
Last month, Alabama passed a $50 million bond issue to support technology and Career Technical Education programs. The bonds will likely be sold next year, with $10 million divided among schools based on the technology programs of offered; $20 million distributed based on the number of CTE students at each school; and the final $20 million to be distributed through grants. While this has a direct positive impact on CTE program across the state, all students will benefit from a new investment in technology.

Colorado’s Competency-based Graduation Requirements & Career Pathways
The Colorado State Board of Education revised the state’s graduation requirements in May, putting in place competency-based requirements, which hinge on students’ mastery of content rather than seat time.  The state has created “graduation guidelines,” outlining ways in which students can demonstrate mastery in the four major content areas (English, mathematics, social studies and science), such as earning a certain score on the ACT, PARCC or statewide assessment; passing a concurrent/dual enrollment course; or passing an AP/IB exam. Starting in 2015-16, the state will allow certain capstone experiences to count and by 2013-13, the state will develop a list of potentially eligible industry-based certificates that may count towards competency in various content areas.  Local education agencies are expected to set their own district-level requirements in alignment with the state policy.

Colorado also passed a bill directing the state board for community colleges and occupational education, with K-12 and postsecondary partners, to design a career pathway for students in the manufacturing sector. The pathway must include industry-validated stackable certificates, multiple entry and exit points, and allow a student to earn income while progressing through the pathway.

Maryland’s Degree Goals & Statewide Transfer Agreements
Maryland recently passed “The College and Career Readiness and College Completion Act of 2013” formalizing the Governor’s postsecondary degree goals (55% adults will have an associate’s degree by 2025) and requiring statewide transfer agreements between the state’s two- and four-year institutions of higher education. Specifically, the bill calls on the Maryland Higher Education Commission to develop and implement a transfer agreement where, by 2016, at least 60 credits earned by a student at any community college towards an associate’s degree will be transferable to any public higher education institution for credit towards a bachelor’s degree and a reverse transfer agreement where at least 30 credits earned by a student at a four-year institution will be transferable to a community college.

The Act also requires all public institutions of higher education to create graduation progress benchmarks for each major, which includes scheduling guidance, credit and course criteria, and schedules for regular periodic reviews of student progress. Finally, the bill requires four years of mathematics for students in high school and institutionalizes the PARCC assessments by requiring all students to be assessed using an acceptable college placement cut score by 11th grade to determine if they are ready for credit-bearing coursework in English/Literacy and mathematics.

The Maryland legislature also funded Governor O’Malley’s $2 million Early College Innovation Fund to incentivize early college access programs for students pursuing CTE and/or STEM disciplines. Specifically, the Maryland State Department of Education (MSDE) will generate competitive grants to fund partnerships of local school systems and higher education institutions to create early college high schools or other forms of early college access. Priority would be given to proposals that provide students with credentials (in the form of degrees, certificates, and certifications, as appropriate) in fields for which there is high demand in Maryland.

Oklahoma’s Competency-Based Graduation Requirements
Oklahoma recently updated their graduation requirements, broadening each of the content area course requirements to be met by “units” completed or “competencies” demonstrated by students. As such, students can receive course credit for demonstrated proficiency rather than just instructional time moving forward.

Vermont’s Flexible Pathways Initiative
A new bill in Vermont creates the Flexible Pathways Initiative, establishing statewide dual enrollment and early college programs. This bill amends the state’s high school completion program by allowing flexible pathways students to pursue pathways to graduation that include applied or work-based learning opportunities, including internships. It also calls for career exploration to no later than seventh grade for all students.

Computer Science in Washington
Last month, Governor Inslee in Washington signed a bill allowing an AP Computer Science course to count towards students’ mathematics or science requirements for graduation.  Washington already allows districts to adopt course equivalences for CTE high school courses towards a full or partial academic credit; this bill requires districts to allow AP computer science courses to count as mathematics or science courses. For the computer science course to count towards a mathematics credit, however, the student must have already completed or be currently enrolled in Algebra II.

Kate Blosveren, Associate Executive Director

By Kate Blosveren Kreamer in Public Policy, Uncategorized
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Legislative Update: ESEA Update; New CTE-Related Bills Proposed

Friday, June 14th, 2013

Rep. Langevin Op-Ed and Announcement of Counseling Legislation

Representative Jim Langevin (D-RI), co-chair of the Congressional Career Technical Education (CTE) Caucus, and Representative Suzanne Bonamici (D-OR) announced in an op-ed this week new legislation to authorize funding for comprehensive career counseling services. The “Counseling for Career Choice Act,” which would amend the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), would authorize grants to successful applicants that are prepared to implement comprehensive school counseling programs that align to a statewide counseling framework. The legislation is a companion bill to one introduced earlier this year by Senator Begich.

In the op-ed, Representative Langevin highlighted the importance of career counseling in making students aware of the many education and training opportunities available after high school – whether a two-year degree, apprenticeship, certificate, four-year degree, or other option – to help meet their future educational and career goals. Langevin also stressed the link between economic competitiveness and education and training, and the role of CTE in closing the skills gap. Staff will continue to work with Representatives Langevin and Bonamici to promote important aspects of CTE, such as counseling, in upcoming legislation.

Rep. McNerney  Introduces GREEN Act

Representative Jerry McNerney (D-CA) introduced this week the Grants for Renewable Energy Education for the Nation (GREEN) Act to increase education and training in the clean energy sector through CTE programs of study. The GREEN Act would authorize $100 million in competitive grants to postsecondary institutions, local education agencies, CTE schools, and community partners to develop clean energy programs of study and curriculum. The bill would also authorize funding to build energy-efficient CTE facilities and promote renewable energy practices.

The clean energy sector currently employs around 3 million Americans and growth of the sector is doubling that of the overall economy. CTE programs will be instrumental to providing education and training to individuals pursuing careers in clean energy.

In Representative McNerney’s press release for the bill, Kimberly Green, Executive Director at NASDCTEc, expressed support on behalf of our members: “We applaud Congressman McNerney’s introduction of the Grants for Renewable Energy Education Act. Promoting energy efficient Career Technical Education facilities and supporting the development of Career Technical Education programs of study in the fields of clean energy, renewable energy, and energy efficiency will ensure that the United States has the workforce needed to build, support and maintain the energy infrastructure essential for our country’s future.”

ESEA Update:

ESEA, currently enacted through the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB), expired at the end of FY 2008 and has since been eligible for reauthorization. As we reported last week, several ESEA reauthorization proposals have been introduced in Congress. See a side-by-side comparison of the proposals here.

Senate Approves Democrat ESEA Bill

This week, the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee approved the Democrats’ ESEA reauthorization bill, the Strengthening America’s Schools Act, on a party-line vote of 12-10. HELP Committee Chairman Tom Harkin (D-IA) noted that he would like to move the bill to a floor vote this year but that this is unlikely to happen before September. Senator Lamar Alexander (R-TN), whose ESEA reauthorization proposal substitute was voted down by the committee, stated that he would like to amend Senator Harkin’s bill significantly when it reaches the floor. Read more about the proposals on our blog.

Ten amendments to the bill were adopted including:

Thirteen amendments were offered but not passed including:

House ESEA Proposal Markup Set

House Republicans on the Education and the Workforce Committee introduced their ESEA reauthorization proposal, the Student Success Act (H.R.5) on June 6, 2013. A markup of the bill has been scheduled for June 19, 2013. Read more about the proposal here.

FY 2014 Appropriations :

House Appropriations

This week, the House Appropriations Committee held a full Committee markup of the defense appropriations bill. Representative Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) attempted to amend the bill by bringing FY 2014 funding levels for the Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies (Labor-HHS-ED) to pre-sequestration levels. The amendment was rejected on a party line vote of 21-29.

In May, the House Appropriations Committee released its draft FY 2014 302(b) allocations, which establish a cap on spending for each of the appropriations bills. The allocations suggest devastating cuts for programs with funding allocated under Labor-HHS-ED. It is unclear when markup of the House Labor-HHS-ED bill will be held.

Senate Appropriations

The Senate Appropriations Committee plans to release formal 302(b) allocations at the full committee markup on June 20, 2013. Senator Barbara Mikulski (D-MD), Chairwoman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, has scheduled a markup of the Senate Labor-HHS-ED appropriations bill on July 9, 2013 in subcommittee and on July 11, 2013 in full committee. Staff will continue to monitor these events and advocate on Capitol Hill for education and CTE funding.

Kara Herbertson, Research and Policy Manager

By admin in News, Public Policy
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