Senate CTE Caucus co-chairs Tim Kaine (D-VA), Rob Portman (R-OH) and Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) recently sent a letter to President Obama asking him to create a Presidential Career and Technical Scholars award through executive order. Currently the Presidential Scholars program recognizes up to 121 high school graduates in the nation based on a combination of academic achievement, community leadership and extracurricular activities. The program also identifies an additional 20 students in the visual and performance arts or creative writing fields centering on participation in the national YoungArts program.
NASDCTEc applauds the Senators’ request to expand the Presidential Scholars program for Career Technical Education (CTE). Such an expansion would more fully acknowledge the level of high-quality CTE work currently under way in high schools throughout the country and highlight the strong academic and technical achievements of individual CTE students. As with the current awards, the application and eligibility requirements for a CTE component to this program would be determined by the Presidential Scholars Commission.
NASDCTEc encourages those in the CTE community to send President Obama a message urging action on this issue here. If you have not done so already, please take the time to thank Senators Kaine, Portman and Baldwin for their continued dedication to the CTE enterprise. While no official response has been sent from the White House as of today, NASDCTEc is hopeful that later this week the CTE community will have an answer to this request.
Labor-HHS-ED Appropriations Outlook
As we shared last month, the House Committee on Appropriations passed a measure setting the 302(b) allocation for the Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education (Labor-HHS-ED) Appropriations bill. The Department of Education and the Carl D. Perkins Act (Perkins) basic state grant program it administers, falls under this spending bill which the Committee set at $155.7 billion for Fiscal Year (FY) 2015. This figure is approximately $1 billion below FY 2014 levels. The Labor-HHS-ED Appropriations Subcommittee must still “markup” an appropriations bill conforming to this cap for FY 2015. This essentially amounts to deciding how that sum will be divided up between the various agencies, departments and programs falling under the jurisdiction of the subcommittee.
While no date has been set in the House, the Senate Committee on Appropriations has embarked upon much the same course. Recently, the committee in that Chamber set its 302(b) allocation for the Labor-HHS-ED Appropriations bill at $156.8 billion for FY 2015— $1 billion above the House level, but still on par with the FY 2014 allocation. The Senate subcommittee has scheduled markup for this bill for tomorrow, June 10th, when funding levels for individual programs— including Perkins— will be determined. The full Committee is also expected to hold a markup on the Labor-HHS-ED appropriations bill sometime later this week, but an official time and date have not been released.
As a reminder, NASDCTEc supported two Dear Colleague letters in both Chambers calling for a restoration of the remaining sequester cuts to the Perkins Act basic state grant program. In addition to this, NASDCTEc also submitted a formal request for additional funding for the Perkins Act to the Senate Committee on Appropriations based on its FY 2015 call for additional investments for the basic state grant program. As this process unfolds, check back here for updates and analysis on the appropriations process as it relates to Perkins.
Upcoming Webinar: Wage Record Interchange System (WRIS) 2
NASDCTEc encourages those interested to join the Workforce Data Quality Campaign this Thursday at 2:00 – 3:00p.m. ET for a discussion on the Wage Record Interchange System (WRIS) 2. This system allows states to exchange wage records for performance reporting on a variety of programs, including career and technical education, adult education and TANF. The webinar will include information about: why it is important to share wage records across state lines; how WRIS2 operates and ways that states can use the system; and examples of states that are using WRIS2.
Panelists:
• Rachel Zinn, Director, Workforce Data Quality Campaign
• John Glen, Oregon Employment Department
• Ruben Garcia, Texas Workforce Commission
Please click here to register and attend. In case you are unable to attend at that time, WDQC will share a recording of the webinar following the live event.
Odds & Ends: WIOA, ATB, and Hill Staff School Visit
The Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA), the bicameral, bipartisan agreement to reauthorize the Workforce Investment Act (WIA) is expected to be taken up by the full Senate sometime during the week of June 16th. The compromise legislation proposes to substitute the House-passed SKILLS Act with the agreement language and will likely be open to some amendments if and when the legislation is considered by the full Chamber.
NASDCTEc recently supported a letter to the House and Senate Appropriations Committees and Labor-HHS-ED Subcommittees, calling for the reinstatement of the “Ability to Benefit” (ATB) provision in Title IV of the Higher Education Act (HEA). Following Congressional austerity measures in 2012, students who do not have a high school diploma or an equivalent— even if they can demonstrate college-readiness— have not been able to utilize the Pell Grant program to pay for the costs of their postsecondary education. Read the full letter here.
Last week, NASDCTEc participated in a school visit to Edison Academy in Alexandria, Virginia. Hosted by the Association of Career Technical Education (ACTE) and the newly formed Senate CTE Caucus, the visit gave House and Senate staff the opportunity to see a CTE program first-hand and illustrated the vital role the Perkins Act has in supporting the types of high-quality programs on display on the doorstep of the nation’s Capital. Do you have a program you would like to see featured on the Hill? Please contact Steve Voytek at [email protected] or Evan Williamson at [email protected] to learn more.
Steve Voytek, Government Relations Associate