On Thursday, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan went before the Senate Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education Appropriations Subcommittee to defend the Administration’s Fiscal Year (FY) 2016 budget request for education. The budget request proposes an additional $200 million for a CTE Innovation Fund within the Basic State Grant, which would support the American Technical Training Fund by providing competitive grants to support job training programs in high-demand fields. However, the budget would level-fund the Perkins Basic State Grant formula program at $1.118 billion—$5.4 million below the pre-sequestration level. Recently, a coalition of 31 Senators, led by Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), sent a letter to the subcommittee urging an increase in funding for the Perkins Basic State Grant program. ACTE has also urged Congress to increase our investment in CTE and fund the Perkins Basic State Grant at $1.123 billion in FY 2016.
Throughout the hearing, committee members raised several issues with Sec. Duncan that are related to CTE interests. Chairman Roy Blunt (R-MO) and Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV) took issue with the department’s recently finalized “gainful employment” regulations. The rule affects nearly all educational programs at for-profit higher education institutions, as well as non-degree programs at public and private nonprofit institutions, like community colleges and area CTE centers, that must provide training programs that prepare students for “gainful employment in a recognized occupation” in order to participate in federal financial aid programs. The regulations outline how the department will evaluate a program’s effectiveness in preparing students for gainful employment after program completion and set requirements for programs to make certain performance and outcome data available to the public. ACTE has expressed concerns about the additional burdens that reporting and disclosure requirements in the rule will create for community colleges and other postsecondary CTE institutions, despite the fact that these institutions provide students with a cost effective option for obtaining the skills and credentials sought by employers. Committee Republicans also criticized the Administration’s plan to move forward with a new college ratings system, and raised concerns about the ability of the department to develop a system that can effectively account for the diversity among postsecondary institutions.
The ongoing reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) was another source of discussion in the hearing. Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), co-chair of the Senate CTE Caucus, talked about the Next Generation (NextGen) High Schools Act (S. 696) that she introduced in March. The bill would connect struggling students with rigorous curriculum and applied learning opportunities as part of a strategy to increase student engagement and high school graduation rates.
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