Education Week - October 5, 2016 - 18

GOVERNMENT & POLITICS

Storm Clouds Loom Over Push for Ed-Tech Law's Renewal
Approval in House, speed bump in Senate
By Andrew Ujifusa
Congress has made a late, bipartisan push to reauthorize the Carl D.
Perkins Career and Technical Education Act, which governs vocational
and other programs that teach workforce and career-related skills.
But it's still unclear, with a presidential election and a lame-duck
session coming up, whether lawmakers will be able to get a bill to
President Barack Obama's desk before a new administration and new
session of Congress begin.
Written by Rep. Glenn Thompson,
R-Pa., and Rep. Katherine Clark,
D-Mass., the Strengthening Career
and Technical Education for the 21st
Century Act-passed by a 405-5 vote
in the House last month-would
provide states and districts more leeway when it comes to accountability
and goals for CTE programs. It also
would establish a new definition for
students concentrating in such programs and give states more flexibility
over their use of federal dollars.

For the most part, both lawmakers and CTE advocates have
hailed the bill. But momentum was
checked last month when the Senate education committee postponed
a hearing on a Republican-backed
Perkins reauthorization bill. The
main political flashpoint with the

is the largest source of federal funding
for high schools. It was last reauthorized in 2006. Retooling Perkins has
been at the top of Congress' education
agenda for the past few years.
"Perkins has always been a bipartisan issue, so we're hopeful that
things work out in the Senate and
they can find a bipartisan way forward," said Alisha Hyslop, the director of public policy for the Association

countable for the outcomes of their
CTE programs.
For high school students, the
House bill defines concentrators as
those who have "completed three or
more career and technical education courses, or completed at least
two courses in [a] single career and
technical education program or program of study."
In a letter sent to lawmakers

[The law] has always been a bipartisan issue, so we're hopeful that things
work out in the Senate and they can find a bipartisan way forward."
ALISHA HYSLOP
Association for Career and Technical Education

Senate bill: proposed prohibitions
on the authority of the U.S. secretary of education that echo separate
fights over the Every Student Succeeds Act.
Funding for the Perkins Act stands
at about $1.1 billion in fiscal 2016 and

for Career and Technical Education.
The main concern of various CTE
advocates appears to be how the
House bill defines a "concentrator"
in such programs. Who gets categorized that way, in turn, would affect
how states and schools are held ac-

last month, 24 education associations and other groups wrote that
the definition is overly broad and
should center more on those students focusing on specific CTE
courses of study.
"Combining the populations into

one definition of 'concentrator' will diminish data quality and make it difficult to truly determine the impact
of CTE programs," the groups wrote.
Hyslop also noted that according to 2009 data from the National
Center for Education Statistics,
around 36 percent of high school
graduates have earned at least two
credits in a single area of study in
CTE. That's an appropriate share
of students to include in accountability plans, she argued, without
including students that "never got
in-depth enough to earn a certification that would actually have value
in the labor market."

Incorporating a Blueprint
But in several other respects, both
sides of the aisle have praised the
legislation.
Rep. Thompson lauded the additional flexibility the reauthorization would give states-they could
apply a greater share of federal
Perkins funding for their own CTE
funding formulas or competitive
grants, for example. And Clark
said the Perkins bill would direct

Appraising Trump
School Choice,
Child-Care Plans
By Andrew Ujifusa
Advocates and researchers dealing with school
choice and early childhood are pleased that Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump
has released plans addressing those issues after
having had little specific to say
about K-12 for most of his camTION paign-but not necessarily for his
ELEC
proposals' level of detail, or what
those details actually are.
At the most general level, many of
those working on school choice and early childhood say they believe Trump's recent forays
into their policy areas have helped raised the
subjects' political profile in the campaign and
contributed to the surrounding debates. The
Republicans' 2012 presidential nominee, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, did not
release a detailed proposal for expanding or
overhauling child-care programs and policies;
however, Romney was an enthusiastic backer of
school choice.
But observers also expressed concern not only
that the substance of Trump's plans lack detail or
leave many unanswered questions, but also could
cause problems down the road if he were to actually push them in a presidential administration.
Trump's campaign did not respond to requests
for comment.

Plans on the Table
Trump and his rival, Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, take distinctly different approaches
on early-childhood and choice issues.
Clinton, for example, proposed capping childcare costs at 10 percent of a family's income. She

M. Scott Brauer for Education Week-File

2016

also has proposed doubling the investment in the
federal Early Head Start program and expanding preschool to every 4-year-old over the period
of a decade. (A similar Obama administration
preschool proposal has a $75 billion price tag.)
Clinton has not released a specific proposal on
school choice, although she has praised provisions to expand high-quality charter schools in
the Every Student Succeeds Act, while opposing
private school vouchers.
Trump released his school choice plan before
rolling out an early-childhood proposal. Last
month, he proposed a $20 billion federal plan to
promote access to private, charter, magnet, and
other schools for impoverished students. Trump

18 | EDUCATION WEEK | October 5, 2016 | www.edweek.org

said other federal money would be redirected to
pay for the initiative, but did not provide more
information on that point. Combined with state
and local investments, Trump said that 11 million such students would have access to schools
of their choice.
In his Sept. 8 speech at a Cleveland charter
school, Trump pitched his plan as a way for students to escape not just struggling public schools
but also the education bureaucracy, which he assailed in his speech at the Republican National
Convention in July.
"There is no policy more in need of urgent
change than our government-run education moPAGE 22 >

Lora Reyes supervises children
at her licensed child-care
operation in Westfield, Mass.
GOP presidential nominee
Donald Trump favors a new tax
deduction for child-care costs.

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Education Week - October 5, 2016

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