Carl D. Perkins Vocational and Technical Education Act

Allies help defend career and technical education funding
Members of CSBA’s Federal Issues Council came away from meetings with association and government leaders in Washington, D.C., last month committed in their support of the Carl D. Perkins Vocational and Technical Education Act and encouraged that Congress will continue to provide funds for the legislation.
CSBA board members and staff met with Marilina Sanz and Paul Beddoe of the National Association of Counties and with Leighann Lenti, deputy director of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Washington office. They discussed President Bush’s ongoing push to divert funding away from the Perkins Act and into NCLB, as well as congressional reaction to the president’s efforts.

“My concern is the Bush administration,” said NSBA Board Member and CSBA Past President Kerry Clegg, a steadfast supporter of career and technical education. “[The act] has been under attack by the administration for the last five years. Bush wanted Perkins completely scrapped, but Congress rejected it.
“This year, Bush is trying to cut funding for Perkins in half and do loopholes to transfer funds out of Perkins into high school reform,” Clegg noted while adding, “I think Congress is pretty much opposed to that as well.”
Sanz, associate legislative director of NACo, acknowledged that the Bush administration has been involved in “back-door” efforts to redirect Perkins funds to NCLB, but she said it has found little support in Congress for its trouble. “I don’t know why they don’t give up,” Sanz said.

CSBA is finding an ally in Gov. Schwarzenegger in its fight to increase federal funding for career and technical education programs. Lenti said that the governor is pushing for full funding of CTE and that he has opposed the president’s proposal to transfer funding from the Carl Perkins Act to NCLB programs.

“Schwarzenegger has supplied funding  for CTE,” Clegg said. “He definitely supports it.” Schwarzenegger has said that career and technical education helps ensure a robust economy because it supports job skills for students who don’t go on to college or who want to get into more technical professions.

Clegg characterized the FIC meetings on CTE as “very positive in terms of improvement in the education budget and also in changes in NCLB. Changes in [congressional] leadership help,” he said. “The U.S. Department of Education is still toeing the administration’s line,” Clegg said, but “Congress seems to be in the mood to make some significant changes and achieve what [the Perkins Act’s] goals were supposed to be. Career and technical education plays an important role for a segment of our student population not destined for college. They need a job and the technical skills to perform it. If we truly don’t want to leave any child behind, CTE should be supported. We need an alternative pathway for them.”

At issue: Federal authorizations and annual funding levels for Perkins have stagnated at a little more than $1 billion. Funding must be increased in order to expand and replicate quality career and technical education programs that meet the goals of the August 2006 reauthorization.

In California, over 1.3 million secondary students are enrolled annually in CTE courses, and approximately 407,000 adult students are enrolled in Regional Occupation Center Programs or adult education CTE courses. Approximately 85 percent of CTE students currently take a sequence of courses that lead to certification either through employment or higher education. California has made considerable progress in fostering academic integration. Over 8,225 high school career technical education courses are qualified for academic graduation credit and approximately 3,340 courses met the entrance criteria for admission to the University of California. Further, California has established over 290 career partnership academies that require academic integration.

CSBA’s position:
• Career and technical education programs are helping boost student performance.
• CSBA opposes any move to allow the transferability of Carl Perkins funding to NCLB programs.
• CSBA believes that using a performance rate based only on CTE students is more reasonable because it allows programs to show growth from year to year, based on actual student performance.
What California needs:
• Increased funding for career and technical education.
• Flexibility to direct federal funds where they are needed most.