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Public
Policy Update
May 2013
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Congress
Great News on Perkins! Both the House and Senate
have started efforts to support CTE. In the Senate, 21 senators
signed onto Sen. Blumenthal's (D-CT) dear colleague letter. In the
House, the letter was led by Rep. Thompson (R-PA) and Rep. Langevin
(D-RI). An additional 63 House members signed on.
On May 16, Politico
reported that the House Republicans had begun circulating new
spending targets for appropriations bills for the coming year, with
Labor, Education and Health and Human Services facing a nearly 20
percent reduction on top of the cuts already made in the March 1
sequestration order. "Appropriations Committee Chairman Hal
Rogers (R-Ky.) appears to be backloading the larger reductions in
order to salvage a few of the 12 annual bills this summer. He is
putting a priority on what he sees as security items, including law
enforcement and homeland security as well as the
military."
- Discretionary spending for the
departments of Labor, Education and Health and Human Services
would be capped at $121.8 billion--or about $28 billion below
the best available estimates for post-sequestration
appropriations.
On May 14,
the Senate Judiciary Committee voted to direct money collected on
fees for labor certifications toward STEM education at the U.S.
Department of Education and the National Science Foundation, possibly
an additional $100 million annually for STEM education in the
Department of Education and $100 million to $150 million in
additional funding for STEM education in the National Science
Foundation. The amendment had bipartisan backing from Sen. Orrin
Hatch (R-Utah) and two Democrats, Sens. Chris Coons of Delaware and
Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota. Learn More
On May 8,
Sens. Mazie K. Hirono and Roger Wicker (R-MS), along with Representatives
Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) and House Science Committee Chairman Lamar Smith
(R-TX), introduced bipartisan companion legislation in the Senate and
House of Representatives that promotes science education and
celebrates scientific achievement by establishing an official Science
Laureate of the United States, who would be a nationally renowned
expert in his or her field and would travel around the country
to inspire future scientists. Learn More
On May 7,
the House Committee on Education and the Workforce held a hearing
titled "Raising the
Bar: Exploring State and Local Efforts to Improve
Accountability." With the reauthorization of
the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) on the horizon, the
hearing focused on what the proper federal role should be in holding
schools accountable for student outcomes. CTE was discussed for its
role in making students college and career ready.
On April 26,
11 senators, including Jeff Merkley (D-OR) and Al Franken
(D-MN), sent a letter to the Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human
Services, and Education Senate Committee on Appropriations to support $265 million
for STEM education in the Department of Education,
including Math and Science Partnerships and the STEM Master Teacher
Corps.
On April 25,
Senator Merkley introduced The STEM Education
for the Global Economy Act to help improve
instruction in STEM subjects and amend the Elementary and Secondary
Education Act (ESEA) The legislation aims to:
- Improve student engagement in, and
increase student access to, courses in STEM subjects;
- Recruit, train, and support
highly-effective teachers in STEM subjects and providing robust
tools and supports for students and teachers;
- Close student achievement gaps, and
prepare more students to be on track to college and career
readiness.
On April 24,
Senators Bennet (D-CO) and Portman (R-OH) reintroduced the Career Through
Responsive, Efficient, and Effective Retraining (CAREER) Act,
S.804, "to make federal job training programs more responsive to
the needs of employers, more efficient with taxpayer dollars, and
more effective in connecting the unemployed with highly paid
jobs." The key provisions
are:
- Providing a Job Training
Reorganization Plan to Streamline the Federal Workforce System.
- Steer Federal Retraining Dollars
Toward Skills Needed by Industry.
- Establish Better Incentives for
Accountability.
- Provide New Access to Database to
Connect Unemployed to Jobs.
The bill
would amend the Workforce Investment Act (WIA). However, WIA has been
reauthorized in the House. The Senate is working on their bill. It is
not clear how the CAREER Act will fit into this reauthorization
process.
Administration
In April the Office for Civil
Rights released guidance to remind school
districts, postsecondary institutions, and other Federal funding
recipients of the legal prohibition against retaliation with regard
to civil rights complaints and to describe OCR's methods of
enforcement.
On May 3, the U.S. Department of Education announced the opening of
the 2013 Investing in
Innovation (i3) competition for
"scale-up" and "validation" applications. The
i3 grant program is designed to encourage school districts and
nonprofits to work in partnership to develop and expand practices
that accelerate learning and prepare every student to succeed in
college and in their careers. Competition applications are broken
into three grant categories: development, validation and scale-up:
- Development: Projects with promising
but untested ideas.
- Validation: Projects that have been
implemented but require further data testing and collection.
- Scale-up: Projects that have been
implemented, include proven data and will be expanded.
Applications for validation
and scale-up grants are due by July 2, 2013. The department began
accepting "development" category applications in April.
NAPE Partners
The STEM Education
Coalition sent a letter to the House and Senate
Appropriations Committees regarding President Obama's FY 2014
proposed consolidations of federal STEM programs, both praising the
Administration's commitment to STEM and questioning the
consolidations and eliminations for programs.
The Campaign to Invest
in America's Workforce (CIAW) (of which NAPE is a
member) sent a letter on May 20 to the House Appropriations Committee
stating objections to the proposed fiscal year (FY) 2014 302(b)
allocation for the Labor-HHS-Education Appropriations bill. The
proposed allocation is 18.6 percent below the final FY 2013 sequester
level and 22.2 percent below the FY 13 pre-sequester Continuing
Resolution level.
The National Skills Coalition hosted a webinar following the release
of the President's 2014 budget. Review the PowerPoint
presentation and listen to the
webinar.
The American Association of
University Women released a report, Women in Community
Colleges: Access to Success. The report notes that
women make up 57 percent of the students who attend community
colleges; many of these women are financially limited and/or
academically underprepared, and about 25 percent have children.
Recommendations for the success of women in community colleges
include: more active recruitment, ensuring that academic advising
programs are not reinforcing gender stereotypes and bolstering the
gender equity provisions found in the Perkins Act.
Publications
Following a 2011 report by the National Research Council
(NRC) on successful K-12 STEM education, Congress asked the National
Science Foundation to identify methods for tracking progress toward
the report's recommendations. In response, the NRC convened the Committee on an
Evaluation Framework for Successful K-12 STEM Education
to take on this assignment. The committee developed 14 indicators
linked to the 2011 report's recommendations.
On
May 7, Brookings released a policy brief, "Time for Change: A
New Federal Strategy to Prepare Disadvantaged Students for
College," with Princeton University. In this brief Brookings
Senior Fellow Ron Haskins and Dean of Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School
Cecilia Rouse review evaluations of the four main federal programs
designed to increase the number of disadvantaged students who
graduate from college and decrease economic inequality. They find
that the U.S. Department of Education's TRIO programs (Upward Bound,
Talent Search, Upward Bound Math-Science, Student Support Services
and others), at around $1 billion per year, "show no major
effects on college enrollment or completion." They offer a
comprehensive five-step plan
for reforming these programs. Learn More
The question of a STEM shortage has been often debated. However,
there is a new study from the
Economic Policy Institute that does a supply and
demand analysis and concludes the United States has more than a
sufficient supply of workers available to work in STEM occupations.
In the Huffington Post,
Linda Rosen refutes this study, saying "but from our perspective
at Change the Equation--a nonprofit working closely with the
companies facing the real-world consequences of a shortage--the STEM
shortage is very real, and very urgent." She cites Anthony
Carnavale's study from the Georgetown Public
Policy Institute, which states that the U.S.
should be concerned about our ability to produce enough STEM workers
to compete successfully in the global economy.
News from
the States
New Jersey Governor
Christie has signed into law legislation
introduced by Assemblyman Patrick Diegnan Jr., a Democrat
representing the 18th Legislative District, which includes East
Brunswick, Edison, Helmetta, Highland Park, Metuchen, South
Plainfield and South River. The legislation will expand opportunities
for all students and families to receive information about the
educational programs available to them at New Jersey's county
vocational-technical schools. The bill requires local school
districts to share mailing list information for middle and high
school students with county vocational schools, making it easier for
them to reach out to students and inform them of the advantages of a
vocational and technical education.
The National Alliance
for Partnerships in Equity (NAPE) is a national,
nonprofit consortium of state and local agencies, corporations, and
national organizations that collaborate to create equitable and
diverse classrooms and workplaces where there are no barriers to
opportunities. Through its Education Foundation, NAPE has been
involved in a number of initiatives to increase diversity in
America's workforce and to increase opportunities in high-skill,
high-wage, high-demand careers. Among these is the National Science
Foundation-funded STEM Equity Pipeline
Project, which works with educational systems to increase the
participation of underrepresented populations in STEM education.
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