06/01/04 -- The Bush Administration has developed a plan to improve the academic rigor of the federal vocational education program and revise the system for providing grants to local school districts.
The Carl D. Perkins Vocational and Technical Education Act is up for reauthorization, but Congress is not expected to pass legislation until next year.
The Administration's budget for fiscal 2005 would cut funding for Perkins by almost 25 percent from the $1.3 billion appropriated this year to $1 billion.
NSBA opposes the funding cuts and is working on drafting recommendations for improving the Perkins Act.
The Education and the Workforce Committee has held two hearings on the program this spring, and legislation is expected to be introduced in the House within the next few weeks.
Committee Chair John Boehner (R-Ohio) says the reauthorization "presents a chance to reinforce the No Child Left Behind Act's [NCLB] principles for reform: accountability, flexibility, expanded parental options, and the use of methods that work."
The Senate has not yet scheduled hearings. An aide with the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions says the committee will start the process "later this spring -- or more likely this fall." With elections coming up in November, the aide indicated it is not likely that Congress will complete action on Perkins this year.
The Administration's proposal, called the Secondary and Technical Education Excellence Act (SecTech), released in May, is designed to make vocational education more in line with the rigorous achievement goals of NCLB, facilitate the transition from high school to postsecondary programs, and better coordinate career education with trends in the labor market. It would eliminate the stand-alone Tech-prep program.
Under the Administration plan, grants would be distributed to states according to the existing formula, but states would also have the discretion to distribute federal funds to local partnerships -- consisting of at least one school district and postsecondary institution -- on a competitive basis or through a new formula established by states.
The plan focuses on career "technical education pathways." Qualified career and technical education programs would have to have "an articulated sequence of courses" beginning in high school and including "challenging academic classes and technical course work."
Students in these pathways would end up with "an industry-recognized certification, associate or baccalaureate degree, or certificate of completion from a registered apprenticeship."
Participating high schools would have to encourage students to complete four years of English, three and a-half years of social science, and three years of math and science.
The proposal calls for performance targets to be negotiated by the states and the education secretary. Performance would be measured by student scores on the reading and math state assessments mandated by NCLB, high school graduation, and successful transition to either postsecondary programs, employment, or the military.
States would be given new authority to set performance goals and to establish a system of rewards and sanctions for local partnerships.
States that accept Perkins funding would be required to administer the NAEP in reading and math to 12th graders.
During a recent hearing of the House Education Reform Subcommittee, Roberta White, president and CEO of Great Oaks Institute of Technology and Career Development in Cincinnati, described how her program has benefited from the Perkins Act.
Great Oaks is a public school district that provides career and technical education to about 6,000 junior and high school students in 36 school districts on its four campuses and in students' home schools.
"The value of career-technical education is that students have an opportunity to learn a concept in a variety of ways," White says. "In math and physics, a construction student learns about loads and vectors. She then goes into her lab and applies these principles to build a bridge."
Each student at Great Oaks has an "individualized academic plan." Students must complete a "capstone project" in their senior year demonstrating their mastery of the competencies they have learned and must present their findings to a panel of experts.
Great Oaks has 132 agreements with community colleges, four-year institutions, technical institutes, and apprenticeship programs. "Our goal is to enable students to move seamlessly from a Great Oaks campus to a postsecondary institution -- and to arrive with up to 35 hours of credits already in place," White says.
Also at the hearing, Principal Sandy Walls-Culotta described how Sussex Technical High School in Georgetown, Del., has integrated a rigorous academic curriculum with career-technical coursework to raise student achievement.
Since 1993, Walls-Culotta says, the percentage of Sussex Tech students meeting or exceeding standards on the Delaware Student Testing Program has increased from 5 percent to 49 percent in mathematics and from 8 percent to 82 percent in reading.
The school is organized around four clusters: automotive technologies, health and human services, communication and information, and industrial engineering.
Each cluster has a team of teachers who specialize in English, math, science, social studies, special education, technical subjects, and related electives, along with a counselor, assistant principal, support staff, and two "cluster managers" -- one for academics and one for technical content.
Each team meets every day to plan integrated activities, discuss students, and provide peer staff development.
"The heart of the program is the integration of academic and technical instruction," Walls-Culotta says. In addition to the standard requirements of core academic courses, students must earn 10 credits in a career-technical major course and one credit in computer literacy.
According to Walls-Culotta, the reauthorization of the Perkins Act should recognize that instruction needs to focus on career technical training. "Otherwise a lot of students wouldn't be there. Students need more structure and need to be more focused," she says.
Organizations that represent vocational education have raised some concerns about the Administration's proposals on reauthorizing the Perkins Act, particularly over the plan to cut funding and to consolidate funding into a block grant to states.
The Association for Career and Technical Education maintains that the elimination of the Tech Prep and career information programs, the elimination of a local funding formula, and the requirement that local funding be directed only to mandatory partnerships between school districts and postsecondary partners would be detrimental to career and technical education.
The National Association of Secondary School Principals recommends that high-quality career and technical education programs be substantially expanded in high schools and that funding be used at local discretion.
NSBA Federal Relations Director Reggie Felton says, "Strong grassroots involvement of our local school board members will ensure that the reauthorization of the Perkins Act during the 109th Congress addresses our critical concerns."