New Legislation Considerations

On January 13, the National Association of State Directors of Career Technical Education Consortium Executive Director Kimberly Green and Director of Government Relations Nichole Jackson brought the national perspective on the current status of the Carl D. Perkins Vocational and Technical Act of 1998 and Career Clusters to Oklahoma’s state agency. The following notes summarize that meeting.

By Sheryl Hale
Innovative Program Research and Development Manager
Oklahoma Department of Career and Technology Education

The new Carl Perkins legislation will provide states more flexibility on how they choose to spend their money.  However, the new legislation is beginning to narrow the focus on what monies can be spent on.  The four following themes are emerging from the new legislation: 

1. Increased Accountability.  States will be required to negotiate performance indicators with locals and redirect funding to close performance gaps if necessary.  This will require significantly more work at the state level.   In addition, academic achievement will be based upon the No Child Left Behind requirements.  Therefore, there will be pressure for each state to demonstrate how CTE adds value to academics.  Most states demonstrate this value by comparing CTE student academic performance on state achievement tests to other student populations, tracking the number of students transitioning to post-secondary education, and tracking student success at the post-secondary level.    

2. Shift away from job-specific training to preparing students for work and post-secondary education.   Carl Perkins funding will be used to provide incentives to align programs with career clusters.  Each local will be required to implement a minimum of one career cluster.  However, states will have the opportunity to increase the minimum number of clusters a local must align to.  In additions, each career cluster must demonstrate a value add to students by providing college credit, credentials, work based learning, etc.

3. Focus on high-skill and high-wage jobs based upon local labor markets.  The new legislation will require locals to demonstrate connectivity to labor markets by aligning programs to broad labor market trends. 

4. Strong focus on effective student transition.  The new legislation places an emphasis on student transition to post-secondary education and work as well as from two-year programs to four-year post-secondary programs.  The emphasis is on providing students options.