States given more power in revamped Perkins Act

President Donald Trump signed the Strengthening Career and Technical Education for the 21^st Century Act, a reauthorization of the Perkins Act, on Tuesday, giving states greater control over setting their own goals for career and technical education (CTE), a change from the current law that requires states to get program goals approved by the secretary of education. And while there is a slight increase in overall spending for career education grants, it is still lower than historical funding levels for Perkins. 

The Perkins Act is a $1.2 billion program that was last overhauled by Congress in 2006 and was due for reconsideration in 2016, but got bogged down in partisan disagreements. The new bill is a bipartisan compromise that allows states to set their own goals for career and technical education programs without the education secretary’s approval, requires them to make progress toward those goals, and makes other changes to federal CTE law.

Advocacy groups such as Advance CTE and the Association for Career and Technical Education praised what they called positive aspects of the bill, including increasing the reserve fund and expanding career exploration into the middle grades. However, they voiced concerns in a joint letter that there be no unintended consequences of the new legislations that would “result in setting unambitious performance targets, lower academic standards for CTE students, or force states and programs to meet onerous administrative requirements instead of focusing on providing high-quality CTE programs.”