Support for Technology Education
Businesses underline the value of CTE by lending support to new resolution
By ACTE
Mar 25, 2004, 22:40

Support for career training programs is strong in the business community with almost 5,000 businesses signing a resolution imploring the federal government to continue investing in career and technical education, and a representative of employers saying that CTE provides workers with skills that today’s employers covet.

“I do believe that broad support for career and technical education and information across all industries is vital to the quality of life, not just in the United States, but around the world,” said James Borel, senior vice president of DuPont Global Human Resources, at a panel discussion hosted on March 17 by the National Association of State Directors of Career Technical Education Consortium (NASDCTEc), and the Association for Career and Technical Education. Steve Hitch, ThinkBIG program manager for Caterpillar, added that CTE and student organizations such as SkillsUSA and FFA are vital in imparting skill sets to students, including teamwork and organization.

“Leadership skills are rarely incorporated into traditional curriculums,” he said.

The companies that signed the resolution represent more than 4 million employees and $4.2 trillion in revenue last year. The resolution was necessary, according to NASDCTEc secretary John Foster, to “quantify” the support of the business community for CTE programs in what was the first “grassroots effort of local and state CTE leaders to have their business partners” make this support public. The key points of the resolution are that CTE is meeting the needs of today’s economy and is responsive to the labor market; is a valued partner to employers of all sizes; and is valued throughout the nation.

ACTE President Thomas Applegate said that business support for CTE should be the impetus for more federal investment in CTE, because if employers cannot get the skilled workers they need, they are likely to go overseas. Considering how much the U.S. economy is dependent on technological advancements and a skilled workforce, the federal government should invest more to outfit high schools with the latest technology, and expand secondary and postsecondary CTE programming, according to Rep. John Peterson (R-PA).

“Today we should be talking about how fast we can double Perkins funding, not how we can salvage it,” he said. “We should not change its focus to literacy and academics, because all the rest of the federal budget is about that. This is the one little bit that’s for technology.”

But Susan Sclafani, assistant secretary for career and technical education, defended the $1 billion requested for CTE for fiscal year 2005 – a 25 percent cut to current funding levels – by saying the amount of money spent is not necessarily a determinant of outcomes. She added that the No Child Left Behind Act gives states the flexibility to shift around federal funding as necessary.

Peterson, a long-time advocate of CTE, also took aim at the way the government proposes to allocate Perkins funding through competitive grants saying, “it would never work in rural America.” He added that most of the rural school districts in Pennsylvania have not benefited from competitive grants because of the tedious bureaucratic process that already belabored administrators would have to undergo in order to secure the grants.

“My school superintendents are often times school principals too,” he said. “They have no time to write grants, they don’t write grants,” and they also do not have easy access to consultants who can help them in that process. Peterson said he would agree to narrow the focus on how Perkins money is spent in order to: put technology in high schools; develop new and innovative curricula on the cutting edge of technology; and introduce technology at the middle school level to engage students in career exploration at an earlier age and curb the dropout rate. Peterson said that he does not oppose an emphasis on academics at the secondary level, but would like to seen an equal focus on technical skills so that many students are not left behind.

Career Tech Update is published twice-monthly by the Association for Career and Technical Education (ACTE), 1410 King St., Alexandria, VA 22314.

© 2004 Association for Career and Technical Education. ISSN 1531-257X.


© Copyright 2005 by Wisconsin Technology Education Association