Congress Caps Years-Long Effort on Skills Education
On July 25, the House passed legislation to reauthorize the Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education (CTE) Act, moving quickly to approve the Senate’s version of the bill. President Trump kept up the pace, signing the measure into law on July 31.
The “Strengthening Career and Technical Education for the 21st Century Act” (H.R. 2353) was largely unchanged from the version passed by the House in June 2017. Having awaited Senate attention for more than a year, the upper chamber approved the measure within a month of its unanimous passage by the Health, Education, Labor & Pensions (HELP) Committee.
In general, the bill will give states more flexibility in designing CTE programs while establishing tighter timelines and performance indicators to measure the success of state efforts. The legislation also broadly enhances coordination between schools, businesses and government to ensure students graduate with skills local employers actually need, increasing student participation in work-based learning opportunities and promoting the use of industry-recognized credentials.
Maintenance providers have expressed growing concern about increasing difficulty finding workers with the technical skills necessary to work in aviation. As part of its ongoing efforts to address this shortage, ARSA joined a letter coordinated by the National Association of Manufacturers urging HELP Committee leadership to move quickly to enact a Perkins bill into law (see June 18 update below).
Once Congress completed its long work on the bill, its signature by the president was certain. After House passage, the White House doubled down on an early tweet celebrating the bill, applauding Congress for its “tremendous, bipartisan effort.”
On the heels of the VERY successful launch of the @WhiteHouse National Council for the American Worker, Congress should reauthorize #PerkinsCTE and ensure the American workforce remains stronger than EVER! #Jobs #Workforce
“By enacting [the bill] into law,” President Trump said in a July 25 statement, “we will continue to prepare students for today’s constantly shifting job market, and we will help employers find the workers they need to compete.”
The long-overdue reauthorization of the Perkins program represents a significant step towards providing states and communities with the resources needed to address the growing issue of a shortage of skilled labor across all industries. It also sets up Congress to take action of the ARSA-supported effort to pilot an aviation maintenance-focused workforce grant program.
To learn more about that effort, which also incentivizes local collaboration to develop needed skills, visit arsa.org/grant-program.
