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PREPARING TODAY’S STUDENTS FOR 

TOMORROW’S JOBS: IMPROVING THE 

CARL D. PERKINS CAREER AND 

TECHNICAL EDUCATION ACT 

HEARING 

BEFORE THE

COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION 

AND THE WORKFORCE 

U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 

ONE HUNDRED THIRTEENTH CONGRESS 

FIRST SESSION 

HEARING HELD IN WASHINGTON, DC, NOVEMBER 19, 2013 

Serial No. 113–38 

Printed for the use of the Committee on Education and the Workforce 

( 

Available via the World Wide Web: 

www.gpo.gov/fdsys/browse/committee.action?chamber=house&committee=education 

or 

Committee address: http://edworkforce.house.gov 

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(II) 

COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION AND THE WORKFORCE 

JOHN KLINE, Minnesota, Chairman 

Thomas E. Petri, Wisconsin 

Howard P. ‘‘Buck’’ McKeon, California 

Joe Wilson, South Carolina 

Virginia Foxx, North Carolina 

Tom Price, Georgia 

Kenny Marchant, Texas 

Duncan Hunter, California 

David P. Roe, Tennessee 

Glenn Thompson, Pennsylvania 

Tim Walberg, Michigan 

Matt Salmon, Arizona 

Brett Guthrie, Kentucky 

Scott DesJarlais, Tennessee 

Todd Rokita, Indiana 

Larry Bucshon, Indiana 

Trey Gowdy, South Carolina 

Lou Barletta, Pennsylvania 

Martha Roby, Alabama 

Joseph J. Heck, Nevada 

Susan W. Brooks, Indiana 

Richard Hudson, North Carolina 

Luke Messer, Indiana 

George Miller, California, 

Senior Democratic Member 

Robert E. Andrews, New Jersey 

Robert C. ‘‘Bobby’’ Scott, Virginia 

Rube ́n Hinojosa, Texas 

Carolyn McCarthy, New York 

John F. Tierney, Massachusetts 

Rush Holt, New Jersey 

Susan A. Davis, California 

Rau ́l M. Grijalva, Arizona 

Timothy H. Bishop, New York 

David Loebsack, Iowa 

Joe Courtney, Connecticut 

Marcia L. Fudge, Ohio 

Jared Polis, Colorado 

Gregorio Kilili Camacho Sablan, 

Northern Mariana Islands 

Frederica S. Wilson, Florida 

Suzanne Bonamici, Oregon 

Mark Pocan, Wisconsin 

Juliane Sullivan, Staff Director 

Jody Calemine, Minority Staff Director 

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(III) 

C O N T E N T S 

Page 

Hearing held on November 19, 2013 ...................................................................... 1 

Statement of Members: 

Kline, Hon. John, Chairman, Committee on Education and the Workforce 1 

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 3 

Miller, Hon. George, senior Democratic member, Committee on Education 

and the Workforce ......................................................................................... 4 

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 6 

Statement of Witnesses: 

Albrecht, Bryan, Ed.D., President and Chief Executive Officer, Gateway 

Technical College .......................................................................................... 26 

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 27 

Dann-Messier, Hon. Brenda, Assistant Secretary, Office of Vocational 

and Adult Education (OVAE), U.S. Department of Education ................. 8 

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 11 

Flanders, Blake, Ph.D., Vice President of Workforce Development, Kansas 

Board of Regents ........................................................................................... 22 

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 24 

Litow, Stanley S., IBM Vice President, Corporate Citizenship and Corporate Affairs; President, IBM International Foundation ......................... 17 

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 18 

Additional Submissions: 

Dr. Dann-Messier: response to questions submitted for the record ............. 79 

Grijalva, Hon. Rau ́l M., a Representative in Congress from the State 

of Arizona: letter, dated Nov. 14, 2013, from the National Association 

of Secondary School Principals (NASSP) .................................................... 71 

Chairman Kline: 

Letter, dated Nov. 19, 2013, from the Associated General Contractors 

of America (AGC) ................................................................................... 69 

Question submitted for the record ........................................................... 76 

Mr. Miller: prepared statement of Hon. James R. Langevin, a Representative in Congress from the State of Rhode Island ....................................... 40 

Scott, Robert C. ‘‘Bobby,’’ a Representative in Congress from the State 

of Virginia: questions submitted for the record .......................................... 76 

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(1) 

PREPARING TODAY’S STUDENTS FOR 

TOMORROW’S JOBS: IMPROVING THE 

CARL D. PERKINS CAREER 

AND TECHNICAL EDUCATION ACT 

Tuesday, November 19, 2013 

U.S. House of Representatives 

Committee on Education and the Workforce 

Washington, DC 

The committee met, pursuant to call, at 10:04 a.m., in Room 

2175, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. John Kline [chairman 

of the committee] presiding. 

Present: Representatives Kline, Wilson, Foxx, Roe, Thompson, 

Walberg, Salmon, Guthrie, Roby, Heck, Brooks, Hudson, Messer, 

Miller, Andrews, Scott, Hinojosa, Tierney, Holt, Davis, Bishop, 

Sablan, Wilson, Bonamici, and Pocan. 

Staff present: James Bergeron, Director of Education and Human 

Services Policy; Amy Raaf Jones, Education Policy Counsel and 

Senior Advisor; Rosemary Lahasky, Professional Staff Member; 

Nancy Locke, Chief Clerk; Daniel Murner, Press Assistant; Krisann 

Pearce, General Counsel; Dan Shorts, Legislative Assistant; Alex 

Sollberger, Communications Director; Alissa Strawcutter, Deputy 

Clerk; Brad Thomas, Senior Education Policy Advisor; Tylease Alli, 

Minority Clerk/Intern and Fellow Coordinator; Jeremy Ayers, Minority Education Policy Advisor; Jody Calemine, Minority Staff Director; Jacque Chevalier, Minority Education Policy Advisor; Jamie 

Fasteau, Minority Director of Education Policy; Eunice Ikene, Minority Staff Assistant; Brian Levin, Minority Deputy Press Secretary/New Media Coordinator; Megan O’Reilly, Minority General 

Counsel; and Michael Zola, Minority Deputy Staff Director. 

Chairman KLINE. A quorum being present, the committee will 

come to order. 

Good morning and welcome. I would like to thank our witnesses 

for joining us today. We look forward to your testimony. 

A few weeks ago the Subcommittee on Early Childhood, Elementary, and Secondary Education convened a hearing to examine the 

benefits of career and technical education, or CTE. In addition to 

highlighting innovative CTE programs that are helping students 

compete for in-demand jobs, the hearing allowed us to identify a 

number of challenges facing career and technical education. 

For example, redundant reporting requirements and poorly 

aligned performance metrics can stymie the development of innovative new CTE courses. These are often the very same mandates 

CEWDOCROOM with DISTILLER

2 

that create hurdles for higher education institutions and K-12 

schools, which we have discussed at length as part of our efforts 

to improve the Elementary and Secondary Education Act and the 

Higher Education Act. 

Additionally, the hearing underscored the importance of ensuring 

students have access to hands-on training that is relevant to the 

area workforce. Testifying on behalf of the Louisiana Pelican Chapter of the Association of Builders and Contractors, Alvin Bargas 

told a compelling story about the severe lack of skilled construction 

workers in the wake of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Through coordination with business and education leaders, the state has since 

developed targeted CTE programs that are helping to rebuild the 

local construction industry and the Gulf Coast. 

Finally, witnesses stressed the importance of better aligning secondary and postsecondary career and technical education. To get 

the most out of CTE courses, students should have opportunities to 

earn relevant credentials and certificates at an accelerated rate 

through dual and concurrent enrollments. Students should also be 

encouraged to learn new technologies and innovative practices that 

will increase their value in the 21st century workplace. 

As Dr. Sheila Harrity, principal of Worcester Technical High 

School in Massachusetts, noted at the hearing, ‘‘Successful technical schools require strong links to the community, business and 

industry, and academic institutions.’’ Dr. Harrity described her 

school as ‘‘part of the economic engine, coordinating the needs and 

desires of industry for a highly trained, adaptable workforce with 

the needs and desires of our students to secure good-paying, rewarding jobs in the fields of their choice.’’ 

That focus on coordination is exactly what we should strive to encourage through the reauthorization of the Carl D. Perkins Career 

and Technical Education Act. We have made great progress this 

year in advancing proposals to modernize and reform both the Elementary and Secondary Education Act and the Workforce Investment Act. It is time to build on that progress and further integrate 

our schools and workplaces with the reauthorization of the Perkins 

Act. 

We are fortunate to have with us today an impressive panel of 

witnesses who can share their views on the policy changes that 

could strengthen career and technical education, including the 

president of the IBM International Foundation. 

As you may know, IBM serves as a lead industry partner for the 

Pathways and Technology Early College High Schools, known as PTECH. Located in Chicago and New York, P-TECH schools offer an 

integrated high school and college curriculum that focuses on the 

STEM subjects—science, technology, engineering, and math. Students who graduate from P-TECH earn both their high school diploma and an associate degree in applied science and receive priority consideration for entry-level positions with IBM. 

The P-TECH model has been heralded by policy and education 

leaders. In fact, President Obama recently visited a P-TECH school 

in Brooklyn to discuss the administration’s blueprint for reform of 

the Perkins Act. Their proposal offers a solid starting point for bipartisan negotiations with an emphasis on industry coordination 

and state involvement in the development of CTE programs. 

CEWDOCROOM with DISTILLER

3 

While we may not agree on every aspect of the blueprint, there 

are key areas that are ripe for agreement. However, I am discouraged by this morning’s news—leaked news—that President Obama 

plans to announce a new national competitive grant program aimed 

at career education without any input from Congress. Another program will only further muddle the system at a time when we need 

to make smart, structural reforms to improve CTE programs under 

the Perkins Act. 

I look forward to working with my colleagues on both sides of the 

aisle in hopes we can craft smart, bipartisan proposals to strengthen career and technical education in America. 

I would now like to recognize the senior Democrat member of the 

committee, Mr. Miller, for his opening remarks. 

[The statement of Chairman Kline follows:] 

Prepared Statement of Hon. John Kline, Chairman, 

Committee on Education and the Workforce 

A few weeks ago the Subcommittee on Early Childhood, Elementary, and Secondary Education convened a hearing to examine the benefits of career and technical education, or CTE. In addition to highlighting innovative CTE programs that 

are helping students compete for in-demand jobs, the hearing allowed us to identify 

a number of challenges facing career and technical education. 

For example, redundant reporting requirements and poorly aligned performance 

metrics can stymie the development of innovative new CTE courses. These are often 

the very same mandates that create hurdles for higher education institutions and 

K-12 schools, which we have discussed at length as part of our efforts to improve 

the Elementary and Secondary Education Act and the Higher Education Act. 

Additionally, the hearing underscored the importance of ensuring students have 

access to hands-on training that is relevant to the area workforce. Testifying on behalf of the Louisiana Pelican Chapter of the Association of Builders and Contractors, Alvin Bargas told a compelling story about the severe lack of skilled construction workers in the wake of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Through coordination 

with business and education leaders, the state has since developed targeted CTE 

programs that are helping to rebuild the local construction industry—and the Gulf 

Coast. 

Finally, witnesses stressed the importance of better aligning secondary and postsecondary career and technical education. To get the most out of CTE courses, students should have opportunities to earn relevant credentials and certificates at an 

accelerated rate through dual and concurrent enrollments. Students should also be 

encouraged to learn new technologies and innovative practices that will increase 

their value in the 21st century workplace. 

As Dr. Sheila M. Harrity, principal of Worcester Technical High School in Massachusetts, noted at the hearing, ‘‘Successful technical schools require strong links to 

the community, business and industry, and academic institutions.’’ Dr. Harrity described her school as ‘‘part of the economic engine, coordinating the needs and desires of industry for a highly-trained, adaptable workforce with the needs and desires of our students to secure good paying, rewarding jobs in the fields of their 

choice.’’ 

That focus on coordination is exactly what we should strive to encourage through 

the reauthorization of the Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education Act. We 

have made great progress this year in advancing proposals to modernize and reform 

both the Elementary and Secondary Education Act and the Workforce Investment 

Act. It’s time to build on that progress and further integrate our schools and workplaces with a reauthorization of the Perkins Act. 

We are fortunate to have with us today an impressive panel of witnesses who can 

share their views on the policy changes that could strengthen career and technical 

education, including the president of the IBM International Foundation. 

As you may know, IBM serves as a lead industry partner for the Pathways in 

Technology Early College High Schools, known as P-TECH. Located in Chicago and 

New York, PTECH schools offer an integrated high school and college curriculum 

that focuses on the STEM subjects, science, technology, engineering, and math. Students who graduate from P-TECH earn both their high school diploma and an associate degree in applied science, and receive priority consideration for entry-level positions with IBM. 

CEWDOCROOM with DISTILLER

4 

The P-TECH model has been heralded by policy and education leaders. In fact, 

President Obama recently visited a P-TECH school in Brooklyn to discuss the administration’s blueprint for reform of the Perkins Act. Their proposal offers a solid 

starting point for bipartisan negotiations, with an emphasis on industry coordination and state involvement in the development of CTE programs. 

While we may not agree on every aspect of the blueprint, there are key areas that 

are ripe for agreement. However, I am discouraged by this morning’s news that 

President Obama plans to announce a new national competitive grant program 

aimed at career education—without any input from Congress. Another program will 

only further muddle the system at a time when we need to make smart, structural 

reforms to improve CTE programs under the Perkins Act. 

I look forward to working with my colleagues on both sides of the aisle in hopes 

we can craft smart, bipartisan proposals to strengthen career and technical education in America. I would now like to recognize the senior Democrat member of 

the committee, Mr. Miller, for his opening remarks. 

Mr. MILLER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

And welcome, to our witnesses, and we look forward to your testimony. 

The reauthorization of the Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical 

Education Improvement Act of 2006—geez, that is a mouthful— 

presents this committee with an opportunity to ensure students are 

equipped with the skills to succeed in the rapidly evolving 21st century economy. While the U.S. remains in the top 10 worldwide in 

the percentage of youth who enroll in college, we have dropped to 

16th in the world for the proportion who obtain certificates or degrees. 

That is unacceptable and if we plan to remain the world’s economic leader. It is vital that we maintain and strengthen career 

and technical education programs. 

It is now estimated that two-thirds of the 47 million new jobs 

that will be created in America in the next 5 years will require 

some form of postsecondary education. Half of these jobs will be 

filled by people with associate’s degrees or occupational certificate. 

These will be electricians, construction managers, dental hygienists, paralegals, police officers, computer techs and programmers, 

and many other careers. 

Today’s career and technical education programs, or CTE, are 

successfully preparing millions of Americans to succeed both in college and career. They provide students with skills and knowledge 

that today’s employers demand. 

Nationwide, many CTE programs are innovating to serve the 

evolving needs of students in today’s economy. They are fostering 

educational environments that engage students with integrated 

curriculums of core academic content and real-world, work-based 

relevance. 

But we must do more, as the chairman noted, to spur the innovation and delivery of CTE to reward and to replicate programs 

achieving positive outcomes for students and industry and to ensure that CTE is positioned to drive economic success through better workforce alignment and increased collaboration. The Perkins 

Act has supported the development of in-demand skills among secondary and postsecondary education students of all backgrounds 

for many years. 

Yet there is a growing consensus that the federal investment 

needs to focus on relevant, rigorous, and high-quality CTE programs. These programs must meet labor market needs. They must 

CEWDOCROOM with DISTILLER

5 

prepare students to succeed in the in-demand jobs that pay decent 

wages and benefits and offer the opportunity for career advancement. 

Our nation still faces a skills gap. While millions of Americans 

struggle with unemployment in today’s economy, millions more jobs 

go unfilled. Our national education strategy needs more urgency 

and focus on training for the high-reward, high-demand jobs that 

the strong economy demands. 

According to the International Survey of Adult Skills published 

this month by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the United States faces a very real challenge in preparing our young people in the higher order skills needed to thrive 

in the knowledge-based economy. In other nations, younger generations are entering the workforce already highly skilled in such 

areas as problem solving and well-poised to fill positions in the 

growth sectors. Yet the study found that here in the United States 

our younger generation is no more highly skilled than older generations, placing them at odds with the job vacancies that currently 

exist. 

Today and tomorrow’s jobs demand new and different skills to 

succeed and we need to better prepare our students to meet those 

demands. Simply put, we must upskill our workforce or face growing social inequity and diminishing economic vitality. We must 

strengthen our federal commitment to CTE and fully invest in CTE 

programs as a means of educational economic success. 

Partnering to design and implement high-quality programs 

aligned with current and future workforce needs is a shared responsibility. Educational success for every child demands a strong 

collaborative commitment. 

Government and schools, business, laborers, teachers, students, 

community partners must all work to ensure high-quality CTE programs. I think we are going to hear about some of that this morning. 

Data shows that CTE is a powerful tool for engaging students, 

closing achievement gaps, improving schools, and improving school 

completion. While the average high school graduation rate remains 

under 75 percent, the average high school graduation rate for students concentrating in CTE is around 90 percent. 

In transforming CTE through this reauthorization, we must 

prioritize equity of opportunity to participants that benefit from 

CTE programs. New and emerging technologies must be used to alleviate problems of limited access for students who are disconnected due to geography, socio-economic status, disability, or language barriers. 

I look forward to hearing from our distinguished panelists this 

morning, as you all are uniquely positioned to provide insights to 

the future of career and technical education and the federal investment addressing the current and future challenges. 

So thank you so very much, Mr. Chairman, for calling this hearing, and we look forward to the testimony. 

[The statement of Mr. Miller follows:] 

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6 

Prepared Statement of Hon. George Miller, Senior Democratic Member, 

Committee on Education and the Workforce 

Good morning and thank you, Chairman Kline. 

Today’s hearing will examine the critical role of career and technical education 

in preparing our nation’s students for success in college and career. Reauthorization 

of the Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education Improvement Act of 2006 

presents this committee with an opportunity to ensure students are equipped with 

the skills to succeed in a rapidly evolving 21st century economy. 

While the U.S. remains in the top 10 worldwide in the percentage of youth who 

enroll in college, we have dropped to 16th in the world for the proportion who obtain 

certificates or degrees. 

That’s unacceptable if we plan to remain the world’s economic leader. It is vital 

that we maintain and strengthen career and technical programs to be strong and 

successful. It is now estimated that two-thirds of the 47 million new jobs that will 

be created in America in the next 5 years will require some form of postsecondary 

education. 

Half of these jobs will be filled by people with an associate’s degree or occupational certificate. They will be electricians, construction managers, dental hygienists, 

paralegals, police officers, and computer techs and programmers. Today’s career 

technical education programs, or CTE, are successfully preparing millions of Americans to succeed in both college and career. They provide students with the skills and 

knowledge that today’s employers demand. Nationwide, many CTE programs are innovating to serve the evolving needs of students and of today’s economy. 

They are fostering educational environments that engage students with an integrated curriculum of core academic content and real-world, work-based relevance. 

But we must do more to spur innovation in delivery of CTE, to reward and replicate 

programs achieving positive outcomes for students and industry, and to ensure CTE 

is positioned to drive economic success through better workforce alignment and increased collaboration. 

The Perkins Act has supported the development of in-demand skills among secondary and postsecondary education students of all backgrounds for many years. 

Yet there is growing consensus that federal investment needs to focus on relevant, 

rigorous, and high-quality CTE programs that both better fit with labor-market 

needs and better prepare students to succeed in in-demand and high paying jobs: 

jobs and industries that not only contribute to our national economic competitiveness, but also set students on a path to earn a living wage, enjoy employer benefits, 

and offer the opportunity for career advancement. 

Our nation still faces a ‘‘skills gap.’’ While millions of Americans struggle with unemployment in today’s economy, millions more jobs go unfilled. 

Why? Because our nation’s education strategy lacks sufficient urgency and focus 

on training for the high reward, high demand jobs that a strong economy demands. 

According to the International Survey of Adult Skills, published this month by the 

Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the United 

States faces a very real challenge when it comes to production of a skilled workforce. 

Despite the rapid evolution of economic and industry demand, workers now entering 

the labor force are not more highly skilled than those currently leaving the workforce. 

Simply put, we MUST ‘‘upskill’’ our workforce or face growing social inequity and 

diminishing economic vitality. We must strengthen our federal commitment to CTE 

and fully invest in CTE programs as a means to educational and economic success. 

Partnering to design and implement high-quality programs aligned to current and 

future workforce needs is a shared responsibility. Educational success for every 

child demands a strong collaborative commitment. 

Federal, state, and local government, secondary and postsecondary education, 

business and industry, organized labor, teachers and leaders, students, and community partners must all work to ensure CTE programs are meeting the challenges of 

our 21st century economy. 

Data shows CTE to be a powerful tool in engaging students, closing achievement 

gaps, and improving schools. While the average high school graduation rate remains 

under 75 percent, the average high school graduation rate for students concentrating in CTE programs is 90 percent. In transforming CTE through this reauthorization, we must prioritize equity of opportunity to participate in and benefit from 

CTE programs. 

New and emerging technologies must be used to alleviate problems of limited access for students who are disconnected due to geography, socio-economic status, disability, or language barriers. 

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7 

I look forward to hearing from our distinguished panelists, as you all are uniquely-positioned to provide insight on the future of career and technical education and 

the federal investment in addressing current and future challenges. I also look forward to working with Chairman Kline on a bipartisan effort to modernize federal 

support for CTE through reauthorization of the Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education Act of 2006. 

Chairman KLINE. I thank the gentleman. 

Pursuant to committee rule 7(c), all committee members will be 

permitted to submit written statements to be included in the permanent hearing record. And without objection, the hearing record 

will remain open for 14 days to allow statements, questions for the 

record, and other extraneous material referenced during the hearings to be submitted in the official hearing record. 

It is now my pleasure to introduce our very distinguished panel 

of witnesses. 

The Honorable Brenda Dann-Messier is the assistant secretary 

for adult and vocational education in the United States Department of Education. Prior to her appointment she served as a member of the Rhode Island Board of Governors and as president of the 

Dorris Place Adult and Family Learning Center based in Providence, Rhode Island. 

Mr. Stanley Litow is the vice president for corporate citizenship 

and corporate affairs at the IBM Corporation as well as president 

of the IBM International Foundation. Prior to joining IBM, Mr. 

Litow’s career in public and nonprofit leadership included service 

as deputy chancellor of the New York City Public Schools and 

founder and CEO of Interface, a nonprofit think tank. 

Dr. Blake Flanders is the vice president for workforce development at the Kansas Board of Regents. He provides executive leadership for the Kansas Postsecondary Technical Education Authority 

and is a member of the KANSASWORKS State Workforce Board. 

Previously he served as a liaison between the Kansas Department 

of Commerce and Kansas Board of Regents and as a state director 

of the Workforce Investment Act programs. 

And Dr. Bryan Albrecht has served as president of Gateway 

Technical College since 2006. In this capacity he oversees the college’s 65 academic programs, 15 educational facilities, a comprehensive $160 million budget, and a $4 million college foundation. 

So welcome to you all—indeed, a distinguished panel. And before 

I recognize each of you to provide your testimony, let me again 

briefly explain our lighting system. 

You will each have 5 minutes to present your testimony. When 

you begin the light in front of you will turn green; when 1 minute 

is left the light will turn yellow; when your time is expired the 

light will turn red, and at that point I would ask you to wrap up 

your remarks as best you are able. 

As I have explained to witnesses in the past, I am very loathe 

to start gaveling down witnesses who have traveled here to give us 

the benefit of their expertise. However, we do have time constraints 

here so if that light turns red please try to wrap it up. 

And then we will move to questions and comments, no doubt, 

from my colleagues here. I will be less loathe to gavel them down 

so that we can keep this moving. 

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8 

Mr. MILLER. [Off mike.] 

Chairman KLINE. Very unfair. Of course, I start that after Mr. 

Miller has his 15 minutes, 5 minutes. 

No, no. He is very good. 

He actually is very good, come to think of it, in staying on time. 

So I now recognize Dr. Dann-Messier for 5 minutes. 

STATEMENT OF HON. BRENDA DANN-MESSIER, ASSISTANT 

SECRETARY FOR ADULT AND VOCATIONAL EDUCATION, U.S. 

DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION 

Ms. DANN-MESSIER. Chairman Kline, Ranking Member Miller, 

and members of the committee, thank you for holding the hearing 

on improving Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education Act. 

I appreciate the opportunity to share the Obama administration’s 

vision for improving career and technical education through the reauthorization of the Perkins Act, which was last reauthorized in 

2006. 

Today postsecondary education and training are often prerequisites for the jobs of the new economy. Of the 30 fastest-growing occupations, about two-thirds require some form of postsecondary education or training. With the average earnings of college 

graduates at a level that is about twice as high as that of workers 

with only a high school diploma, postsecondary education and 

training are now the clearest pathways into the middle class and 

future prosperity, and they are central to rebuilding our economy 

and securing a brighter future for all. 

To that end, President Obama set a new goal for the country that 

by 2020 America would once again have the highest proportion of 

college graduates in the world. The President also has challenged 

every American to commit to at least 1 year of higher education or 

postsecondary training. 

To achieve the President’s goal we must ensure that every student in our country graduates from high school prepared for both 

postsecondary education and a successful career, and we must ensure that more of our nation’s young people and adults can access 

and complete postsecondary education and training to earn industry-recognized certification, credential, or postsecondary degree. 

Unfortunately, our education and training systems do not always 

prepare students for the jobs needed by our businesses. Too many 

employers report that they are having trouble finding workers for 

skilled jobs in fields such as health care, technology, and advanced 

manufacturing. Strengthening all aspects of our education system 

and creating high-quality job training opportunities are necessary 

to further our economic prosperity as a nation and to keep the 

American promise alive for all of our students. 

Transforming career and technical education is essential to this 

process. CTE represents a critical investment in our future. 

As we reach the end of the current authorization of the Perkins 

Act, the department began a public consultation process to examine 

how to transform CTE. Between the fall of 2009 and spring 2011, 

OVAE hosted over 30 community conversations with hundreds of 

participants around the country representing all the stakeholder 

groups. There were four major themes that emerged from these 

conversations. 

CEWDOCROOM with DISTILLER

9 

First, every student must not only be college ready, but also career ready. Second, opportunities must be significantly expanded 

for students to participate in career pathways. Third, more effective partnerships must be fostered. And four, CTE data and accountability systems must be improved. 

The common thread across all this feedback from participants is 

that every CTE student must be college and career ready. 

The Perkins Act is the primary tool that the federal government 

has to achieve this vision. In April 2012 Secretary Duncan released 

‘‘Investing in America’s Future: A Blueprint for Transforming Career and Technical Education.’’ The blueprint lays out the administration’s four key principles and nine supporting reforms to usher 

in a new era of rigorous, relevant, and results-driven CTE. 

The first principle reform seeks to ensure effective alignment between CTE and the labor markets to equip students with the skills 

they need for in-demand jobs within high-growth industry sectors. 

Our proposed reforms will provide states with clearer guidance on 

establishing high-quality programs and empower states to 

strengthen connections with their workforce and economic development offices and the agencies to identify the occupations and sectors on which CTE programs should focus. Our goal is to ensure 

that CTE federal dollars are exclusively invested in preparing students for in-demand jobs within high-growth industry sectors. 

The second principle of reform emphasizes the importance of 

building and maintaining strong collaborations among secondary 

and postsecondary institutions, employers, industry partners, workforce systems, and labor organizations to improve the quality of 

CTE programs. Our reforms seek to ensure that Perkins funding 

is rewarded to consortia among secondary and postsecondary institutions and their partners. In addition, we propose that states use 

a private sector matching contribution to strengthen the participation of employers, industry, and labor partners in CTE program design and implementation. 

A goal in the reauthorization of the Perkins Act is to dramatically improve the alignment of our federal investments in CTE programs to better support the mastery of rigorous college and career 

readiness standards. A key toward that goal is to establish meaningful accountability, our third reform principle for improving academic outcomes and building technical and employability skills. 

Our reforms seek to provide states increased autonomy to select 

and fund high-quality programs that are responsive to regional 

labor market needs. Thus, we are proposing within-state competitions to ensure that Perkins funding supports only high-quality 

CTE programs. Our proposal includes several provisions to ensure 

that the competition would have no adverse impacts on access for 

students, including those with disabilities and those who live in 

rural communities because the administration believes that all students should have access to high-quality programs. 

Also, we are proposing that states establish common definitions 

and clear metrics for performance to create high-quality data systems that enable meaningful comparisons and the identification of 

equity gaps. In addition, our accountability reforms include ways to 

reward local recipients that exceed their performance targets and 

demonstrate success in closing equity gaps. 

CEWDOCROOM with DISTILLER

10 

Lastly, our fourth principle places more emphasis on innovation. 

We are proposing a competitive CTE innovation and transformation fund to incentivize innovation at the local level and support system reform at the state level. The need for innovation is 

great and we have already started to see many communities take 

the lead to develop new ideas and promising practices. 

We believe the blueprint—especially its provisions for high-quality CTE programs—can serve as a roadmap for transforming CTE 

across the country. Moreover, we believe that CTE is central to rebuilding our economy and securing a brighter future for our nation. 

So our federal investment in CTE must be dramatically reshaped 

to fulfill its potential to prepare all students, regardless of their 

background or circumstances, for further education and cuttingedge careers. 

We look forward to working with you on the rewrite of the Perkins Act. And again, thank you for the opportunity to testify and 

I am happy to answer any questions. 

[The statement of Ms. Dann-Messier follows:] 

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Chairman KLINE. Thank you, Madam Secretary. 

Mr. Litow, you are recognized. 

STATEMENT OF STANLEY S. LITOW, VICE PRESIDENT, CORPORATE CITIZENSHIP AND CORPORATE AFFAIRS, PRESIDENT, IBM INTERNATIONAL FOUNDATION, IBM CORP. 

Mr. LITOW. Thank you very much, Chairman Kline. 

And thank you, Ranking Member Miller and other members of 

the committee. We really appreciate the opportunity that you have 

given us to come here and testify before you. 

The Perkins reauthorization offers the country an enormous opportunity to reshape a program that provides a real opportunity to 

connect school to career in a meaningful way. The core concepts of 

the reauthorization ought to be linking job to the labor market information. We want to prepare our students for the jobs that exist 

and are likely to exist in the future. 

Number two, we want to align our career and technical education 

programs to postsecondary education because we know a high 

school diploma is simply not enough and we have got to provide an 

opportunity for more students to get postsecondary education. 

Third, we have got to get business strongly to the table to help 

shape curriculum, to help provide mentoring, to provide workplace 

experiences, and to really connect school to career in a meaningful 

way and provide those workplace experiences through mentoring, 

internships, and on-the-job opportunities for students so that they 

get the workplace skills that they need to be successful in the 

workplace. 

Now, why is this urgent? You have heard the numbers. We are, 

right now, at the lowest rates of employment for youth and young 

adults than at any time since the Second World War. 

The labor market data shows us that over the next 10 years 

there are going to be 14 million new jobs created for students who 

have middle-grade skills, and the opportunity for students to have 

jobs that require post secondary education are growing markedly 

year after year. We at IBM—I represent one company; we are a little over 100 years old—a large company. We have 1,800 vacancies. 

There is a jobs crisis. But more than a jobs crisis, there is a skills 

crisis. 

How do we address this program of jobs and skills? In your introduction you mentioned one clear example, the P-TECH program. 

Now, we can sit back and hope that our career and technical education programs will improve, but I think business needs to come 

to the table and be a full partner to make sure that those programs 

improve. 

So we created a grade nine through 14 school, starting in a very 

disadvantaged neighborhood in an urban setting. We started with 

students who had no admissions requirement to get in—totally 

open opportunity—working within existing funding streams, within 

existing regulations, and we mapped the job skills that are required for nine different job categories at IBM and embedded them 

directly into the curriculum. 

So workplace skills like problem solving, knowledge acquisition, 

writing skills, presentation skills are part of how math is taught, 

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science is taught, English is taught. And the response from students is that they are achieving at significantly higher levels. 

Every student in the school has an IBM mentor. Every student 

has structured workplace visits. 

Every student has an opportunity to take and pass college 

courses when they are ready for those college courses. And what 

we have learned is that at the end of the 10th grade about 75 percent of the students in the school pass three state regents exams; 

50 percent passed four state regents exams; 25 percent passed five 

state regents exams. And by the end of the 11th grade about 25 

to 30 percent of the students will have already completed 1 year 

of college. 

And this addresses a critical problem that we have in the country, which is that the students who begin community college, only 

25 percent of them on average complete. And in some urban districts the numbers are in single digits. 

Now, we have seen the opportunity to have P-TECH replicated 

in Chicago and now 16 schools being replicated across the state of 

New York in rural areas and suburban areas as well, providing a 

real opportunity for a future for students. 

Why is this important? A recent survey of employers—by the 

way, the private sector currently spends about $53 billion on job 

training, and employers who were surveyed—all large employers— 

looking at their recent hires said 70 percent of them lacked workplace ethics, lacked communication skills, lacked writing skills, and 

lacked the skills to be successful in the workplace. 

So this is a real benefit. It is a benefit to students by providing 

them the skills to be able to take the jobs of the 21st century. It 

is a benefit to employers to be able to expand their workforce and 

to be competitive and make the country competitive. And we have 

this great opportunity through the reauthorization of the Perkins 

Act. 

Now, there are a lot of differences that people have about education. Educators very often differ with people in higher education. 

People on both sides of the aisle very often differ. People in the 

business community differ with other businesses. 

This is one issue that there is an enormous amount of agreement 

on. We can make this change. We can make it now. We can benefit 

the 12 million students who are in CTE programs right now and 

we can address the U.S. competitiveness in the future and link 

school to career in the 21st century. 

Thank you so much, Chairman Kline. 

[The statement of Mr. Litow follows:] 

Prepared Statement of Stanley S. Litow, IBM Vice President, Corporate 

Citizenship and Corporate Affairs; President, IBM International Foundation 

CHAIRMAN KLINE, RANKING MEMBER MILLER, MEMBERS OF THE COMMITTEE: IBM 

appreciates the opportunity to testify on improvements to the Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education Act that will prepare today’s students for tomorrow’s 

jobs. 

IBM is a major U.S. employer with long involvement in education including our 

recent work with the P-TECH school in New York. Based on our experience and urgent need for work-ready graduates, we urge Congress to reauthorize Perkins to: 

• Align curriculum to labor market needs in high-growth industry sectors 

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• Improve CTE programs with strong collaborations among secondary and postsecondary institutions • Facilitate participation by local employers in making link between curriculum 

and needed workplace skills • Incorporate workplace experience for students through internships, apprenticeships and mentorships with local employers, and experiential teaching methods 

such as work-based learning classes and project based learning 

U.S. economic competitiveness is seriously undermined by the serious and systemic problem of young people being inadequately equipped to make an effective 

transition from school to career. 

According to the Center for Labor Market Studies, employment rates for the nation’s teens, ages 16 to 19, and young adults, ages 20 to 24, have dropped to new 

post-World War II lows. During the two-year period from late 2007 to late 2009, the 

number of employed teens in the U.S. declined by nearly 25 percent, while the number of employed young adults fell by nearly 11 percent. These employment rates are 

more than 18 percent below their year 2000 values and nearly 23 percent below 

their values in 1989—the peak of the 1980s labor market boom. 

But let me proceed. Today, some 12 million U.S. students are enrolled in secondary or postsecondary Career and Technical Education—or CTE—programs. This 

is an enormous enterprise, and its ability to impact not only the futures of America’s 

young people—but our collective economic prospects—is equally huge. 

Once known as Vocational Education, CTE has a checkered history. It is commonly viewed as a system ancillary to the core issues involved in education improvement and reform. ‘‘Voc. ed.’’ or CTE teachers, principals and schools were most often 

an afterthought in sometimes contentious discussions about how to improve our 

schools, where the focus has been on choice, charters, and teacher evaluation systems. CTE funds available under Perkins were too often spent on equipment, with 

little serious thinking about curriculum change or alignment first to college and 

then to career. 

As a result, its history is that of a second track for students for whom educational 

excellence was not expected, but a path from high school to work was anticipated. 

Look at the historical data and it is not a pretty sight. 

Our thinking has been forced to undergo change, largely stimulated by fairly dramatic changes in the 21st Century economy and the core issues of U.S. competitiveness that have weakened our nation’s economy and put new pressures on government, business and education. It’s the economic pain that has dictated a change, 

first in our views and now, finally, in our actions. 

Let’s review the facts. 

Fact number one: Many job opportunities go unfilled due to the skills mismatch. 

Many of the well paying jobs that exist in today’s labor force remain vacant because too few job candidates possess the skills needed to fill them. As one example 

close to home, in August 2013, almost 1,800 IBM jobs were left unfilled, with our 

company experiencing shortages of skills in technical fields. As a business to business company, we see the same problem with our clients and business partners. In 

fact, over the next 10 years, 14 million middle skill jobs will be created potentially 

heightening the problem. 

According to Help Wanted: Projections of Jobs and Education Requirements 

through 2018, within six years there will be a need for at least 4.7 million new 

workers with postsecondary credentials. If the country stays on its current path, 

without addressing the skills crisis, there will be a shortage of at least 3 million 

workers with the necessary degrees. The implications for our economy are grave. 

Fact number two: Less than 25 percent of high school graduates who enroll in 

postsecondary education via community colleges will earn a certificate or degree 

within eight years, and the average for young people of color is far worse, with only 

one in four completing. To lend more clarity, 43 percent of our nation’s community 

college students require remediation. IBM looked at one community college’s entering Freshman class and using data analytics, we found that if students were enrolled in two remedial courses, one of them being math, they had a 99 percent 

chance of dropping out of college before the end of the first semester. If students 

are not college ready, how can they possibly be ready for today’s careers? 

Fact number three: While U.S. high school graduation rates are improving, students who complete with only a high school diploma and enter the job market right 

out of high school will see their wages max out at less than $15 an hour, condemning far too many to lives of the working poor. 

Therefore, the task for today’s CTE is to illuminate numerous paths to success 

for American students to ensure that they are both college and career ready. With 

high-quality preparation for college and career, our graduates will have access to 

meaningful, long-term career opportunities and a hopeful future. 

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Despite these compelling numbers, our CTE programs, largely funded under Perkins, have not changed. This was acceptable in the heyday of U.S. manufacturing 

and skilled labor, when CTE helped provide the critical workplace skills that enabled economic mobility for generations of young adults. But today and tomorrow’s 

knowledge-based jobs require more. To succeed in the 21st Century economy, employees need skill sets that include problem-solving, communications, and teamwork, coupled with high-quality traditional academic preparation. 

Far too many current CTE programs are not aligned with labor force needs, 

meaning that the jobs they are preparing our young people for either do not exist 

in the numbers needed, or they do not exist at all. Businesses share in the blame. 

Business involvement, which is critical to connecting education and economic need, 

is spotty at best. With very little business involvement, few CTE programs are 

aligned to real jobs and needed skills, so the skills stressed in the workplace are 

missing both from college and high school curriculum, leaving graduates underprepared. The cost to businesses in training is astronomical. 

What’s clear is that the burden of preparing workers cannot be the sole responsibility of schools. A fully prepared workforce requires a multifaceted response. Employers, educators, and government and community leaders must collaborate, with 

each contributing its specific expertise to solve complex employment needs and prepare the new generation of workers. 

That is not to say that there are not some exemplary programs, there are, but 

they are the exception and not the rule. 

One stark exception in which IBM has been intimately involved is Pathways in 

Technology Early College High School, or P-TECH, the nation’s first grades 9 to 14 

school. This unique collaboration between IBM, the New York City Department of 

Education, The City University of New York, and New York City College of Technology, launched in September 2011 in Brooklyn, New York. We initiated this model 

because the existing system simply does not work, and we needed a change. Every 

student graduating from P-TECH will earn an Associate in Applied Science degree 

either in Computer Information Systems or Electromechanical Engineering Technology. That degree will signify that they are college and career ready—able to continue their studies without remediation in a four-year postsecondary institution or 

to embark upon a career in the IT industry. IBM, with our skin in the game, our 

steadfast belief in the P-TECH model and its young people, principal and teachers, 

has promised that successful graduates will be first in line for jobs at our company. 

And we believe with some evidence and reason that other companies are more than 

ready to step up to the plate. 

The school, which is in its third year, has 335 students. Students are accepted 

into the school solely based on interest—not grades or testing requirements. The 

vast majority—74 percent—are boys, with Black and Hispanic males making up 

more than 60 percent of the population. More than 80 percent of students are on 

free or reduced lunch and 16 percent have Individual Education Programs because 

of special learning needs. 

Against this backdrop, by any measure, the students at P-TECH are excelling. 

While the typical New York City high school student may have taken up to two required New York State Regents exams before entering the third year, 74 percent 

of all P-TECH students have passed at least three Regents exams for graduation; 

51 percent have passed four and 23 percent have passed five Regents exams before 

entering year three at P-TECH. 

These results can be attributed to the core elements of P-TECH, which differentiate it among most CTE programs and demonstrate the great promise of reinventing high school CTE programs along this innovative model. 

First, the curriculum is mapped to the skills required in high growth jobs and careers. IBM identified the skills required for entry-level jobs, and working with our 

partners, developed a scope and sequence of courses that would ensure that students graduated with academic, technical and workplace skills needed in the IT industry. This means that the core curriculum in math, science, English and all other 

subjects are focused on ensuring that students are career-ready. Our skills mapping 

process has been documented and is available to any public-private partnership or 

CTE program wishing to do this same process of alignment. Aligning curricula with 

local job opportunities should be the highest priority in reauthorizing Perkins. 

Second, students move through a personalized academic pathway, aligned to college and career requirements, which is closely monitored by his or her teachers and 

advisors, based on their individual needs and performance. The focus is on mastery 

not seat time. The alignment allows students to take the courses as they are ready, 

reducing the need to wait, repeat courses, or jump over gaps in their learning. As 

a result, students begin taking college classes the summer after the ninth grade. 

Today, 125 students (44 sophomores and 81 juniors) are enrolled in at least one of 

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12 college courses. To date, students enrolled in college courses have earned 12.6 

college credits on average. Several students have earned 21 college credits, and will 

have as many as 33 credits by January 2014. Fifteen students in the first class are 

on target to graduate with their AAS degree in just four years. The collaboration 

between secondary and post-secondary institutions helps P-TECH students and 

could dramatically improve all Perkins CTE programs. 

Third, a 21st Century workplace learning curriculum is provided to every student. 

This curriculum includes skills like critical thinking, problem solving, communication and leadership skills that need to be developed in young people before they become part of the workforce, and is importantly designed to develop within them 

those habits of mind like ‘‘persistence’’ and ‘‘grit’’ that are found in our most successful employees. Employers have a shared interest in a Perkins Act that develops ‘‘soft 

skills’’ in students. 

Finally, each student has a volunteer IBM mentor, who provides academic support, career guidance and invaluable inspiration. While much of the interaction happens in person, IBM also has developed a safe and secure online platform to enable 

frequent communication, with a focus on academics, between mentors and their students. To further support career-readiness, students participate in structured workplace visits and project-based learning. And this summer, 75 students will begin 

paid, skills-based internships where they will hone and advance their skills, while 

helping work on actual projects for the businesses that hire them. This type of experiential learning is one of the best ways of linking the workplace to the classroom 

and provides students opportunities to solve real challenges on today’s topics with 

the current tools in use by potential employers. Incorporating workplace experience 

and experiential learning is one of the most significant opportunities for Perkins reform—students, teachers, administrators, and employers all benefit from ongoing 

interaction. 

Working off the P-TECH playbook, P-TECH was replicated in four schools in Chicago in September 2012. IBM is spearheading one school, the Sarah E. Goode STEM 

Academy, in collaboration with the Chicago Public Schools, City Colleges of Chicago, 

and Richard J. Daley College. Other lead companies that IBM is working with include Cisco, Motorola Solutions and Verizon Wireless. Goode currently has 463 students in Years One and Two, all facing similar challenges to the students at PTECH. Operating under the same model principles, we are seeing similar promising 

results. In one year, Goode’s inaugural class gained an overall average of 1.5 years 

growth on Chicago’s 9th grade exam. Goode was ranked 2nd out of 17 high schools 

in the Southwest Area High School Network and 4th out of 106 high schools in the 

City of Chicago with regard to average growth. 

In New York City, two more schools modeled on P-TECH opened in 2013: Energy 

Tech High School, partnered with ConEd and National Grid, and Health and Emergency Response Occupation (HERO) High School, partnered with Montefiore Medical Center. Three more NYC schools will open in 2014, in partnership with Microsoft and New York-Presbyterian Hospital, SAP, and the American Association of Advertising Agencies. 

Last August, Governor Andrew M. Cuomo announced the 16 winners of a statewide competition that will implement the P-TECH model, preparing thousands of 

New York students, in urban, suburban and rural areas, for high-skills jobs of the 

future in technology, manufacturing, healthcare and finance. Each school is based 

in one of the state’s 10 economic development regions and will help advance the 

Governor’s Regional Economic Development Strategy by linking job training directly 

to employment opportunities in the regions. Fifty businesses, including IBM, and 19 

colleges, both public and private, are participating, in an effort that will change the 

trajectory of more than 6,000 students. 

Inspired by IBM’s work in New York and Chicago, the J.A. and Kathryn Albertson Foundation is creating a new school model based on P-TECH. Rather than creating brick and mortar schools serving a few hundred students, the Foundation is 

now creating a network that will serve ALL Idaho students, providing students in 

rural areas with the ability to gain—at little or no cost—meaningful credentials and 

pathways to Idaho jobs in healthcare, high-tech manufacturing and information 

technology. 

Many other states are approaching IBM discussing state-wide replication, and are 

on board to implement more, and many businesses are as well. These involve many 

other themes, not just IT—themes such as advanced manufacturing and healthcare, 

business and finance, telecommunications and hospitality. 

Business interest in this issue is very high, born out of the necessity of changes 

in the economy. In fact, tomorrow the Harvard Business School will host a forum 

attended by many business leaders to discuss how business engagements that have 

up to now been sporadic and achieved limited scalability and sustainability can be 

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reformed. They will cite the P-TECH model, which has been documented in a new 

Harvard Business School case, as being illustrative of the direction that businesses 

should consider taking. 

Replication has moved rapidly because, as a public school model, spending for 

these schools is the same as other public schools. In addition, because they embrace 

open enrollment, we know that this model works in communities with significant 

and serious economic and educational needs and can address great disparities in opportunity that have plagued many school districts across the country. 

I, and a great many others, strongly believe that this model is so significant, and 

the early results so impressive, that we can and will see dozens more grades 9-14 

schools opening along this model. But dozens of schools is hardly enough. For the 

U.S. to be competitive we need more—much more. It will take many other political 

leaders, like Mayors and Governors, supporting it, many more companies stepping 

up as we at IBM have, and many universities, motivated by the high completion 

rates and strong link to employment, owning it. But the good news is that we have 

documented some early successes and importantly codified the tools required to 

achieve success. IBM, with our partners, is committed to making these tools available online to each and every state, district, college and employer that is interested 

in embracing this change. 

As they develop the second generations of schools, administrators, teachers, and 

employers will benefit from the emerging tools that allow teachers and administrators to more accurately understand and predict a learner’s educational pathway, and 

align and deliver content relevant to the student’s learning needs. Understanding 

where learners are strong or challenged allows educators to tailor instruction programs for each learner, and can ease the challenges in aligning the correct instructional resources an educator will use to align the learner, classroom and the workplace. 

Which bring us to the role of the federal government. We need your help, too. 

Which brings us to the Carl D. Perkins Act. Imagine that instead of dozens of 

schools modeled after P-TECH, there were thousands of them, providing a clear 

path from school to career and offering hundreds of thousands of young people a 

middle class wage. The opportunity to affect the lives of young people and strengthening the U.S. economy is enormous. 

Perkins can be the linchpin to U.S. competitiveness. A reauthorized Perkins must 

include: • Alignment of state and locally developed curriculum by secondary and postsecondary with skills in demand by local industry as demonstrated by job openings, 

and Department of Labor data, attainment of industry-recognized certificates, inclusion of work-based learning classes, and project based learning • Alignment of secondary curriculum with postsecondary institutions • Participation by employers in making link between curriculum and skills needed for employment • Student participation in industry internships, apprenticeship and mentorships, 

and other workplace placements 

As the American CTE system continues to grow and evolve, education leaders and 

policymakers can learn a great deal from our international peers, who arguably 

have more sophisticated systems in place that better prepare students for career 

success. In the U.S. skills are taught through school programs; in many European 

countries, students master workplace learning components in real world settings. 

This is not a pipedream, it can be done. It requires political will and action, and 

the support from business, labor, universities will follow, as the results begin to 

show that CTE programs can revolutionize American education—and our nation’s 

economy. We’re seeing it right now in Brooklyn, New York, with a group of inspired, 

motivated young people whose dreams are now within reach. 

Chairman KLINE. Thank you very much. 

Dr. Flanders, you are recognized. 

STATEMENT OF DR. BLAKE FLANDERS, VICE PRESIDENT OF 

WORKFORCE DEVELOPMENT, KANSAS BOARD OF REGENTS 

Mr. FLANDERS. Thank you, Chairman Kline, Ranking Member 

Miller, and members of the committee, for the opportunity to discuss how to better prepare today’s students for the jobs of tomorrow and how the Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education 

Act can support this critical endeavor. 

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My name is Blake Flanders. I serve as the vice president of 

workforce development for the Kansas Board of Regents and I also 

function as the state director for Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education. 

As context for Kansas, the Board of Regents is the sole eligible 

agency for the Carl Perkins Career and Technical Funds, which are 

awarded to the state, and we split those funds with our secondary 

partners at the Kansas State Department of Education. The business-led Kansas Postsecondary Technical Education Authority operates under the auspices of the Board of Regents and has led the 

transformation of career and technical education in the state of 

Kansas. 

Our community and technical colleges deliver college-level career 

and technical education programs and we have connected these 

programs to pathways delivered by Kansas high schools at the secondary level. 

However, connecting levels of education isn’t enough. We must 

link our existing educational programs to industry through industry-recognized credentials. In Kansas we are ensuring our career 

technical education programs meet the needs of industry because 

students earn not only an educational award and college credit 

hours, but they also earn an industry-validated, nationally recognized credential. 

But to realize the maximum benefit of industry credentials, Kansas and other states will need access to these completion data. It 

would be helpful to have a centralized clearinghouse where credential data could be stored and matched to individuals identifying industry credentials attained. 

We must transform our local advisory committees and structurally connect them to the workforce system. The Carl Perkins 

legislation relies on local advisory committees as the tie to business 

and industry. 

Local connections to businesses are important and we have some 

examples of successful local advisory committees. However, advisory committees typically function with limited or no committee 

staff support, which restricts sustained employer engagement. 

In Kansas, in the Wichita area, with our partners at the local 

workforce investment board, the Workforce Alliance, we are exploring sector advisory committees operating at the regional level to 

support the regional economy. These industry committees will advise both secondary and postsecondary career technical education 

programs and actually be staffed by our workforce partners from 

the local workforce system. 

Encouraging regional industry advisory committees supported by 

Workforce Investment Act-funded staff provide a structural connection to programs funded both by Carl D. Perkins funding and also 

Workforce Investment Act funds. We need to leverage partnerships 

and connect existing workforce initiatives and entities where possible. 

As we move towards regional advisory committees I would recommend funding consortia instead of secondary and postsecondary 

institutions, and instead of spreading those funds thinly across all 

institutions, bringing them, again, together in a region. Where possible, these consortia should partner with the local workforce inCEWDOCROOM with DISTILLER

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vestment board and, again, make a structural connection between 

those federal workforce programs. 

Accountability and incentives, at least in Kansas, drive performance improvement. It is important that Kansas has the mechanism 

to reward high-performing technical education programs. 

As an example, last year in Kansas we passed Senate bill 155, 

which pays the postsecondary tuition for high school students enrolled in college, career, and technical education courses. The sending school district also receives a 1,000 award for each student that 

completes an industry-recognized certificate in a high-demand area 

and also graduates from high school. As a result of these incentives, our completion and postsecondary participation numbers for 

high school students nearly doubled last year. 

We want to incentivize our institutions to serve our adult Kansans, as well. Please allow states the flexibility to move a larger 

portion of the funding currently distributed by formula to local institutions into a competitive pool designed to incentivize improvements and reward actual outcomes. 

As an example, Kansas could continue with a base level of formula-driven support for local institutions but allow up to a 50 percent of these formula grant funds to be awarded competitively. 

Competitive funding and incentives will drive change. The status 

quo will not. 

Thank you for the opportunity for input on this important topic. 

I appreciate your leadership and look forward to questions. 

[The statement of Mr. Flanders follows:] 

Prepared Statement of Blake Flanders, Ph.D., Vice President of 

Workforce Development, Kansas Board of Regents 

Thank you Chairman Kline, Ranking Member Miller and Members of the Committee, for the opportunity to discuss how to better prepare students for the jobs 

of tomorrow, and how the Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education Act can 

support this critical endeavor. 

My name is Blake Flanders and I serve as the Vice President of Workforce Development for the Kansas Board of Regents, State Director for Carl D. Perkins Career 

and Technical Education, and Executive leadership for the Kansas Postsecondary 

Technical Education Authority. The Kansas Board of Regents (Board) is the governing board of the state’s six universities and coordinating board for the state’s 32 

public higher education institutions (seven public universities, nineteen community 

colleges, and six technical colleges.) The Board is the sole eligible agency for the 

Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical funds awarded to the state which are split 

with our secondary partners through the Kansas State Department of Education. 

The Kansas Postsecondary Technical Education Authority operates under the auspices of the Board and has led the transformation of the career technical education 

system in Kansas. 

Strong connections to business and industry are the key to successful career technical education programs that produce positive outcomes for students and assist 

business in staying competitive. All career and technical education programs, where 

possible, must include industry credentials. Industry credentials provide a clear and 

direct connection between education and work and ensure graduates have the skills 

employers require in the new economy. In Kansas, two national partnerships have 

led efforts to better connect our programs with industry. We have aligned many of 

our career technical programs to industry using the National Association of Manufacturers-Endorsed Manufacturing Skills Certification system. This system aligns 

traditional education pathways with the requirements of industry-based certifications. Students earn not only education certification, but also industry-validated, 

nationally-portable industry credentials with real value in the marketplace. Additionally, our Kansas partnership with the National Coalition of Certification Centers 

has allowed us access to a network of industry partnerships that not only give students access to validated industry credentials in the transportation, aviation, and 

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gram faculty. To realize the maximum benefit of industry credentials, Kansas, and 

other states, will need access to credential completion data. It would be helpful to 

have a centralized clearinghouse where credential data could be stored and matched 

to individuals identifying industry credentials attained. 

The Carl D. Perkins legislation relies on local advisory committees as the tie to 

business and industry. Local connections to businesses are important, and we do 

have some examples of successful local advisory committees; however, advisory committees typically function with limited or no committee staff support, which restricts 

sustained employer engagement. In Kansas, we are exploring sector advisory committees operating at the regional level. These industry committees would advise 

both secondary and postsecondary career technical education programs and be 

staffed by workforce partners from the local workforce system. Encouraging regional 

industry advisory committees supported by workforce investment act funded staff, 

where possible, provides a structural connection to programs funded with both Carl 

D. Perkins and Workforce Investment Act funds and maximizes the use of industry 

partnerships. 

A regional model of industry engagement informed by nationally recognized industry partnerships will tighten the focus of our efforts across federal programs and 

leverage state and local funding to produce the highest quality outcomes. Rather 

than thinly spreading funds across all institutions, funding consortia consisting of 

secondary and postsecondary institutions is recommended. Where possible, consortia 

should partner with the local workforce investment board. Funding consortia would 

better connect the workforce and education systems, create more effective industry 

engagement, and provide a structural connection between secondary and postsecondary career technical education programs. 

Our career technical education system must perform and be a conduit to high 

wage, high demand careers for program graduates. The current core indicators of 

performance required for Perkins programs measure valuable outcomes such as program completion, student retention and transfer, technical skill attainment, and employment. However, the gender nontraditional core indicators provide little value, 

especially to postsecondary programs where many times students choose a major 

prior to admittance to the institution. To close the current skills gap and maximize 

prosperity for all students, our career and technical education system should be sensitive to the needs of nontraditional students. I would, however, suggest the gender, 

nontraditional indicator be tracked similar to the special populations categories, but 

not included as a core indicator of performance. 

Accountability drives performance improvement. It is important that Kansas has 

the mechanism to reward high performing technical education programs and highlight promising practices. I recommend allowing states the flexibility to move a portion of the funding distributed by formula to local institutions, instead into a competitive pool designed to incentivize improvements and reward actual outcomes. As 

an example, Kansas could continue with a base level of formula driven support for 

local institutions, but allow up to 50% of these formula grant funds to be awarded 

competitively based on outcomes. 

In summary, to improve the Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education Act, 

I recommend: 

1. Requiring the alignment of all career and technical programs, where possible, 

to industry-recognized credentials; 

2. Creating a centralized clearinghouse for data related to industry credential attainment; 

3. Encouraging regional industry advisory committees supported by workforce investment act funded staff, where possible; 

4. Funding consortia consisting of secondary and postsecondary institutions; 

5. Retaining only the core indicators of performance measuring program completion, student retention, technical skill attainment, and employment; 

6. Allowing states to reward high performing technical education through a competitive funding process. 

Thank you for the opportunity for input on this important topic. I appreciate your 

leadership and look forward to questions. 

Chairman KLINE. Thank you, sir. 

Dr. Albrecht, you are recognized for 5 minutes? 

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STATEMENT OF DR. BRYAN ALBRECHT, PRESIDENT, 

GATEWAY TECHNICAL COLLEGE 

Mr. ALBRECHT. Thank you, Chairman Kline, Ranking Member 

Miller, and members of the committee. I am honored to share with 

you my perspective on the importance of your work and leave you 

with three examples of promising practices from our community. 

My name is Bryan Albrecht and I serve as president and CEO 

for Gateway Technical College. Gateway is located in Southeast 

Wisconsin and is one of 16 technical colleges in our state. 

In fiscal year 2013 Wisconsin received a state appropriation of just over $20 million from the Carl Perkin Career and Technical 

Education Act. These funds are split between our 16 technical colleges and our 423 secondary school districts. 

Our college history supporting the education and training needs 

of global companies such as Snap-on, Trane, SC Johnson, Modine, 

and Insinkerator provides me a perspective of the critical need to 

invest in programs that will provide skills for the next-generation 

technical workforce. Nick Pinchuk, president and CEO of Snap-on, 

Incorporated, recently stated to the National Coalition of Certification Centers that ‘‘the time is now for technical education,’’ and 

I could not agree more. 

So what do we do to combat this war on our economy? What impact must the Carl Perkins Act have on the education and training 

needs of youth and adults? And what are some successful best 

practices that our community has been able to gain as a result of 

Perkins investments? 

At Gateway, and with the support of our business community, we 

have leveraged Perkins funding to transform our training programs 

to rapidly respond to the needs of dislocated workers, upscale incumbent workers, and engage new workers. The following three examples demonstrate the importance of business and education 

working together to improve career and technical education both at 

the secondary and postsecondary levels. 

My first example describes the work of the National Coalition of 

Certification Centers, a consortium of colleges and high schools 

across the country. Gateway has partnered with Snap-on and 

Trane to develop curriculum through NC3, training, and industry 

certifications that align with specific technical competencies for 

their companies. 

Students demonstrate those competencies and earn certifications 

for their mastery. This year the NC3 network of colleges is positioned to award over 10,000 industry certificates to students 

throughout the country in the automotive and energy industries. 

Another example is our partnership with the SC Johnson Company. The integration of academic curriculum and industry standards resulting in measurable outcomes has served as the framework for our boot camp manufacturing partnership. 

Gateway, along with over 40 local employers, integrates services 

from area workforce development centers to assist students in mastering skills in computer numerical control, welding, and industrial 

machine repair. With a 95 percent job placement rate, boot camp 

graduates are highly sought after by employers. 

Through this program, students earn college certificates and nationally validated industry credentials. Some examples include: 

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Manufacturing Skills Standards Council certification in safety and 

production, the American Welding Society credentials, and the National Coalition of Certification Centers certifications in multimeters and torque technology. 

These are just two examples of the value of industry certifications in career and technical education programs. 

My last example is one that demonstrates how Gateway Technical College, in partnership with the Kenosha Unified School District, has utilized Perkins funds to support a framework for programs of study, leading to postsecondary credentials for high school 

students. Gateway, in partnership with Kenosha Unified School 

Districts, operates a high school and an adult learning center called 

the LakeView Advanced Technology Academy. Beginning in the 

ninth grade, students are exposed to college and career success 

through our college connection program and curriculum integration. 

Starting their junior year, students may enroll in Gateway 

courses in engineering, manufacturing, and information technology. 

All of these courses are offered at the LakeView Academy. 

When they graduate, students will have earned between 18 and 

40 college credits, building a pathway to college and career success. 

LakeView is nationally recognized for ‘‘Project Lead the Way’’ high 

school with a focus on STEM for all learners. 

Gateway provides the curriculum, instruction, and technology 

needs to deliver high academic and occupational skill integration in 

a secondary school environment. LakeView is just one example of 

how articulation can improve college and career readiness for high 

school students. 

Gateway has credit transfer agreements with all 14 of the high 

school districts we serve, each designed to address the individual 

needs of the district and the students they serve. 

In conclusion I would like to offer three recommendations that 

have improved career and technical education for our community, 

the first being that CTE program outcomes must align with industry credentials to assure that there are common college and career 

pathways for all students; the second, career and technical education programs must integrate student support services with occupational programs to build bridges for student success in the workplace and in continued education; and third, schools and colleges 

should establish transcripted credit agreements that add value to 

the academic and occupational goals of the student, building their 

academic competence and confidence toward postsecondary success. 

I want to thank you for your support of the Carl Perkins Act and 

for your consideration of my testimony. Thank you. 

[The statement of Mr. Albrecht follows:] 

Prepared Statement of Bryan Albrecht, Ed.D., President & 

Chief Executive Officer, Gateway Technical College 

My name is Bryan Albrecht, and I serve as President and CEO for Gateway Technical College. Gateway is located in Southeast Wisconsin and is one of 16 technical 

colleges in our state. In FY 2013 Wisconsin received a state appropriation of 

$20,241,685 from the Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education Act. The 

funds are split between post-secondary technical college districts (55%) and secondary school districts (45%). 

Our college history supporting the education and training needs of global companies such as Snap-on Incorporated, Trane, SC Johnson: A Family Company, Modine, 

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IBM, and Insinkerator provides a perspective of the critical need to invest in programs that provide skills for next generation technical careers. Nick Pinchuk, President and CEO of Snap-on, Inc. recently stated to the National Coalition of Certification Centers that ‘‘The time is now for technical education’’, and I could not agree 

more. 

Hundreds of articles have been written about the skills gap, and the lack of qualified workers. Bill Symonds, Director of the Pathways to Prosperity Project at Harvard Graduate School of Education wrote, ‘‘The United States is no longer a global 

leader in education. Many of our youth are not developing skills they need to prosper in the 21st century economy. Unless we equip youth with the education and 

workforce skills they need to succeed, we are in danger of leaving millions of young 

people on the sidelines, severely jeopardizing our nation’s ability to remain competitive in a global economy’’. 

So what do we do to combat this war on our economy? What impact must the Carl 

D. Perkins Career and Technical Education Act have on the education training 

needs of youth and adults? And what are some of the successful best practices that 

our community has been able to gain as a result of the Carl D. Perkins Act investments? 

With the support of our business community and the leveraged Perkins funding 

we have been able to transform our training programs to rapidly respond to the 

needs of dislocated workers, upscale incumbent workers and engage new workers. 

The following examples demonstrate the importance of business and education 

working together to improve career and technical education at both the secondary 

and post-secondary levels. 

• As a founding member college of the National Coalition of Certification Centers 

(NC3), Gateway along with now over 150 colleges, has partnered with Snap on and 

Trane to developed industry certifications that ensure training curriculum is aligned 

with the needs of employers, and that students demonstrate world class skills. This 

year the NC3 network of colleges is positioned to award over 10,000 industry certificates to student technicians in the automotive and energy industries ensuring a 

workforce for the future. 

• The integration of academic curriculum and industry standards resulting in 

measurable outcomes has served as the framework for our bootcamp manufacturing 

partnership. The SC Johnson Company, along with over 40 local employers integrates services from the area workforce boards and Gateway to assist students in 

mastering skills in Computer Numeric Control (CNC), Welding, and Industrial Machine Repair. Through this program students have the opportunity to earn nationally validated, portable industry credentials. Examples include Manufacturing Skills 

Standard Council (MSSC) safety, and production; American Welding Society (AWS); 

National Coalition of Certification Centers (NC3); Multimeter, and Torque Technology. 

• My last example is one that demonstrates how Gateway Technical College in 

partnership with the Kenosha Unified School District have utilized Perkins funding 

to support a framework for programs of study leading to post-secondary credentials 

for high school students. Gateway Technical College in partnership with the Kenosha Unified School District co-operates a high school and adult learning center 

called LakeView Technology Academy. Students beginning in grade 9 are exposed 

to college faculty and curriculum throughout their high school experience. Beginning 

their junior year high school students enroll in Gateway courses in engineering, 

manufacturing and information technology, all offered in the LakeView Academy. 

When they graduate, students will have earned between 18 to 40 college credits, 

building a pathway to college, and career success. LakeView is a nationally recognized ‘Project Lead the Way’ high school with a focus on STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) for all learners. 

Gateway provides the curriculum, instruction, and technology needed to deliver 

high skills integrated in a secondary school environment. Through articulation 

Gateway Technical College has college credit transfer agreements with all fourteen 

(14) high school districts we serve. Examples include Health Occupations, Business 

Services, Automotive Technology, Engineering, Hotel Hospitality, Marketing, Welding, Information Technology, and Mathematics. 

In conclusion, I offer three recommendations that have improved career and technical education in our community. 

• Career and Technical Education program outcomes must align with industry 

credentials to assure that there are common college and career pathways for all students. 

• Integrate students support services with occupational programs to build bridges 

for student success in the work place and continued education. 

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• Establish transcripted credit agreements between secondary and post-secondary 

institutions that add value to the academic and occupational goals of the student. 

Thank you for your consideration of my testimony. 

Respectfully, 

DR. BRYAN ALBRECHT, President, 

Gateway Technical College. 

Attachments: 

Case Study Trane 

ACTE Perkins Reauthorization 

Guiding Principles NCATC Newsletter 

Lakeview Technology Academy Facts Sheet 

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Chairman KLINE. Thank you very much for your testimony. 

All of you, as we said in the beginning, or I said in the beginning, 

we said very distinguished panel of witnesses, and that has proven 

to be true. There are a lot of areas of agreement, I think, as Mr. 

Litow pointed out, and I want to get to some of those. 

But I want to go to the secretary for just a minute. As I mentioned in my opening remarks, the Wall Street Journal this morning announced, I guess through a leak, that the President is going 

to announce another national fund for CTE programs, this one run 

out of the Department of Labor. So I am a little confused about 

that because the Department of Education administers the bulk of 

CTE funding and programs. 

So I am interested if you can share with us what input you 

might have had in this development of the new program and how 

you see coordinating the Department of Labor’s $100 million CTE 

program with the programs in your jurisdiction. How would that 

work, because it—I am concerned because it seems to me that one 

of the things we are trying to do in this and that I have heard is 

to get more alignment, not less. 

And so we already have, in the President’s 2014 budget, the career academies, and we have in the 2012 blueprint, which you addressed, Madam Secretary, the new CTE innovation fund. And now 

we are apparently going to have a new CTE high school redesigned 

competition out of DOL. 

Can you put those together for us, please? 

Ms. DANN-MESSIER. Well, Mr. Chairman, let me just say there 

will be more information coming out later this afternoon and I 

would be very happy to come back and share further information 

with you. 

We are excited about the possibilities that this fund would offer, 

and I don’t want to get too far out ahead of the President, but I 

think you do know that the President put in his budget a proposal 

for the high school redesign, and that—what, CTE is one of the 

only programs that span both secondary and postsecondary education, and our high school redesign initiatives are really focused 

on whole high school designs with the core elements of making 

sure that students have access to work-based learning and college 

credit opportunities. 

But I am happy to come back at a further time and provide more 

details when they are released. 

Chairman KLINE. Well, thank you. We will be looking for those 

details. This committee obviously has some jurisdiction insight into 

both departments, and I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that I was 

surprised to learn about a new $100 million grant program. 

Where we do seem to really have alignment here, all of you have 

talked about the importance of getting the right credential and getting alignment between high school, some postsecondary training 

for real jobs. 

And that, Mr. Litow, you talked about. 

You all talked about that. And that is something that we have 

been grappling with here quite a bit, because it doesn’t do any good 

to have somebody get training for a skill that is not in demand. 

And I just suggested to Mr. Miller that we made a mistake much 

earlier in our lives by not becoming welders because it seems like 

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in every hearing we learn that there is a great demand for welders. 

But I did also admit that would mean I had to actually have a 

skill, so could have been a problem. 

How do you see—let must just sort of work down—let me jump 

in with you, Mr. Litow. How do you see, outside of the P-TECH 

program that you are running, how do we get this alignment between businesses that have job openings, the extra training—Perkins training, and how do we get that on a large scale? 

Mr. LITOW. Well, first of all what I would say is if you look at 

the competitive jobs that exist in the labor force now and are going 

to exist in large numbers and analyze the workplace skills across 

those skill areas, there is a lot of similarity. There are some very 

narrow and technical skills that are required for a range of jobs, 

but when we did the skills mapping process for nine different job 

categories at IBM and we mapped those specific workplace skills 

and then embedded them in the curriculum, and then convened 

hundreds and hundreds of other employers to talk about the specific skills and the job categories that they had, there was an enormous amount of similarity. 

Now, we have actually prepared that skills map and put it on a 

free electronic site that will be available for all the 27 schools by 

next September that will be replicating the P-TECH model, but 

then hundreds of other schools would be able to have access to the 

same kinds of skills mapping exercise. So when you look at the 

skills that people need in the workforce they are knowledge acquisition, teaming skills, problem solving skills, written communication, verbal communication, presentation skills. 

And these are not just I.T. area skills; this is not just about 

STEM. If you look at the 50 employers that are involved in the 16 

P-TECH schools around the state of New York they include banking, they include supermarket chains, they include health care 

companies, advanced manufacturing companies. And those same 

skills map worked in all of those areas. 

This is not about a narrow set of skills. It is about first step on 

a career ladder. When we bring the students from P-TECH to an 

IBM facility they meet employees of the IBM company who began 

their career with an AAS degree but then got a bachelor’s degree 

or then got a master’s degree and improved their work opportunity 

based upon that first rung on the ladder. 

So I think it is very possible to take those workplace skills and 

embed them into the curriculum and find a way to solve this problem about so many employers finding too few people who have the 

skills for the jobs that are available. 

Chairman KLINE. Okay. Thank you very much. 

My time has more than expired. 

Mr. Miller? 

Mr. MILLER. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. First of all, 

I would like to insert into the record a statement by our colleague, 

Mr. Langevin, who heads up the CTE caucus, along with Mr. 

Thompson, of our committee, if we could put that in the record? 

[The information follows:] 

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Prepared Statement of Hon. James R. Langevin, a Representative in 

Congress From the State of Rhode Island 

CHAIRMAN KLINE AND RANKING MEMBER MILLER: Thank you for convening today’s 

hearing. As co-chair of the bipartisan Career and Technical Education (CTE) Caucus, alongside Mr. Thompson of Pennsylvania, reauthorizing the Carl D. Perkins 

Career and Technical Education Act is one of my top priorities. I am pleased that 

this issue is now before the full committee, and I look forward to working with my 

colleagues to ensure that Perkins is up to date and fully funded. 

I am certain that this entire committee is aware of the importance of Perkins in 

supporting CTE programs in all 50 states and the territories. Perkins grants help 

to build a talented, highly-skilled workforce and ensure that students are qualified 

for in-demand jobs. Every student, whether bound for a four-year college, a two-year 

degree, or a non-degree certification program, will benefit from high-quality CTE 

programs. 

High school diplomas are no longer sufficient training for the modern job market. 

Over 30 percent of the 46.8 million projected job openings by 2018 will require some 

post-secondary education. Meanwhile, eight of the top 20 fastest-growing industries 

in the coming decades will be in the health care sector. Many of these positions will 

require more than a high school education; some will necessitate a professional certification, others a two-year degree. 

While the demand for CTE has increased in recent years, funding stagnated from 

FY07 to FY10, and was cut in FY11 and FY12. The effects of sequestration have 

further damaged these programs, causing real harm to millions of students. If we 

want to stay competitive in a 21st Century economy, then Congress must reauthorize Perkins at a level that will meet the growing demands for CTE and adequately 

prepare America’s workforce. I, therefore, strongly urge the committee to set the reauthorization amount at no less than the FY07 appropriation level of $1.3 billion. 

Even reauthorizing Perkins at FY07 would represent a barely sustainable cut of 

$170 million in 2013 dollars and fail to keep pace with inflation. We can and must 

do better to ensure the success of our students and workers. 

Additionally, there are many ways the Committee can strengthen CTE for students. The 2006 reauthorization added Programs of Study to Perkins. These take 

the form of a coordinated, non-duplicative progression of courses that aligns secondary and postsecondary education. Giving equal credence to academic and career 

standards allows students to both learn job skills and complete their graduation requirements. This innovation should be expanded to provide more students access to 

higher-quality, better-coordinated CTE, instead of forcing them to decide between 

CTE courses and graduating on time. 

Students also need to be exposed to the full range of options available to them. 

Working with Rep. Bonamici, a member of this Committee, I introduced the Counseling for Career Choice Act. This bill helps school districts provide comprehensive 

counseling to students so they are aware of all the available pathways to a career. 

It is my sincere hope that the committee will recognize the important role that 

school counselors play in guiding and informing students’ postsecondary decisions 

and include comprehensive counseling options in this reauthorization. 

There is broad, bipartisan agreement about the value of CTE programs. Money 

invested in CTE is returned back to the economy many times over. In a recent 

study, the State of Connecticut found that every dollar invested in community college coursework returns $16.40 over the course of a student’s career. This translates 

to a $5 billion-per-year return to the state. Imagine what we could achieve if such 

investments were prioritized on a national level. 

Thank you again for convening today’s hearing. Perkins has traditionally been a 

bipartisan endeavor, and I am hopeful that we can continue this tradition moving 

forward. I look forward to working with my colleagues on the committee to ensure 

that all Americans have the training to be career and college ready. 

Chairman KLINE. Without objection. 

Mr. MILLER. Thank you very much. 

I think we have a wonderful positive confluence here. We have 

the announcement of the President on the competitive program. 

Mr. Flanders said that he thought competition drove change. We 

have the jurisdiction of this committee of both education and labor, 

and I think we see here testimony across the board about the importance of collaboration. 

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I was, maybe I am an early convert to this. I did try welding but 

I set my boots on fire and it didn’t work out terribly well, so anyway, here I am. That was a high school job. 

Okay, stop. Start that timer again. 

We got a TAA grant a couple years ago and that grant made the 

entire East Bay of San Francisco Bay Area reevaluate what we 

were doing. It was very clear, and has been for some time, that 

given our transportation systems, housing patterns, and everything 

else, jobs aren’t restricted to school districts. Those school districts 

were set up when in my congressional district the biggest mover 

was either oil or agriculture. Today it is high-tech, it is oil, it is 

accounting, it is research, it is all of those things. 

And so we had to start figuring out how to move people across 

these systems, and I think that is sort of what you did with PTECH. It wasn’t what borough they were in, what public school 

they were in. That is obsolete. 

And yet, when we think about Perkins, every district wants their 

grant, every district wants their allotment, and I think we are way 

beyond their capacity to deal with this. I was just noticed in an email yesterday that today they are convening—the county—two 

county offices of education, four different college districts, a number 

of K-12 districts, the workforce incentive boards, the U.C. campus, 

the National Labs both at Livermore and Berkeley, and then, of 

course, our major employers in my district would be Chevron, DuPont, Dow, the National Labs, and then, of course, high-tech and 

the entrepreneurs that come in. And again, all of those corporations, like IBM, it is a whole range of jobs, from those welders in 

the refinery to accountants and research people in the research facilities in that area. 

And somehow we have got to get this collaboration that each of 

you have talked about. These old lines and these old jurisdictions 

and ‘‘this is the way we have done it’’ is just not going to work. 

We are really encouraged. In our first initial efforts in doing 

some work in biotech, out of 32 students 24 went on to employment 

and the remainder went on to 4-year colleges, and in a very difficult socio-economic area. That is what was possible when they 

could see the skills that were necessary. 

We are now leading the way in the repair of hybrid cars, electric 

cars, which just isn’t the old body work of the past. You better 

know something about that battery and what you are doing at that 

particular time. 

And so I just think that this is really an opportunity. I don’t 

know what the President is going to announce, but we have got to 

challenge collaboration, because otherwise—I will tell you what 

happens to me. I go to these workforce boards and all that, and 

most of the people are introducing themselves because they are no 

longer doing that for this corporation, that corporation, this entity, 

or that entity, and we start all over again. 

It is not that they are not enthusiastic; it is not that they don’t 

help. It is just sort of a revolving door and we don’t seem to get 

to the future here in terms of that. 

Right now we are all excited in one part of my county because 

we got a plant manager at Dow that is excited, labor is excited, the 

business community, because it is a—you know, get this job done 

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today. And it is getting done. But given his skills, I am going to 

say, he is going somewhere else in that corporation soon because 

he is a very talented person. 

So I just, if I can—I have got 20 seconds—this question of collaboration. It doesn’t come naturally. You want to hold on to your 

little pot of gold even if it costs you more, we find out in some 

school districts, to apply for that money than you get back. 

Mr. Litow? 

Mr. LITOW. Well, I think that this issue of collaboration, there 

are a variety of different collaborators—and critical collaborators: 

K-12 education through the CTE program in high schools, the higher education partners if you are going to align to the courses in 

postsecondary education, and the importance of having a business 

partner and collaborator at the table. So I think that there are a 

lot of other partners and collaborators that are important. 

In the not-for-profit sector there are people who provide a whole 

range of services. That is important, too. 

But those collaborators are critically important. And I think it 

can be structured—what we have done, and one example in the PTECH schools in New York and Chicago and now statewide, is to 

construct a steering committee where decisions are made jointly by 

those three parties and give them access to an electronic platform 

where everybody can see the input that they need to make for 

those skills. 

Number one, if you want employers to provide mentors, have a 

platform where mentors can be trained electronically so that they 

can provide their mentoring on a consistent basis. The mentors 

that we have in the schools that we are involved in are in contact 

with students two and three times a week. They don’t always have 

to be going, visiting the school. 

Number two is when you do the skills mapping process, that is 

something that you don’t have to do 100 different times. You can 

do it and other employers can learn from it. When you embed that 

into the curriculum you are going to have curriculum materials, 

you are going to have videos of teachers teaching those courses, 

and why shouldn’t people have access to that on a common platform? 

Mr. MILLER. That collaboration also is your right to insist, as Ms. 

Messier pointed out—don’t keep sending us people in need of remediation. 

Mr. LITOW. Exactly. 

Mr. MILLER [continuing]. Do that. But the higher ed institutions 

have to insist upon that from the schools. 

Mr. LITOW. They have to insist upon it totally and it has to be 

done together. 

We did a little data analytics on one community college in the 

city of New York. All the students who registered in their first year 

of community college with a high school diploma, if they were taking two remedial courses and one of them was math, 99 percent of 

those students dropped out before the end of the first semester. So 

what that tells you is they weren’t college ready and they weren’t 

career ready. 

So you have to close this gap between high school, community 

college, and career, and that is what the collaboration gets you. 

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43 

Mr. MILLER. The third lesson was that math remediation wasn’t 

related to anything that they envisioned themselves doing so it was 

out here and it was— 

Mr. LITOW. Yes. 

Mr. MILLER [continuing]. A killer of completion. 

Mr. LITOW. Yes. 

Chairman KLINE. The gentleman’s time has expired. 

Dr. Foxx? 

Ms. FOXX. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Dr. Dann-Messier, I read over your prepared remarks and I 

noted that you put in here that between the fall of 2009 and spring 

2011 you had 30 community conversations with 800 participants 

around the country. Now, it is my understanding that the final National Assessment of Career and Technical Education was due to 

Congress on July 1, 2011. 

I am just wondering, since we have not received that report, why 

the department didn’t spend that time working on meeting your 

statutory requirements and gathering some empirical data on the 

situation with CTE. I would like to know what is the current status 

of the report and why is it late? 

Ms. DANN-MESSIER. Certainly, Congresswoman. We did, in fact 

use the very extensive, I would say 400 pages, of the preliminary 

findings from the draft final assessment to inform our blueprint, 

and there were two reasons why the assessment is late. 

One is that we have had an extended review process in the department, and we recognize that we have to really streamline our 

clearance review process. And also, there were structural challenges that were created by the statutory evaluation timeline. So 

we have conducted a lengthy review internally, and as a result of 

that we are going to look at our processes. 

But we also just wanted to note that the Independent Advisory 

Council also made a number of points that we would like you to 

take under consideration, and that was that they were required to 

begin the implementation of the assessment before the implementation of the 2006 law and that it had to be completed before the 

outcome data were available. So those are some things that we can 

talk about in the future. 

But let me just reassure you, Congresswoman, that we are putting the assessment into our final review process in December and 

we will have it up here to Congress by spring of 2014. 

Ms. FOXX. Again, I have read over your prepared comments, and 

what you talk about in your blueprint sounds very nice. You know, 

they are good words. They are the right kinds of words to be saying. 

But it seems to me that you are not at all dealing with any empirical data or objective information. And without that, how are 

you coming up with the blueprint? It seems to me you are saying 

to us, ‘‘Well look over here at this shiny ball—what sounds really 

great in our report here and in this blueprint. But don’t pay any 

attention to the fact that we don’t have any objective information 

on which to base what we are doing.’’ 

Again, you have great-sounding words in here but you don’t really have anything to show us that you know what it is that is 

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wrong, you know what needs to be improved, you know what to do 

in the future to have good programs. 

Ms. DANN-MESSIER. Well, as I mentioned, we did, in fact, review 

the initial draft findings and helped use those findings to inform 

our blueprint. And I would say to you that we did have extensive 

consultation with the field and we met with a wide range of stakeholders. 

We met with researchers; we met with policymakers, many of the 

folks who are, in fact, sitting at the table here today; we met with 

parents; we met with the students and higher education officials. 

And we asked them what was working in career and technical education, what were the challenges they were facing, and if they 

could come up with some bold new strategies to reform and transform career and technical education, what might those be? 

And those were built on research, effective practice, and their 

own experiences of what was working for students. Because we 

want to make sure we have the best system for all students and 

the best, high-quality CTE system for all students. 

Ms. FOXX. And the last comment I would make, Mr. Chairman, 

is that I am—I note when I read over these that a lot of what you 

talk about wanting to do are the principles that we have put out 

when we talked about the SKILLS Act and we passed the SKILLS 

Act. And yet, we have had no cooperation from the administration 

on looking at that issue, and I would like to note that it would be 

good if we could get your support for that legislation. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Chairman KLINE. Thank the gentlelady. 

Mr. Scott, you are recognized. 

Mr. SCOTT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

I would like to ask a question about the competition to Ms. 

Dann-Messier. One of the problems I have with the competitions is 

an experience that happened in the Upward Bound programs 

where they went to a competition and it turned out that none of 

the programs in my local area got funded. They had several very 

successful, longstanding programs and their score was just below 

the cutoff line and all of the students in that area were without access to an Upward Bound program. 

Will your competition guarantee when the dust settles that all of 

the areas will be covered, rather than have great programs in one 

area and nothing in others? 

Ms. DANN-MESSIER. Thank you very much, Congressman, for 

your question. 

We really think competition, as you also heard from some of my 

colleagues, will incentivize the development of high-quality career 

and technical education programs. We also looked at a number of 

OECD reports that spoke to the effectiveness of competition in 

terms of being responsive to the needs of business and industry 

and meeting the needs of students, and— 

Mr. SCOTT. Well, is it possible when the competition takes— 

Ms. DANN-MESSIER. But— 

Mr. SCOTT [continuing]. Place that some areas won’t get any assistance at all? 

Ms. DANN-MESSIER. So what I did want to say was there also 

were reports that showed that there could be—you could create inCEWDOCROOM with DISTILLER

45 

equalities, and that is not what we want to happen. We want to 

make sure we have a system that is a high-quality system for all 

students. 

So we have been really developing a number of and thinking 

about a number of strategies and proposals to make sure that we 

have an equitable system and that we, in fact, close the equity 

gaps. We met with our office of civil rights to help them come up 

with different strategies, and what we are proposing would be that 

the local programs make sure they take into account the needs of 

low-income students, students with disabilities, and English proficiency as they are designed their program and that, in fact— 

Mr. SCOTT. Well, the question is whether or not you are going 

to guarantee on a formula basis everybody gets some assistance? 

In a competition you may have some areas, at least to the Upward 

Bound experience, you had some areas with no coverage at all. Is 

that possible when you do competition? 

Ms. DANN-MESSIER. Well, we would really hope that the state officials would work to make sure that there was geographic distribution and that all students were served well and that you will not 

leave states—certain subpopulations behind. We have a number of 

provisions. 

Another provision would be that we would want to make sure 

that students—all students—have access to the program, and if 

they don’t have enough academic preparation that we would, in 

fact, the programs would be required to provide them the support 

services— 

Mr. SCOTT. Are you committing to make—under a formula basis 

everybody gets assistance. Are you committing that everybody will 

get assistance under your competition program, unlike what happened in the Upward Bound competition? 

Ms. DANN-MESSIER. Well, those decisions will be made at the 

state level. 

Mr. SCOTT. You mentioned accountability measures. What accountability measures are appropriate to ensure the best use of the 

funds? 

Ms. DANN-MESSIER. Well, we want to make sure that we are 

looking at all the students that are participating in the program 

and completing the program. So we want to make sure that we are 

looking at the numbers of students who are low-income, students 

with disabilities, and students who are English-learners, are, in 

fact, enrolling to your point, Congressman—are enrolling and completing high-quality CTE programs. 

We want to make sure that we can identify the number of high 

school graduates, the number of students that are enrolling in postsecondary education with and without remediation, to the chairman’s point, and we also want to make sure that we are looking 

at the student earnings potential and employment opportunities. 

So we are looking at disaggregating the data, Congressman, so that 

we can, in fact, make sure that the system is serving all students 

well. 

Mr. SCOTT. Do you have a list of all of the accountability measures? 

Ms. DANN-MESSIER. That we are proposing, yes, we can get that 

to you, sir. 

CEWDOCROOM with DISTILLER

46 

Mr. SCOTT. What effect does sequestration have on the program 

and what will get cut if sequestration continues as scheduled? 

Ms. DANN-MESSIER. I am not prepared to answer that now but 

I am certainly happy to provide that information to your office. 

Mr. SCOTT. Thank you. 

Dr. Albrecht, you are a public system of colleges, as I understand 

it. 

Mr. ALBRECHT. That is correct. 

Mr. SCOTT. Can you tell me what role proprietary schools have 

in job training? 

Mr. ALBRECHT. I think job training is a responsibility for all of 

us in our communities. Jobs happen at the local level. Employers 

work hand in hand with a wide variety of job training organizations. We work collectively with our workforce development centers 

to help provide the supply of trained workers for our employers. 

We do work in partnership with our private providers, as well. 

The important role that we play at Gateway Technical College is 

open access for all individuals at a cost that is affordable to our 

community. 

Mr. SCOTT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Chairman KLINE. Thank the gentleman. 

Madam Secretary, Mr. Scott asked for some accountability measures and you said you would provide them to his office. 

Ms. DANN-MESSIER. We will provide— 

Chairman KLINE. Please provide them for the record for all of us 

then, please. 

Ms. DANN-MESSIER. Be happy to do that, Chairman. 

Chairman KLINE. Thank you very much. 

Mr. Walberg? 

Mr. WALBERG. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

And thank you, to the panel, for being here. A most interesting 

subject and pertinent subject. 

Dr. Flanders, appreciated the fact that in your testimony you 

really highlighted a call for a need to make sure that our students—early and later students—have the opportunity to gain realworld experience, job training, that will hopefully lead to credentials and certifications. I had the privilege not too long ago to review the program—in fact, to walk in a site visit of Jackson Career 

Center in Jackson, Michigan with the ISD there—that is making 

a very significant effort to make sure that as many of their students as possible go from their program with certifications and 

ability in the real world. 

If you could expand a bit further on why you believe including 

this concept is necessary to the reauthorization of Perkins? 

Mr. FLANDERS. Yes. Thank you for that question. 

You know, as we looked at metrics and industry credentials and 

all of those types of measurements, what we did in Kansas is, you 

know we had quite a bit of conversation between secondary and 

postsecondary partners and we recognized that at the postsecondary level that students are transitioning into employment 

where at the secondary level there is some of that but more so 

transitioning into postsecondary programs. 

So what we did is we decided we are going to go ahead and ask 

our business leaders. So we brought together business and said, 

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‘‘What metrics are the most important for you as students come out 

of these programs?’’ 

And they said, ‘‘If you are looking at these programs to evaluate, 

here are three things that you should evaluate programs on—just 

three: Did the student receive an industry credential that is valuable to us? We are hiring because of those industry credentials. We 

want to see industry credential attainment.’’ They actually valued 

that higher than the academic award. 

Mr. WALBERG. It is real-world, right? 

Mr. FLANDERS. Correct. 

They also said, ‘‘Your program should have a high job placement 

rate. That is the reason the programs exist is for students to receive a job.’’ 

And that also, third was to look at the wages of those students 

as they exit those programs. If we have programs where the student could get the job anyway or the jobs aren’t of a significant 

wage and they don’t provide a return on value to that student or 

to our Kansas taxpayers then we want to go in a different direction 

with our programs. 

And so we have a project right now where we are benchmarking 

these outcomes with our postsecondary programs. We are looking 

to how to incentivize them to achieve high marks in these three 

areas. That is why I mentioned the centralized clearinghouse. 

We have some trouble getting those data from a third party, and 

if you are going to tie funding to these metrics it cannot be selfreport data. We must be able to access these data in order to really 

make a difference. 

Mr. WALBERG. Okay. Thank you. 

Dr. Albrecht, how can we foster more business involvement in career and technical education? 

Mr. ALBRECHT. I think I mentioned Nick Pinchuk, the CEO from 

Snap-on, in my comments. Nick also says that we have an optics 

problem in career and technical education. People don’t understand 

what it is that we offer. 

And I would encourage anyone in the audience here that if you 

have not been to your local community or technical college in a few 

years it is time to go take a look because visibility of the programs 

that we offer are directly linked to the jobs of our local communities. I think that whole— 

Mr. WALBERG. That is a good point to make. 

I, in fact, just had the opportunity to visit another exciting educational job training endeavor in my district at a cooperative relationship between Monroe County Community College in Monroe, 

Michigan, as well as the ISD, with a middle college program. It 

specifically related to the health sciences. Amazing to see the involvement of business and industry there, as well. 

And I didn’t want to jump on your statement, but you are absolutely right: Take those tours but bring business and industry in, 

as well, to see what they can do to enhance the programs. 

Mr. ALBRECHT. I would agree. It is a shared responsibility. We 

have to be more aggressive in career and technical education in our 

colleges and schools to invite the public in. We also need to hear 

from our industry partners and where they have interests to come 

CEWDOCROOM with DISTILLER

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and see what programs we have available and if they are not meeting their needs, help us address that by improving those programs. 

Mr. WALBERG. I see my time is expired. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Chairman KLINE. Thank the gentleman. 

Mr. Bishop, you are recognized. 

Mr. BISHOP. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you very 

much for holding this hearing. 

And to the panel, thank you all very much. 

Mr. Litow, I guess I want to talk some more about P-TECH. And 

first off, I want to commend you. I think it is a very powerful model 

and I think it is one that clearly is replicable. 

And what I want to sort of focus on is how it is replicable in 

smaller settings—suburban settings, rural settings—and in high 

schools for which the entire population, perhaps, is not in need of 

such a program, but a subset of the high school population is in 

need. 

I am working to set up a program in my district, and I have 

brought to the table the high school, a community college, a Fortune 500 company, and the local BOCES to sort of administer it 

all. And we are encountering some challenges. 

One has to do with funding. And so I think all of us would have 

liked to have some advance word on what the President announced 

this morning but we all need to know more about it, but I think 

providing funding is something that can be very helpful. 

But the other is, how do you deal with these small groups and 

do you deal with them as isolates or do you try to develop consortia? And if you develop consortia, how do you deal with the more 

traditional issues of high school—the sort of the social needs of the 

high school students, the interscholastic athletic needs of the high 

school student, that kind of thing? 

So if you could talk a little bit about that, that would both help 

me with the program I am trying to get set up, but I think help 

a lot of us in terms of bringing these programs to our district. 

Mr. LITOW. Thank you very much for the question. And I do 

think that this is not something that only works with large employers. I don’t think it is something that only works in urban areas. 

If we look at what is going on in the state of New York and the 

16 P-TECH schools that will open in September, they are in rural 

areas, they are in suburban areas, they are all across the state— 

northern part of the state, southern tier. And of the 50 companies 

that are involved, many of them are smaller companies and they 

are operating in consortia in those areas where there aren’t large 

companies. 

On the other hand, the large companies who are involved in this 

are sharing their expertise with the other companies around the 

skills mapping, around the mentoring, around workplace visits, 

around paid internships, so that you are not asking smaller companies to reinvent the wheel, so to speak, in terms of their engagement and their involvement in this way. So I think there are collaboration and partnership that can involve large companies working with small companies that are going to be able to affect those 

schools and districts that might not have either Fortune 500 companies or be in urban areas. 

CEWDOCROOM with DISTILLER

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The second thing, your question about, you know, how do you integrate all of the high school experience, there is nothing in the 

programs in the P-TECH schools that have eliminated the kinds of 

other programs that you are talking about. They are integrated 

into the school program. 

You know, we used to have this idea that vocational education 

or CTE was this separate track and that you didn’t need to provide 

those students with a strong academic program. That is over. 

Those choices shouldn’t be made any longer because they don’t reflect the needs of the labor force. 

So I think that the burden of proof is on business—the large 

businesses—to be involved as collaborators and full partners and 

assist in the smaller companies and make sure that we are not 

asking students and schools to make a choice between a narrow 

educational experience and the broader experience that is going to 

offer them all the options that we would all like them to have. 

Mr. BISHOP. I would say that the challenge that we are encountering has less to do with the business, which stepped up quite 

readily, and in fact, I had other businesses come to me and say, 

‘‘Look, if these guys don’t want to do it we will do it,’’ so that was 

very encouraging. 

The difficulty that we are encountering is with schools having 

really, really tight budgets, exacerbated in New York by the 2 percent real property tax cap, exacerbated by things like sequestration, which affect Title I and IDEA. We are encountering difficulty 

with how do you do the curriculum development, how do you add 

the additional sections of courses that would be required? 

And, you know, in New York there was one grantee per region 

of New York. And, you know, Long Island has got 140 schools. 

Mr. LITOW. Right. 

Mr. BISHOP. One school got it. 

So we are going to need help there. And I think what the President is proposing, I just hope there is room in it for smaller schools 

that are either isolates or are hoping to engage in some kind of 

consortium arrangement. 

Mr. LITOW. Well, I think that the question about Perkins is not 

to make it a small program but to affect the entire program and 

allow these reforms not to be in a couple of schools but to be able 

to reach scale and able to be sustainable. That’s what the struggle 

here isn’t to create some narrow platform out of Perkins that is 

going to support some good programs over here; that will always 

happen. 

The effort is to affect the entire program through the reauthorization, the core elements of the entire program so that it isn’t just 

dependent upon a few programs to be excellent but to make sure 

that excellence is embedded throughout the entire program. 

Chairman KLINE. The gentleman’s time has expired. 

Dr. Heck? 

Mr. HECK. [Off mike.] 

Ms. DANN-MESSIER. Congressman, we believe that the current allocation formula for states is really too complex and we agree with 

you that it relies too heavily on outdated data. And so we are looking and exploring options and would like to work with the committee on developing some other options, but we think the current 

CEWDOCROOM with DISTILLER

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allocation for formulas for the states is too complex and uses outdated data and we are exploring a number of options. 

Mr. HECK. [Off mike.] 

Ms. DANN-MESSIER. I really couldn’t at this point. Thank you. 

Mr. HECK. [Off mike.] 

Ms. DANN-MESSIER. Thank would be great. 

Mr. HECK. [Off mike.] 

Ms. DANN-MESSIER. I am just angling for an opportunity to come 

back as often as I can. 

Mr. HECK. [Off mike.] 

Chairman KLINE. Thank the gentleman. 

By the way, for all in the room, we are aware there is a microphone problem here and presumably some people who actually 

have skills that we were talking about earlier are moving to solve 

that. 

Mr. Pocan? 

Mr. POCAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

And I just want to thank the panel and especially Dr. Albrecht, 

from Wisconsin. I know if Mr. Petri were here he would say the 

same. We really appreciate the great job the technical colleges do 

across Wisconsin. 

I had a lot of time to visit many of them across the state and, 

you know, when we talk about welding it just reminds me of all 

my years in the legislature talking about the lack of enough people 

available with training in welding. 

As much as I think there is really great work that is happening 

with technical colleges and great relationship with the businesses 

and trying to help get people into the jobs that are available, I 

know there has also been a lack of funding. Especially right now, 

I know, with the current state leadership there has been some 

extra issues. 

Let me ask the question about the reauthorization in a slightly 

different way: union apprenticeship programs. You know, I have a 

business and I am also a member of the International Union of 

Painters and Allied Trades, which has an amazing apprenticeship 

program. About 450,000 people a year across the country are in 

union apprenticeship programs. They get trained—with business 

buy-in, by the way, including the people at my business. We help 

to fund those programs because they provide really great training, 

as well. 

And then I look at technical colleges and I am just wondering if 

there is potential either for current collaboration or future collaboration specifically within this type of funding. You know, I went to 

Eau Claire—the technical college up there—they are in nanotechnology. You know, there might be need for a 3-D printing technology. And while you have got these great apprenticeship programs doing a lot of these other areas, is there a way we could 

have increased collaboration with potential—with the reauthorization? 

I guess that would be a question for you, Dr. Albrecht, and also 

Dr. Dann-Messier, if possible. 

Mr. ALBRECHT. Yes. Thank you, Congressman. I appreciate the 

compliments for the great state of Wisconsin and certainly our 

friends in Kenosha say hello today as well. 

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51 

But apprenticeship is very important to what we do in career 

and technical education. In fact, as you know, the historical roots 

of it started in Wisconsin in 1911, the same time Gateway Technical College was founded. As an opportunity for the workforce to 

become embedded into education and training, Wisconsin’s technical colleges partnered with the State Apprenticeship Bureau and 

most of that training happens in one of our local technical colleges. 

In fact, at Gateway we host the office for the Bureau for Apprenticeship Training for Southeast Wisconsin, so it is hard to even tell 

the difference between what we offer at Gateway and what is offered in the apprenticeship program. 

This year Wisconsin has made apprenticeship a flagship program. Our enrollments continue to increase and we continue to expand apprenticeship opportunities into new and emerging areas 

like water technology, things that we have not had in the past. 

So I am a full supporter of apprenticeship. I think career and 

technical education, the Carl Perkins legislation, can help build 

that identity and that brand for multiple pathways of success for 

students to learn. 

Ms. DANN-MESSIER. Congressman, I would just echo the sentiments that my colleague made. I am a strong supporter of registered apprenticeship programs. I am an ex officio member of the 

Department of Labor’s Registered Apprenticeship Advisory Council 

and know full well how worthy those programs are. And we would 

consider them a very integral part of a transformed career and 

technical education system. 

Mr. POCAN. Sure. And if I could follow up—sorry, I am getting 

a little echo there—Dr. Dann-Messier, specifically, is there any way 

that we could even expand as we are doing this reauthorization 

some of this collaboration? 

Because, you know, I think of my union, for example. One of the 

new technology they have—it is a virtual painter. 

It is a real painting technology. You are up there but you have 

no VOCs, you have no wasted paint, it tells you if you are dripping, 

how long a time you are spending. 

It is expensive piece of equipment but it also provides training 

that is very green friendly, and one of the things we invested in 

Wisconsin with some of the apprenticeship programs was specifically in the green jobs area, trying to keep more dollars in the U.S. 

rather than going overseas, especially in energy and things like 

that. Is there some potential as we reauthorize this that we could 

expand in this area? 

Ms. DANN-MESSIER. Well, we think the use of technology is going 

to be very important. We need to expand opportunities, particularly 

for our rural and remote communities who don’t have access to internship opportunities, work-based learning opportunities, and 

even postsecondary education opportunities. 

And I have visited a number of programs where I also did virtual 

welding and could see how well I did—you could see how well I 

didn’t do and I felt very badly because I took somebody else—I was 

doing it on a student’s—during his portfolio and so his—my poor 

grade reflected poorly for him. So I apologized to him. 

Mr. POCAN. But your shoe didn’t virtually catch on fire. 

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Ms. DANN-MESSIER. No, it did not. That was the benefit that I 

was able to use the virtual system that I didn’t injure myself or 

anybody else. 

But no, there is a tremendous role for technology to be able to 

increase access to work-based learning opportunities and internship opportunities for our students. 

Mr. POCAN. Thank you. 

I yield back. 

Chairman KLINE. Keep earning those gold stars. 

Mrs. Brooks, you are recognized. 

Mrs. BROOKS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

My question is to, I think, starting with Mr. Litow, and then, I 

think, also Dr. Albrecht in particular. 

I am a former college administrator at Ivy Tech Community College, and I know we have a great partnership and have partnered 

with Gateway on a number of things, but what I think part of the 

problem in the country is that students, particularly from middle 

school to high school, have no idea about the career opportunities 

before them. That is why I think we have an extremely high number of unemployed young adults even coming out of college. 

And one criticism of our national—of the country’s career and 

technical education system is because if a young person in middle 

school then high school decides to go into CTE they are no longer 

‘‘college bound.’’ And we in this country, I think, have created in 

some ways almost a caste system of—and I completely disagree 

with it and believe that we should have career and technical not 

be viewed as a, you know, an adjective for a certain type of learning but rather we ought to be expanding it to all students in some 

way. 

And I love that the—how do we get the business community 

much more engaged and our school systems much better aligned so 

that starting at that high school, you know, on to college, that we 

are not really separating these students, because we are losing a 

huge opportunity to educate them about what all their career opportunities might be? 

Mr. Litow, do you want to start? 

Mr. LITOW. Yes. Well, I think that the discussion that we have 

had about reauthorization of Perkins addresses those core elements 

to make sure not some students understand about the jobs of the 

21st century but all students do, and that we find a way to embed 

those general workplace skills—high-end skills—directly into the 

curriculum and provide students more opportunities to engage in 

the workplace. They don’t only have to be through apprenticeship 

and internship programs; they can be through structured workplace visits, opportunities where people from the workplace come 

into the schools to work. 

I think this idea that we had two tracks is over. It is just over 

because it doesn’t relate to where the workplace is today and where 

it is likely to be over the next several decades. 

If you look at the apprenticeship programs—and there is a lot of 

effective apprenticeship programs outside the U.S. and very often 

they are highlighted as examples of success. On the other hand, 

they are not providing, in many instances, the kind of skills that 

are required to expand from one job to another or to have a broader 

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range of career success. They tend to be fairly narrow in their focus 

and they are about preparation for one type of career. 

Careers are changing. Opportunities are changing. And that is 

why all students need to be prepared with the opportunity to learn 

how to acquire knowledge and be successful. 

I think that this idea about two tracks is just over because it 

doesn’t exist in the workplace anymore. 

Mrs. BROOKS. I agree. And I would like to ask Dr. Albrecht. But 

when we take students off-site in high schools to career centers 

that are not embedded in their high schools and then I think it 

causes a problem, then, with our career and technical colleges and 

the exposure that all students should have to what those colleges 

provide. 

Can you address that? How can we avoid this two-track country 

educational system we have created? 

Mr. ALBRECHT. Thank you, Congressman. And, you know, I 

would just first echo the support for Ivy Tech. I think it is a fabulous system. They do a terrific job of supporting their career and 

technical education programs. 

And Indiana is a little different than Wisconsin. While we do not 

have career centers, I understand the model that you are describing here. 

The embeddedness of career and technical education is critical 

for all learners at all levels, whether it is the adult learner in the 

apprenticeship program so they understand the career path and 

leveraging their skills and abilities for postsecondary credit and 

eventually go on to receive their educational degrees for supervisory management and so on, or it is at the high school level 

where we are trying to expose students to those postsecondary options. That is a little easier transition because it is a little more 

visible for students. They can go to their local college and see some 

of those experiences. 

But we also work with our middle school and our elementary 

schools. In fact, KTEC, in Kenosha, is probably one of the more 

progressive elementary schools to teach skills around teamwork, 

problem solving, community involvement. It is a Project Lead the 

Way elementary program. 

It is a very unique way to help inspire and instill young people 

to think about careers at a very early age, and I think Carl Perkins 

legislation helps to at least create the opportunity for that dialogue. Additional funding and support would certainly help to bring 

those conversations and those applications to the lower grades. 

Mrs. BROOKS. Thank you. 

I encourage all of you to think about how we can eliminate the 

tracks. 

Thank you. 

Chairman KLINE. Thank the gentlelady. 

Mr. Hinojosa, you are recognized. 

Mr. HINOJOSA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

My first question is to Dr. Messier: As Congress considers the reauthorization of the Carl Perkins and Career and Technical Education Act, how do we prioritize access and equity for all students, 

including those students in South Texas, where I come from, and 

in congressional districts like mine who are largely low-income? 

CEWDOCROOM with DISTILLER

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Ms. DANN-MESSIER. Thank you for your question, Congressman. 

Equity. Closing the equity gaps and making sure that all students have access to high-quality CTE programs really is very, very 

important to us and prominent throughout our blueprint. And I 

have seen examples, Congressman, of institutions that have such 

a high-quality program reputation that they have long waiting lists 

and they have to take students via lottery. 

And many of those students were not academically prepared to 

succeed—not only to access the program, but also to complete. And 

the institutions and schools provided them very extensive academic 

support services—tutoring, mentoring, also provided them career 

counseling—and so the students were, in fact, able to succeed and 

graduate with a high school diploma and an associate’s degree. 

And so we are proposing that we would want the same for all 

students, that there should not, in fact, be two tracks, that all students should have access to high-quality— 

Mr. HINOJOSA. If I may interrupt you— 

Ms. DANN-MESSIER [continuing]. CTE programs. And we provide 

the necessary supports. I am sorry— 

Mr. HINOJOSA. If I may interrupt you, many of the members here 

on both sides of the aisle talk about involving businesses so that 

we can provide mentors and tutors at an early enough age—either 

sixth, seventh, eighth grade—so that those that are falling behind 

on reading and writing and particularly mathematics can catch up 

and become college ready. 

And I am just concerned that when I hear the administration 

proposal is including the move from formula basis to competitive 

funding, it could have a very serious impact in regions of the country where business is not involved and they don’t have—in fact, 

they have high dropout rates. And sometimes in those cases if the 

funding were not given to those regions of the state of Texas, for 

example, where they cut 5.8 billion in K-12 not this session but the 

session before while we were in that big recession, I am concerned 

that this may be a mistake. 

So let me move quickly to another question to Dr. Flanders from 

Kansas and Dr. Albrecht from Wisconsin: How would you define 

high-quality career and technical education, known as CTE, and 

what criteria would you prioritize? 

Mr. FLANDERS. Thank you, Representative, for that question. 

And earlier, again, we reached out to our business leaders to really 

ask them, ‘‘How do you define that?’’ Because we didn’t want to 

study in isolation and just come up with metrics on our own. 

At the postsecondary level we must have programs that graduate 

students that get jobs, that have high job placement rates. And 

sometimes we have looked internally at the programs, we went 

through all types of accreditation, and the bottom line is did the 

graduates get a job, and then was that job at a wage that they 

were able to benefit from that education? And we know that industry credentials allow that and is the conduit to putting those graduates in a position where they can enter the middle class and 

where they can drive economic growth in Kansas. 

In Kansas we are not recruiting a large number—we don’t have 

a high number of people coming into our state, so what our stratCEWDOCROOM with DISTILLER

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egy is to use these metrics to increase the skills of our workforce 

and to be more competitive. 

Mr. HINOJOSA. Thank you. 

How do you do it in Wisconsin? 

Mr. ALBRECHT. I would actually agree with Dr. Flanders. I would 

add one additional element to it and that is the investment and the 

importance of the quality of the teacher, making sure that we provide professional development to ensure that our teachers have the 

tools and resources necessary to be able to deliver upon those industry credentials and have the time to go out and network with 

their community so the understand what types of employment opportunities are available for students. 

Mr. HINOJOSA. Thank you. 

I yield back. 

Chairman KLINE. Thank the gentleman. 

Dr. Roe, recognized. 

Mr. ROE. Thank the chairman. 

First of all, great discussion today. I live in the state of Tennessee. I have a couple of questions I would like to ask, and one 

is what Mr. Miller started out with about how our number of degrees, I think, in technical degrees had gone to 16th in the world. 

Why has that happened? And I will ask you all that in just a—why 

do you think it has happened, because if you can fix that problem 

maybe you have caught it earlier. 

Our state just made the most academic progress in the nation on 

testing this past year as we are tested. We take this very seriously 

and we have a Tennessee Board of Regents system in our state 

which is the sixth-largest in the country—200,000 students. We 

have six 4-year traditional colleges, 13 or so community colleges, 

and 27 colleges of applied technology, and a technology school is 

within 1 hour of any student who lives in our state. 

I think, Mr. Litow, you made some comments earlier, which I 

wholeheartedly agree with, of linking education to jobs. You mentioned a high school diploma is not enough anymore. I totally agree 

with that. 

And then, and bring businesses to the table, because as an employer, as I was, the single best thing you can get is a good employee— 

Mr. LITOW. Right. 

Mr. ROE [continuing]. And, I mean, that is the most valuable 

asset you have. And that is what you all are all interested in doing 

is producing a product. 

And I think Dr. Flanders mentioned this exactly the same, 

maybe slightly differently—a certificate that says you can do something and you know when you graduate from this particular institution you can do those skills, you have mastered those skills, and 

then those skills are tied to how much money or wages that you 

would make. And then secondly, what is your placement rate? In 

our state it is 84 percent through all our technical colleges. 

And as a traditional college guy, I have really become a supporter of the technical colleges because I think that is the future 

of the country and how we get this great number of people. Like 

you mentioned, IBM had 1,800 empty—that is tragic in an economy 

with an unemployment rate of 7, 8, 9, 10 percent, whatever it is, 

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56 

that you would have that many jobs open in a great company like 

IBM. 

So first, why do you think that is? 

And then, Dr. Flanders, I want you to talk about accountability 

and incentives and just expand on your statement in a minute, if 

you would. 

Mr. LITOW. Well, thank you very much for the question. And people ask us, when we are involved in these P-TECH grade nine 

through 14 schools, where we make a commitment that we will 

guarantee students who complete with an AAS degree that they 

are first in line for jobs. And people say, ‘‘Well, how can you make 

that kind of guarantee?’’ 

And the answer to that is that over a 6-year period every single 

course that a student takes, whether it is math or science or 

English or history or any course, includes the core academics that 

are important plus the workplace skills. And over a 6-year period 

students will take special workplace learning curriculum, material, 

that we have helped design. 

Every student will have access to an IBM mentor. Every student 

will have internship opportunities. So at the end of that 6-year period, why wouldn’t we want to make the student first in line for 

jobs? 

Mr. ROE. But why do you think that—are we failing at the lower 

level below in elementary school and also in kid—I mean, why are 

we having—why did we have this drop off? 

And just as a comment, I learned a lot in sports. I learned three 

skills in sports. One, if you didn’t show up on time you didn’t get 

to play. You sat on the bench. Number two, you play as a team 

player. Number three, you gave your best effort. Those are important skills I think you are trying to— 

Mr. LITOW. Absolutely. I was at one of the schools in Chicago 

yesterday and in the math class they were teaching about how data 

analytics is used in sports to be able to predict which people, which 

athletes are going to be successful— 

Mr. ROE. [Off mike.] 

Mr. LITOW. Exactly. And those skills—understanding predictive 

analytics, understanding math skills, understanding how to interpret those skills and use them at work and how to team with others to be able to solve problems— 

Mr. ROE. I am going to give Dr. Flanders a chance, too, to answer that question about accountability and incentives. That is one 

I want to get to, also. 

Mr. LITOW. Okay. 

Mr. FLANDERS. Sure. Thank you. Thank you for that question related to accountability. 

And really, I am advocating a balanced approach to where part 

of the funds would be delivered through formula and also then— 

but a much larger portion delivered by competition and through accountability measures. 

You know, I think that we probably wouldn’t be here today if we 

were getting exactly what we wanted out of this system. This conversation probably wouldn’t be happening. 

And I have seen in Kansas what incentives have done through 

Senate bill 155 and I believe that if we used these dollars, as well, 

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in an incentive-based structure that is blended, I think you would 

see much greater gains because administrators will track those 

measures that are important to colleges and postsecondary institutions and these would highlight those measures. 

Chairman KLINE. Gentleman’s time has expired. 

Mr. Tierney? 

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

And thank you all for your testimony here and for your thoughtfulness on this. So I am hearing continually that the skills that Mr. 

Litow has set forth so eloquently that are not only essential for the 

technical programs, but they are also essential for students who 

want to go to college. 

So how, Dr. Dann-Messier, are we aligning the core standards 

that we are, you know, putting on a college with these standards 

under the Perkins bill? 

Ms. DANN-MESSIER. So we really believe, Congressman, that a 

high-quality CTE program, that it is an integrated academic and 

technical curriculum that are aligned to the state’s college and career readiness standards. 

Mr. TIERNEY. How are we assuring that is the case? 

Ms. DANN-MESSIER. Well, that would happen at the state level 

and we would make sure that is a provision that is followed very 

closely so that , in fact, happens. 

Mr. TIERNEY. So you would enforce that compatibility of standards on that. I think you are right on for doing that. 

Our, you know, technical and vocational schools in Massachusetts—we are very fortunate, particularly in my district, at least, 

on that. I always tell the kids there that if Jefferson came back 

that is the school he would want to go to, because it gives them 

so many more options than, you know, a college or a career or both 

on that basis. And we have a lot of students that graduate from 

there and go into higher education on that because of that alignment on that. 

So I think a lot of it has to do with teachers being able to put 

this into their curriculum. We had an interesting group in there 

they call themselves STEM Squared, and it is an alignment between a private curriculum company—development company, one 

of the colleges locally, and some of the public schools. 

And they are taking a measure to taking it to teachers and having them understand those very core basics and how to get a curriculum together either on their own or through using whatever 

private resources might be there, and then bringing it down to the 

lower grades. They were obviously concentrated on science, technology, engineering, and math, but they should also concentrate on 

teachers being able to meld all of these qualities in through education. 

Would we put funding in this bill for that teacher instruction? 

Will we put it in the Higher Education Bill? Will we put it in the 

ESEA? You know, how best to make sure that we get this done and 

that teachers are assisted in getting what they need on that? 

And anybody can answer. 

I will start with you, Dr. Dann-Messier? 

Ms. DANN-MESSIER. Well, certainly we would need to make sure 

that we are aligning all of our funding streams so that we are supCEWDOCROOM with DISTILLER

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porting our faculty at all levels of the educational process. Totally 

agree with you on that. 

And, you know, we have had a lot of questions about the role for 

business and industry during this hearing, and a great role that 

business and industry can play would be to provide externship opportunities for our faculty so they can, in fact, see what the workplace looks like today, can take the materials that are used on the 

workplace floor as part of their curriculum. And so the business 

and industry also has a great role to play in that regard, sir. 

Mr. LITOW. I will take that to another level. I think that business 

can play a role in improving teacher quality, having nothing to do 

with workplace visits. We created a free site on the Web called 

‘‘Teachers Try Science’’—the best science lesson plans, not just at 

the high school or the middle school level, but at the elementary 

school level, with video of board-certified teachers teaching those 

lessons so any teacher, for free, can go to the site and have access 

to the best science lessons, video of teachers teaching those lessons, 

aligned with standards, collaborative tools so that they can work 

with others. 

And if you want to get the results of people who have those 

skills, those are some of the things that you can do to make sure 

that the education system improves. And that part of it is free. 

Mr. TIERNEY. Well given the importance of getting industry and 

business to engage in that level with the curriculum and with providing the experiential learning on that, do we need to provide incentives in this legislation or do we think there is no need for that, 

that businesses are ready and able to go—we are finding the response so good in the area that it is not necessary? 

Mr. LITOW. I think the incentive would be to reauthorize the legislation and make sure that business is really involved and at the 

table, and not just as part of an advisory group that makes suggestions, but that is actually involved in shaping the curriculum and 

the experience so that you get a larger number of students who 

have the skills that you need. 

I think if that were done I think we would see a lot more businesses involved than we see today. 

Ms. DANN-MESSIER. Congressman, we are proposing in our blueprint that there would be a 25 percent private sector match, and 

that would primarily come from business and industries in the 

form of cash or in-kind. In-kind could be equipment, materials, access to the workplace. So we would go even a little bit further than 

that by proposing the 25 percent private sector match. 

Mr. TIERNEY. So they would require that match in order to go 

forward with one of their proposals— 

Ms. DANN-MESSIER. That is correct. That is correct. 

Mr. TIERNEY. Mr. Litow, what do you think about that? 

Mr. LITOW. Well, I think it is important that business bring resources to the table, but I really think it is important that everyone 

bring resources to the table. When you look at higher education 

courses that haven’t changed in decades and decades, they have to 

change and they have to bring their resources to the table. When 

you look at high schools that are not preparing students to become 

college ready, they have to change. 

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So I think what we are talking about is incentives to change for 

everyone and making sure that we set a higher bar for everyone. 

If you want business at the table and you give them an appropriate 

role you are going to get it, but everybody has to change, not just 

one party. 

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you all very, very much. 

Chairman KLINE. Thank the gentleman. 

Mr. Guthrie, you are recognized. 

Mr. GUTHRIE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And again, thanks for 

having this hearing. This is something that is dear to me. I grew 

up in a manufacturing business and try to align our needs with our 

local—matter of fact, I got into politics working with local adult 

education, trying to find tool and die makers and industrial maintenance people. 

But Mr. Perkins is on the wall there, and he is from my great 

state and I would think if—I am not going to put words in his 

mouth, but I would say if he spent the money we spent in the last 

20 or 20-more years since he has been out of Congress, or maybe 

25 or 30, that we should have a fully skilled workforce and everybody working and having the jobs that they have. 

And I will tell you, I know we have talked about aligning goals 

and industry being involved, and that is vitally important because 

specifically, if you need a certain type of piece of machinery you 

have numerical machining, numerical control machining, and you 

donate a machine or you put a machine in so the students can actually learn on the specific equipment, that is important to do. 

But I haven’t walked into a community technical education in my 

district that is teaching something that nobody wants. You don’t 

walk in there, why are you teaching basket weaving or training— 

they are not doing that. Matter of fact, some of them don’t want 

to train some things people won’t like—HVAC and plumbing and 

bricklaying and—I tried to hire a plumber the other day and tried 

to get an HVAC guy to come by and—because the heat is coming 

on now down in Kentucky and all of a sudden you can’t find an 

HVAC person. 

So it is not just the industry stuff; it is all of it. And so I am 

on another committee that has oversight of some of this and the 

CMT, but I always ask the question—I will tell you, at least in the 

skills that my business hires—tool and die, industrial maintenance—it keeps going up and up and up. In our area you are in 

the middle class if not towards the lower end of the upper middle 

class with those skills. 

But we can’t get enough people in them. It is not that the schools 

aren’t teaching it. They can’t get the students to show up for it. 

So why isn’t the market working in skilled labor? It works in a 

lot of everything else in this country, but for some reason as prices 

rise, whether it is medical technology, whether it is HVAC, whether it is plumbing, whether it is tool and die, industrial maintenance, computer tech—not computer science but computer tech— 

we can’t get the people to come. Because I have not walked into 

a business in my district that doesn’t say, ‘‘If I had people with X, 

Y, and Z skills I would hire them today,’’ at good wages, not at— 

you know, I am not even talking the low teens; I am talking mid 

to high teens. And in Kentucky that is a good starting wage. 

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So why isn’t the market working? That is my generic question. 

Why aren’t kids showing up? 

Any of you answer that. 

Ms. DANN-MESSIER. Congressman, I will take a first crack at it 

and to say because there is still a stigma attached to career and 

technical education and in many communities there are programs 

that aren’t preparing students for the jobs that are going unfilled. 

And we have got to do a much better job of making the case with 

students and with their parents to let them know that high-quality 

CTE programs will prepare them for college and careers. 

It is not an either/or proposition, and in some communities there 

is still that discussion that if you are going into career and technical education you are not prepared for postsecondary education. 

And that is why the comments that my colleague, Dr. Flanders, 

has made—that is why the programs have to result in an industryrecognized credential or a postsecondary degree so that students 

may go to work on day one and prepared for work on day one but 

are able to come back into postsecondary education. 

We have a number of excellent examples of where that is happening, but it is not systemic. And that is what we hope will happen as a result of the blueprint that we will have systemic reform, 

that all students will be prepared for college and career and there 

won’t be that stigma. 

Mr. GUTHRIE. We only have a few—but you are absolutely right. 

There is a group of kids that are forced or encouraged or there is 

a stigma to start out in college even though that may not be the 

best path for them. Not saying they are not smart. Matter of fact, 

they are probably smarter. I know people in my factory that are 

smarter than I am and I am glad they are there. 

But they go down this path—what I am talking about are the 

whole graduate from high school and just go out into the economy 

somewhere. And even if they work or if they don’t work, they are 

just kind of—it is not just the ones who, okay, well went a couple 

years in college, ‘‘Hey, I can make more money if I would be a computer technician than if I am getting this degree in college,’’ and 

so the economic incentives kind of works. But it is not just the parents who are stigmatizing because they are not even pushing them 

to go on to anything after high school. 

So where are we missing those kids? That is the kids if we could 

grab them and put them into this we could really change lives and 

change the way our country operates. And how are we missing 

that? 

To any of you, yes. 

Mr. ALBRECHT. I might just respond. I think you are right on all 

of your comments. Thirty percent of the employment based in 

Southeast Wisconsin is based on manufacturing and we have gone 

through a generation of a decline in support for manufacturing just 

because people have seen the reduction in manufacturing jobs and 

so they encourage their children not to go into manufacturing. 

I have worked really hard, in cooperation with the National Association for Manufacturers and their new framework for manufacturing. In fact, October was National Manufacturing Month. We 

had lots of activities for students to get a better picture of what 

CEWDOCROOM with DISTILLER

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manufacturing is—the ‘‘Dream It Do It’’ campaign that is going 

across the nation to help create greater awareness. 

And then most importantly, I think it is really to do just what 

you are saying—expose people at a very young age on what manufacturing is today. Computer numerical control is not the same as 

standing in front of a mill doing machining every day. It is a computer-integrated system of robotics, computer automation. There 

are so many new ways to think about manufacturing and we just 

have to keep elevating that conversation with our communities. 

Mr. GUTHRIE. I am sorry I am out of time. 

I yield back, Mr. Chairman. Thank you. 

Chairman KLINE. Gentleman yields back. 

Ms. Bonamici, recognized. 

Ms. BONAMICI. Thank you very much, Chairman Kline and 

Ranking Member Miller, for holding this hearing today, and certainly to all of the witnesses for your testimony. The skills gap is 

a very important issue in all of our districts. 

Mr. Litow, I think you called it a skills mismatch. 

And I agree with so many of the principles that have been discussed here today, certainly the importance of the public-private 

partnerships between businesses and schools, the need to make 

more students aware of career and technical education programs. 

I agree with Congresswoman Brooks about getting away from this 

two-track perception and system, and certainly the need for curriculum that develops skills like critical thinking, problem solving, 

communication. 

Tackling the skills gap requires assessing local needs, and I want 

to talk about that local aspect for a minute. The community needs 

are really as diverse as our country. 

I have introduced the WISE Investment Act, which is Workforce 

Infrastructure for Skilled Employees Act, to strengthen that communication between local businesses, especially small businesses, 

and schools and workforce development boards. 

Last month I visited a high school in the district I am proud to 

represent, and it is in the rural part of the district. It is a great 

example of what is really working—Yamhill Carlton High School. 

They have an outstanding program in manufacturing that they set 

up with local businesses. 

They also have a program in viticulture, and they have a vineyard right there on the high school campus and then the students 

can go on to the local community college and get a degree in either 

vineyard management, winemaking, or the wine business, which is 

a tremendous part of the economy in that part of the state. Very 

good wines, by the way; I highly recommend them. 

So the local businesses have helped with the curriculum development, procuring the equipment and supplies, they provide internships, and a lot of times they are doing this sort of out-of-pocket, 

and a lot of these are really pretty small businesses. So as we look 

to reauthorize Perkins we have to really look at how important 

these partnerships are and encourage them and incentivize them 

somehow, and I appreciate your expertise and all your testimony 

on that. 

And one of the things we talked about at the high school, at 

Yamhill Carlton, was the need to develop soft skills. And they are 

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working with a lot of sort of rural and sometimes at-risk youth, 

and really even understanding the importance of showing up on 

time and how you behave in an interview and all of those things 

are important and—along with, you know, critical thinking, leadership, creativity, which I know was mentioned, Mr. Litow, in your 

testimony. 

So the technical skills aren’t enough. So as we consider the reauthorization, what can we do to improve the development of those 

soft skills that our—not only our CTE students but all students 

need in a knowledge-based economy? 

And I will start with Dr. Dann-Messier? 

Ms. DANN-MESSIER. Congresswoman, I am happy to respond to 

that. I couldn’t agree with you more how important the employability skills are, and we consider that one of the real core elements of high-quality CTE—is to make sure that students have the 

opportunity to participate in work-based learning opportunities so 

that they can, in fact, gain the employability skills that employers 

are telling us are so necessary. 

I think another really important component of that is the existence of career and technical education student organizations. I am 

sure you have met some of the students. That is a wonderful example of how you can use your state and local CTE funds to really 

ensure that the students have the employability skills because they 

have to make presentations, they have to come and testify before 

Congress, and they are very poised and articulate. 

So we consider employability skills as a very core, important element of a high-quality CTE program. 

Ms. BONAMICI. Thank you. 

And I also wanted to ask about—and I know, Mr. Litow, great 

what IBM is doing. That is wonderful. But what about all the small 

businesses that have needs? What is the best way to make sure 

that we are assessing the workforce needs of small businesses and 

getting their participation, as well? How— 

Mr. LITOW. Well, we are a business-to-business company. All of 

our clients are businesses—small, medium, and large—and as we 

talk to them they have the same kind of needs and problems that 

we have. 

And I think the key word here is integration. The workplace 

skills, the technical skills, the academic skills, they are all not separate. They need to be integrated into the curriculum. 

And the public-private partnership is key. We shouldn’t be afraid 

of input from the private sector in terms of embedding this into the 

curriculum. 

We have a curriculum in our higher education in the United 

States that is called computer science. Computer science was developed in the United States. It was developed and inputted into higher education. 

It was created at the IBM Company. It was a private company 

that created the academic discipline ‘‘computer science.’’ So there 

are a lot of businesses who have a lot of great ideas about the skills 

that are needed in a whole range of businesses— 

Ms. BONAMICI. Thank you so much. I am just about out of time. 

I don’t want to interrupt but I want to align myself with Mr. 

Hinojosa’s concerns about balancing—changing to a competitive 

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method of funding and how we prioritize equity. So I just want to 

align myself with those concerns moving forward because we want 

to make sure that we still have equity in funding. 

So thank you, and I am out of time. I yield back. Thank you. 

Chairman KLINE. Gentlelady’s time has expired. 

Mr. Thompson, you are recognized. 

Mr. THOMPSON. Chairman, thank you. 

Members of the panel, thank you for being here, for your expertise and leadership. 

Thanks to the ranking member for submitting Mr. Langevin’s 

comments. Good friend and colleague, co-chair of the career and 

technical education caucus, which is a very strong bipartisan caucus here in a subject of much agreement in times of sometimes 

much disagreement, but not when it comes to career and technical 

education. 

I am looking forward on my way home on Thursday, as I do frequently, of stopping outside of Harrisburg to visit a CTE training 

center—petroleum training center, actually very specific. Incredible 

opportunities provided for individuals. 

Somebody shared some statistics with me last week and talked 

about how someone with a bachelor’s degree—and I am a fan of 

higher education; I want to make that affordable, but how individuals—the statistic was—and we can make statistics say whatever 

we want to, but that the earning power, I think, was like at least 

60 percent more over someone who didn’t have that higher education degree, but what—I think what the statistics failed to mention is all those folks are starting out graduating with their degree 

and a mortgage payment, which is not a good place to be in life 

I don’t think, depending on the value of your degree and your ability to use it for success. 

We are talking today about finding affordable access to success 

in life, and my—first I want to come back to—Mr. Guthrie really 

teed up nicely and, you know, the biased misstatement that is still 

out there, and I find it predominantly—the target audience is parents, because that is the launching platform for youth as they pursue education. So if you had the opportunity and you only had 

about—you had the elevator message time that they talk about 

around Washington all the time to spend with a parent, you know, 

what would the message be that you would provide in that very 

short period of time of encouraging parents to be open minded and 

to look at a pathway through career and technical education training for their children? 

Go ahead, ma’am. 

Ms. DANN-MESSIER. Congressman, first I would like to thank you 

for chairing the CTE caucus with my congressman, Jim Langevin. 

I think you are doing really incredible work. 

My message in the elevator would be that when your students 

are able to participate in a high-quality CTE program they have a 

leg up because not only are they going to graduate with a high 

school diploma but they will also graduate with an industry-recognized credential and be able to enter post-secondary education 

without the need for remediation because they would have also 

participated in postsecondary education college credit courses. 

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Mr. LITOW. I would say to any parent, if you want your child to 

have the skills to be competitive and to have a middle-class lifestyle and even further, this is the kind of opportunity that you 

don’t want to deny them. 

Mr. FLANDERS. Yes. I would say, and I do appreciate your leadership in career and technical education. Thank you for that. I would 

say it is not either/or, it is both/and. Choosing career and technical 

education doesn’t mean you are not going to go ahead and receive 

a baccalaureate degree someday; it is just a pathway and you can 

receive an industry-recognized credential. As you go to work and 

start to earn you might go to a liberal arts college and you might 

be in a job that pays more than some minimum wage jobs that 

other students are needing to take to pay their way through. 

And so not either/or, both/and. It is just a pathway to prosperity 

for students. 

Mr. ALBRECHT. As the father of a daughter who is an engineer 

I understand your comments about the values that parents play in 

helping their young people make decisions. I tell our young people 

along with their parents to turn pro sooner—pro fireman, professional fireman, professional firefighter, professional police officer, 

professional nurse. Engage yourself in an occupation that is going 

to be rewarding for yourself. 

Mr. THOMPSON. Okay. Thank you. 

I want to tee up and get your feedback on just a specific tactic— 

get real specific at this point in terms of how we promote this. To 

each of you, do you view creating an accelerated depreciation 

schedule for companies willing to donate equipment and technology 

as something that would further spark private investment in CTE 

programs? 

Mr. ALBRECHT. I may comment first. So the partnership that we 

established is more about not necessarily donating the equipment 

but being a part of a training program, so we want state-of-the-art 

equipment and technology in our classrooms and I want our students to be professionals in their industry. 

So we are not in the business of taking old equipment that is not 

working any longer. I want to help create a brand for our students 

so that they become professionals through the day they enter our 

programs and they think about their job as a profession, just as 

they would their college degree. 

Mr. THOMPSON. And with time left I just want to kind of touch 

on—I know—I am under the impression that moving to a competitive grant funding model, even with some equity protections, create 

a situation where LEAs and community colleges will not receive 

funding. I am from a rural district. 

I have always had a concern with—fact is, the resources are not 

there for grant-writing to be able to secure competitive funds, and 

so I would just—I expressed my concerns if moving more in that 

direction. I think it just creates some access issues. 

Thank you. 

Chairman KLINE. Gentleman’s time has expired. 

Mr. Andrews? 

Mr. ANDREWS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Mr. Miller for having the hearing. 

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I thank the panelists. I think you are doing some of the most important work in our country and you are all doing it very well. We 

appreciate it. 

Dr. Flanders, what are the graduates in the system that you supervise—what are the people who graduated 3 years ago doing 

today? Do you know? 

Mr. FLANDERS. We have been looking at recent graduates. We 

are just starting a study to look at the employment on a continuum 

and to look at some trend data. 

We have had some difficulty accessing labor wage records across 

state lines and we have some regional economies, particularly in 

the Kansas City area, where people work on both sides of the line, 

so— 

Mr. ANDREWS. How about people who graduated 1 year ago? 

Mr. FLANDERS. We have individuals in health care. Many have 

entered the nursing fields— 

Mr. ANDREWS. But do you have a complete data set of the people 

who graduated in 2012, what they are doing? 

Mr. FLANDERS. Yes, and I can get you that information. 

Mr. ANDREWS. What does it look like generally? What percentage 

of them are employed in the field for which they were trained? 

Mr. FLANDERS. You know, typically placement rates average in 

the high 70 percents to low 80 percents across the institutions. We 

are not able—we have some self-report data from in the field but 

we are not able, through the wage records, to determine if they are 

in the field of study or not through those wage records. They just 

report the wages that an individual— 

Mr. ANDREWS. Got it. 

Dr. Albrecht, what would your answer be to those two questions? 

Mr. ALBRECHT. Yes, absolutely. The state of Wisconsin has a 

pretty sophisticated data collection system for graduates. We measure graduates 3 years out so we can specifically show what occupations students have gone into, what they are employed— 

Mr. ANDREWS. What do your data look like from 3 years out? 

Mr. ALBRECHT. So for Gateway Technical College we have an 88 

percent placement rate graduating from the college. Our direct enrollment as it relates to the training and the occupation that they 

have got their degree in is 55 percent. 

Mr. ANDREWS. So 55 percent are in the field for which they specifically trained and then another 33 are working somewhere— 

Mr. ALBRECHT. Correct. 

Mr. ANDREWS [continuing]. And then what about the other 12? 

Mr. ALBRECHT. Many of our students go to college transfer programs, they take advantage of the articulation we have with our 

university partners, some go off to the military, and some stay and 

continue their education at Gateway. 

Mr. ANDREWS. And I ask these questions not to highlight anything you have done, because I think you are doing the very best 

you can with a very difficult legal and administrative situation. I 

really ask them to point out something I think we should do, 

which, fully respective of the privacy of your students and your 

graduates and their employers, we need to make better use of data 

that we have here. 

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One of you mentioned about the analytics, the students studying 

professional sports. I assume that leads to a career in Vegas betting the football games, which is not a bad thing necessarily. 

But analytics are the wave of the present. I am sure that IBM 

is all over analytics about who your customers are and what they 

have been doing, and it is being used in really every field. I think 

that we have really shortchanged you and your students by not giving you easier access to some of the data that would lead to those 

analytics. 

Again, being completely respectful of people’s privacy and respectful of the privacy of employers, I think there are ways that we 

could make, through the Internal Revenue Service or the Department of Labor or other—Social Security Administration, other entities, you know, identity-blind data available so that we could get 

a better picture of what is going on here. 

And I think this, in turn, would then lead to some clues about 

the cultural problem that Mr. Guthrie’s question really led to. I visited a manufacturer in my district that makes parts of satellites 

that are used by the military and intelligence agencies and some 

commercial, and he had seven job openings for machinists—would 

pay $50,000 or $55,000 a year with full benefits. My area has a 

higher-than-average unemployment rate relative to the national 

average, and he gave me exactly the same answer you all did, because I asked the same question, ‘‘Why can’t you fill these jobs?’’ 

And basically he said, ‘‘Because the parents think that, you 

know, advising your son or daughter to go become a machinist is 

a piece of bad advice.’’ In some cases I am sure that is true, but 

in many cases it is not. 

One way I think to connect up the data is using social media is 

such a powerful tool to talk to people about anything. It might be 

a tool that we could use to begin to change the perception of parents and students about enrolling in the very high-quality programs that you all run. 

So I appreciate, Mr. Chairman, the tone of this hearing and the 

empirically-driven basis of this hearing. I hope that we can produce 

a piece of legislation that empowers these ladies and gentlemen to 

do their jobs even better than they do now. 

Thank you. 

Chairman KLINE. Thank the gentleman. 

We have reached the point in the hearing where it is time for 

closing remarks and thanks to the panelists, so I will yield time to 

Mr. Miller for any closing remarks he has. 

Mr. MILLER. I want to join you in thanking the panelists, Mr. 

Chairman. I think that this panel not only is helpful this morning 

but I think has great potential in helping us as we rethink this 

Act. 

But this is—you know, I think requires some institutional restructuring from the historical way not only that we have allocated 

funds—and that sets off a battle that we know very well. Any time 

a formula fight is in play it is bipartisan and it is a hard road to 

navigate. But I also think in terms of our accounting, you know, 

President Obama was one of the first Presidents I can remember 

that talked about completion rates at community colleges, but we 

have got to make sure that those completion rates are also for 

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those students who are coming to get four units, eight units, and 

12 units. It turns out to be very, very beneficial to them. 

I was just looking at the new study in California done by WestEd 

and a professor from the University of Michigan, and they looked 

at 11,000 what they called ‘‘skill-builders’’ who came to community 

colleges for a very specific reason. They got about a bump in their 

average wage of about 28 percent in coming in some cases, as I 

said, for as little as four units of specialized training, eight units, 

12 units, and yet they worked against it because they are not registered as completers under many systems of how states decide this 

so they work against the interest of those community colleges in 

terms of how they are doing and what are they doing to help the 

state. And I think we have to sort that out. 

Also, in many of these institutions they are not quite clear that 

this is part of their mission. It is an historical sense of academics 

and what have you, that there is somehow a differentiation between the skills and intellectual capacity you need to do this and 

what you need to do this. The more sophisticated the workplace 

gets, the less that is so. And these basic skills are needed both in 

reasoning and computation and communications. And they will 

serve you well in the classics and they will serve you well in the 

digital world of manufacturing. 

So there is a lot here for us, but I really think that you have laid 

out the possibilities. 

I will be interested in seeing, Madam Secretary, what the President lays out today in terms of this challenge grant. And, you 

know, we know that we have watched the challenge grants help 

embedded interest make a transition, and I think what I talked 

about earlier in my statement was really in the East Bay now a 

transformation of how people were looking at their universe and 

what they thought was their capture area, if you will, or their job 

base. And in fact, it is regional-wide; it is probably all of Northern 

California. 

And I think we are turning the corner on better serving those 

students but we are not there yet, and so how this act is designed 

and how it allocates money and the incentives it puts on competition—I have been involved with some very serious—causing recompetition among embedded interests, and it doesn’t sound like the 

healthy word to many of those people who think they are going to 

be recompeted, but I think we have to update these systems because they were born in a very different age. 

And I think that, in fact, in some areas where the institutions 

are too small, too rural, the regionalization can help draw other resources to the institutions and to the benefit of those students and 

the local economy. So this is a very real opportunity. 

Mr. Chairman, I want to thank you for assembling this panel. I 

think we have got a lot of helpful suggestions and a lot of results 

of, you know, being involved—experience-based suggestions here 

that are very helpful to us on this committee. 

So thank you so very much for your time and your expertise. 

Chairman KLINE. I thank the gentleman for his comments, and 

I agree with almost everything he said, so I am starting to worry 

right now. 

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But we have a serious challenge out there. We have heard this 

challenge again and again in this committee where we have 

talked—all of us have talked to employers who say, ‘‘I have got 

jobs. I don’t have anybody who can fill it.’’ We have kids and not 

necessarily kids who are going to school and trying to make 

choices. 

And so we have a challenge in front of us to see if we can align 

some federal policy with some of the things that you have been 

talking about, but there are challenges there. 

Mr. Litow, you talked about how it is important to get some sort 

of basic education going into high school, and that is what your 

program is aligned to do, but that is you doing it working with 

schools at the local level. The federal government is prohibited by 

law from coming in and telling schools what needs to be in their 

curriculum. Fact, there is a huge discussion—some would say 

fight—going on now around the country revolving around the Common Core, and we are prohibited from telling high schools what 

they ought to teach. 

And yet, Madam Secretary, in an exchange that you had with I 

think Mr. Tierney, he was asking, well, how are you going to make 

sure that the schools—K-12 schools are doing this? And you said, 

well, it is the states. And then he pressed and you said, ‘‘Well, we 

are going to enforce it.’’ Well, you don’t really have a provision for 

enforcing it. 

So those are challenges that we have to deal with where you 

have some really good ideas that have come forward and you get 

the involvement of business and you get this alignment that is 

working, but we have we have to write policy here mindful of all 

these things—privacy concerns when you are looking at data on 

graduates and how much money they are making and what happens when they cross the state line and all those things. Those are 

challenges here. It is not necessarily a tale of two cities, as Mr. 

Miller said, but it sort of is. 

And so we very much appreciate your expertise and we love 

hearing the success stories—people getting jobs and schools succeeding and people lining up in the volunteer involvement of companies. 

So again, I would echo what Mr. Miller said—real expertise here. 

We appreciate very, very much your testimony and your involvement and thank you for being here today. 

And with that, there being no further business, we are adjourned. 

[Additional submission for the record from Chairman Kline follows:] 

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[Additional submission for the record from Hon. Rau ́l M. Grijalva, a Representative in Congress from the State of Arizona, follows:] 

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[Questions submitted for the record and their responses follow:] 

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[Dr. Dann-Messier’s response to questions submitted follows:] 

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[Whereupon, at 12:11 p.m., the committee was adjourned.] 

Æ 

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