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IMPROVING CAREER AND TECHNICAL EDUCATION 

TO HELP STUDENTS SUCCEED IN THE 

WORKFORCE 

HEARING 

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON EARLY CHILDHOOD, 

ELEMENTARY, AND SECONDARY EDUCATION 

COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION 

AND THE WORKFORCE 

U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED FOURTEENTH CONGRESS 

FIRST SESSION 

HEARING HELD IN WASHINGTON, DC, OCTOBER 27, 2015 

Serial No. 114–33 

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 

Joe Wilson, South Carolina 

Virginia Foxx, North Carolina 

Duncan Hunter, California 

David P. Roe, Tennessee 

Glenn Thompson, Pennsylvania 

Tim Walberg, Michigan 

Matt Salmon, Arizona 

Brett Guthrie, Kentucky 

Todd Rokita, Indiana 

Lou Barletta, Pennsylvania 

Joseph J. Heck, Nevada 

Luke Messer, Indiana 

Bradley Byrne, Alabama 

David Brat, Virginia 

Buddy Carter, Georgia 

Michael D. Bishop, Michigan 

Glenn Grothman, Wisconsin 

Steve Russell, Oklahoma 

Carlos Curbelo, Florida 

Elise Stefanik, New York 

Rick Allen, Georgia 

Robert C. ‘‘Bobby’’ Scott, Virginia 

Ranking Member 

Rube ́n Hinojosa, Texas 

Susan A. Davis, California 

Rau ́l M. Grijalva, Arizona 

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 

Mark Takano, California 

Hakeem S. Jeffries, New York 

Katherine M. Clark, Massachusetts 

Alma S. Adams, North Carolina 

Mark DeSaulnier, California 

Juliane Sullivan, Staff Director 

Denise Forte, Minority Staff Director 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON EARLY CHILDHOOD, ELEMENTARY, AND 

SECONDARY EDUCATION 

TODD ROKITA, Indiana, Chairman 

Duncan Hunter, California 

Glenn Thompson, Pennsylvania 

Dave Brat, Virginia 

Buddy Carter, Georgia 

Michael D. Bishop, Michigan 

Glenn Grothman, Wisconsin 

Steve Russell, Oklahoma 

Carlos Curbelo, Florida 

Marcia L. Fudge, Ohio, 

Ranking Minority Member 

Susan A. Davis, California 

Rau ́l M. Grijalva, Arizona 

Gregorio Kilili Camacho Sablan, 

Northern Mariana Islands 

Suzanne Bonamici, Oregon 

Mark Takano, California 

Katherine M. Clark, Massachusetts 

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C O N T E N T S 

Page 

Hearing held on October 27, 2015 .......................................................................... 1 

Statement of Members: 

Fudge, Hon. Marcia, L., Ranking Member, Subcommittee On Early Childhood, Elementary, and Secondary Education ............................................. 4 

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 9 

Rokita, Hon. Todd, Chairman, Subcommittee On Early Childhood, Elementary, and Secondary Education ............................................................. 1 

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

Statement of Witnesses: 

Hiftalin, Dr. Deneece G., President, Salt Lake Community College, Salt 

Lake City, UT ................................................................................................ 13 

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 15 

Major, Dr. Douglas, Superintendent/CEO, Meridian Technology Center, 

Stillwater, OK ............................................................................................... 21 

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 13 

Johnson, Mr. Tim, Director of Government Relations, National Center 

for Construction Education and Research, Baton, LO ............................... 32 

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 34 

Ricks, Dr. Irelene, Director, Diversity in Life Science Programs, Keyston 

Symposia on Molecular and Cellular Biology, Silverthorne, CO .............. 26 

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 28 

Additional Submissions: 

Ms. Fudge: .........................................................................................................

Prepared statement of Jim Langevin ...................................................... 6 

Thompson, Hon. Glenn, a Representative in Congress from the state 

of Pennsylvania: ............................................................................................

Prepared statement of Career and Technical Education Caucus .......... 10 

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IMPROVING CAREER AND TECHNICAL 

EDUCATION TO HELP STUDENTS 

SUCCEED IN THE WORKFORCE 

Tuesday, October 27, 2015 

House of Representatives, 

Subcommittee on Early Childhood, 

Elementary, and Secondary Education, 

Committee on Education and the Workforce, 

Washington, D.C. 

The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 10:00 a.m., in Room 

2261, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Todd Rokita [chairman 

of the subcommittee] presiding. 

Present: Representatives Rokita, Thompson, Brat, Carter, 

Bishop, Grothman, Fudge, Davis, Grijalva, Bonamici, Takano, and 

Clark. 

Also Present: Representatives Kline, Scott of Virginia and Polis. 

Staff Present: Lauren Aronson, Press Secretary; Janelle Belland, 

Coalitions and Members Services Coordinator; Amy Raaf Jones, Director of Education and Human Resources Policy; Nancy Locke, 

Chief Clerk; Dominique McKay, Deputy Press Secretary; Brian 

Newell, Communications Director; Krisann Pearce, General Counsel; James Redstone, Professional Staff Member; Alex Ricci, Legislative Assistant; Emily Slack, Professional Staff Member; Alissa 

Strawcutter, Deputy Clerk; Juliane Sullivan, Staff Director; 

Tylease Alli, Minority Clerk/Intern and Fellow Coordinator; Austin 

Barbera, Minority Staff Assistant; Denise Forte, Minority Staff Director; Brian Kennedy, Minority General Counsel; Alexander 

Payne, Minority Education Policy Advisor; Veronique Pluviose, Minority Civil Rights Counsel; and Rayna Reid, Minority Education 

Policy Counsel. 

Chairman ROKITA. A quorum being present, the Subcommittee 

on Early Childhood, Elementary, and Secondary Education will 

come to order. 

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to today’s hearing on career and technical education. I would like to thank our witnesses 

for joining us as we explore opportunities to better serve America’s 

workforce. 

Young adults are entering a job market today that is vastly different than the one that existed just a generation ago. Technological advances and the growth of a global economy have significantly changed the kinds of jobs available and the skills required 

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to do them, making quality education and training vital ingredients 

to success in today’s workplaces. 

This new reality has been painfully evident in the wake of the 

recent recession. We are more than 6 years into the so-called recovery, yet millions of Americans continue to struggle with finding a 

good-paying job. Meanwhile, industries critical to our economy— 

health care, engineering, and manufacturing, for example—have 

jobs to fill and not enough qualified applicants to take them, a 

problem we have come to know as the skills gap. 

Recognizing the urgent need to close the gap and put Americans 

back to work, Republicans and Democrats came together last Congress to fix a broken and outdated job training system. The bipartisan, bicameral effort resulted in what we call the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act, a commonsense solution to modernize 

and improve the Federal workforce development system. The Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act will help workers obtain 

skills for 21st century jobs and cultivate a modern workforce that 

evolving American businesses truly need. 

But we still have more work to do. By reauthorizing the Carl D. 

Perkins Career and Technical Education Act, we have an opportunity to help even more Americans, especially younger Americans, 

to enter the workforce with the tools and knowledge necessary to 

compete in the high-skilled, in-demand jobs of our economy—in 

short, to compete in a 21st century world and win. Last reauthorized in 2006, the law provides Federal support for State and local 

programs focused on preparing high school and community college 

students for technical careers. 

Now, unfortunately, many of these career and technical education programs have not kept pace with the changing workforce. 

In a report released by the Counsel for Chief State School Officers, 

education leaders explained that, quote, ‘‘Career education in too 

many of our secondary schools reflects an outdated model that tolerates low expectations and is often misaligned with the evolving 

needs of the current labor market.’’ 

With more than 14 percent of young adults unemployed and the 

highest level of unfilled jobs since 2001, it’s no wonder States have 

started to take action. My home State of Indiana, for example, is 

partnering with local businesses to develop a new high school curriculum that better meets the needs of local communities and ensures that students are prepared to enter high-skilled jobs right 

after earning their diploma. 

As Governor Mike Pence testified at a hearing here earlier this 

year, quote, ‘‘For those students who are not bound for the traditional 4-year college, we must still ensure that they can thrive in 

future careers. And one way to do this is to again make career and 

technical education a priority,’’ unquote. 

By working with the private sector to develop resources for successful career and technical education programs, Indiana has made 

incredible gains over the last 2 years. The State has helped thousands of hard-working Hoosiers join the workforce and attracted 

more good-paying jobs for people in our communities. It’s our hope 

that the success we’ve experienced in Indiana not only continues 

for our State, but is replicated across the country. 

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The goal at the Federal level and what we are here to discuss 

today is how to ensure investment in these State and local efforts 

is paying off for students that we all aim to serve. To help reach 

that goal, we should consider reforms that encourage States to 

align high school and postsecondary course work with the needs of 

the workforce. This will require a look at existing Federal requirements, many of which, in my opinion, are duplicative and can 

hinder State and local efforts to development and implement their 

own successful programs. 

Helping Americans compete and succeed in today’s workforce remains one of the committee’s leading priorities, and today’s discussion is an important part of that effort. I look forward to hearing 

from our panel of witnesses as we work to improve the Perkins Act 

and strengthen support for young Americans as they enter the 

workforce. 

And before I recognize my friend Ranking Member Fudge, I 

would like to note that one of our witnesses today, Dr. Douglas 

Major, is a resident of Stillwater, Oklahoma. On Saturday, the people of Stillwater and the surrounding communities were celebrating 

Oklahoma State University’s homecoming when a driver crashed 

into the homecoming parade. This terrible tragedy injured more 

than 40 individuals and killed four others. 

Dr. Major, or behalf of this committee, I want to extend my deepest sympathies to you, the people of Stillwater, and the entire 

Oklahoma State University community. We pray for the recovery 

of those who remain hospitalized and in critical condition, and we 

lift up our thoughts and prayers to the victims and their families. 

[The statement of Chairman Rokita follows:] 

Prepared Statement of Hon. Todd Rokita, Chairman, Subcommittee on 

Early Childhood, Elementary, and Secondary Education 

Young adults are entering a job market today that is vastly different from the one 

that existed a generation ago. Technological advances and the growth of a global 

economy have significantly changed the kinds of jobs available and the skills required to do them, making quality education and training vital ingredients to success in today’s workplaces. This new reality has been painfully evident in the wake 

of the recent recession. We are more than six years into the so-called recovery, yet 

millions of Americans continue to struggle with finding a good-paying job. Meanwhile, industries critical to our economy – health care, engineering, and manufacturing, for example – have jobs to fill and not enough qualified applicants to fill 

them; a problem we have come to know as ‘‘the skills gap.’’ 

Recognizing the urgent need to close the gap and put Americans back to work, 

Republicans and Democrats came together last Congress to fix a broken and outdated job training system. The bipartisan, bicameral effort resulted in the Workforce 

Innovation and Opportunity Act, a commonsense solution to modernize and improve 

the federal workforce development system. The Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act will help workers attain skills for 21st century jobs and cultivate the 

modern workforce that evolving American businesses need. 

But we still have more work to do. By reauthorizing the Carl D. Perkins Career 

and Technical Education Act, we have an opportunity to help more Americans – especially younger Americans – enter the workforce with the tools and knowledge necessary to compete for the high-skilled, in-demand jobs in our economy. Last reauthorized in 2006, the law provides federal support for state and local programs focused on preparing high school and community college students for technical careers. 

Unfortunately, many of these career and technical education programs have not 

kept pace with the changing workforce. In a report released by the Council for Chief 

State School 

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4 

Officers, education leaders explained, ‘‘Career education in too many of our secondary schools reflects an outdated model that tolerates low expectations and is 

often misaligned with the evolving needs of the current labor market.’’ 

example, is partnering with local businesses to develop a new high school curriculum that better meets the needs of local communities and ensures students are 

prepared to enter high-skilled jobs right after earning their diploma. As Governor 

Mike Pence testified at a hearing earlier this year, ‘‘For those students who are not 

bound for the traditional four-year college, we must still ensure that they can thrive 

in future careers, and one way to do this is to again make career and technical education a priority.’’ 

By working with the private sector to develop resources for successful career and 

technical education programs, Indiana has made incredible gains over the last two 

years: The state has helped thousands of hardworking Hoosiers join the workforce 

and attracted more good-paying jobs for people in our communities. It is our hope 

the success we’ve experienced in Indiana can be replicated across the country. 

The goal at the federal level, and what we are here to discuss today, is to ensure 

our investment in these state and local efforts is paying off for the students we aim 

to serve. To help reach that goal, we should consider reforms that encourage states 

to align high school and postsecondary coursework with the needs of the workforce. 

This will require a look at existing federal requirements, many of which are duplicative and can hinder state and local efforts to develop and implement successful programs. 

Helping Americans compete and succeed in today’s workforce remains one of the 

committee’s leading priorities, and today’s discussion is an important part of that 

effort. I look forward to hearing from our panel of witnesses as we work to improve 

the Perkins Actand strengthen support for young Americans as they enter the workforce. 

Before I recognize Ranking Member Fudge, I would like to note that one of our 

witnesses today, Dr. Douglas Major, is a resident of Stillwater, Oklahoma. On Saturday, the people of Stillwater and the surrounding communities were celebrating 

Oklahoma State University’s homecoming, when a driver crashed into the homecoming parade. This terrible tragedy injured more than 40 individuals and killed 

four others. 

Dr. Major, on behalf of the committee, I want to extend my deepest sympathies 

to you, the people of Stillwater, and the entire Oklahoma State University community. We pray for the recovery of those who remain hospitalized and in critical condition, and we lift up in our thoughts and prayers the victims and their families. 

Thank you for being with us today. 

Mr. MAJOR. Yes, sir. Thank you. 

Chairman ROKITA. And thank you for being able to continue to 

be with us today. 

I now would like to recognize Ranking Member Fudge for her 

opening remarks. 

Ms. FUDGE. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. 

Thank you all for being here today. 

Today we are going to examine the critical role of career and 

technical education programs that prepare our Nation’s students 

for success in college and career. Many of these programs are funded through the Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education 

Improvement Act of 2006. 

According to the Georgetown University Center on Education 

and the Workforce, in the next 5 years 65 percent of all jobs in the 

United States will require training beyond high school. In my home 

State of Ohio career and technical education is available at every 

public high school. Other States should follow Ohio’s lead so career 

and technical education is available at every high school across this 

Nation. 

The importance of CTE cannot be overstated. Its programs equip 

our Nation’s students with the skills they need to succeed and in 

a rapidly evolving 21st century economy. 

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5 

Unfortunately, after harmful sequestration cuts, public funding 

for CTE is at historic lows. It is clear that we should not continue 

to cut funding for critical programs like CTE that engage students 

with an integrated curriculum of core academic content and real 

world, work-based relevance. Instead, we must support high-quality CTE programs. 

Currently, our Nation faces an unprecedented skills gap, and 

CTE programs are integral to closing that gap. We must do everything we can to maintain and strengthen these programs. 

For many years, the Perkins Act has supported the development 

of CTE programs that cultivate in-demand skills among secondary 

and postsecondary students. We must do more to spur innovation 

with the 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. 

Reauthorization of the Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical 

Education Act presents this committee with an opportunity to ensure that all students are equipped with the skills to succeed in a 

rapidly evolving 21st century economy. 

I look forward to hearing from our distinguished panel of witnesses and working with the majority to reauthorize the act. Further, I have received, Mr. Chairman, a letter from our colleague, 

Mr. Langevin, and he would like to enter it into the record. 

Chairman ROKITA. Without objection. 

[The information follows:] 

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Ms. FUDGE. Thank you very much. 

And, Dr. Major, my condolences as well. 

I yield back. 

[The statement of Ms. Fudge follows:] 

Prepared Statement of Hon. Marcia L. Fudge, Ranking Member, 

Subcommittee on Early Childhood, Elementary, and Secondary Education 

Good morning and thank you, Chairman Rokita. 

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

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

of these programs are funded under the Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education Improvement Act of 2006. 

According to Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce, in 

the next five years, 65 percent of all jobs in the United States’ economy will require 

training beyond high school. In my home state of Ohio, career and technical education (CTE) is available at every public high school. 

Other states should follow Ohio’s lead, so career and technical education is available in every high school across the country. The importance of CTE cannot be overstated—its programs equip our nation’s students with the skills they need to succeed in a rapidly evolving 21st century economy. 

Unfortunately, after harmful sequestration cuts, public funding for CTE is at historic lows. It is clear that we should not continue to cut funding for critical programs, like CTE, that engage students with an integrated curriculum of core academic content and real-world, work-based relevance. 

Instead, we must support high quality CTE programs.Currently, our nation faces 

an unprecedented skills gap, and CTE programs are integral to closing that gap. We 

must do everything we can to maintain and strengthen these programs. 

For many years, the Perkins Act has supported the development of CTE programs 

that cultivate in-demand skills among secondary and postsecondary students. 

We must do more to spur innovation in the 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. 

Reauthorization of the Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education Act presents this Committee with an opportunity to ensure that ALL students are equipped 

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

I look forward to hearing from our distinguished panel of witnesses, and 

working with the Majority to reauthorize the Perkins Act. 

Thank you and I yield back. 

Chairman ROKITA. Thank you, Ranking Member Fudge. 

Pursuant to Committee Rule 7(c), all 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 such statements and other extraneous material referenced during the hearing to be submitted for 

the official hearing record. 

[The information follows:]Thompson 

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Chairman ROKITA. I will now turn to the introduction of our distinguished witnesses. 

First off, Dr. Deneece Huftalin is the president of the Salt Lake 

Community College in Salt Lake City, Utah. SLCC is a comprehensive community college serving more than 60,000 students, including approximately 29,000 CTE students. SLCC works with school 

districts in the Salt Lake City area to ensure CTE programs offered 

by those institutions put students on track for high-wage, high-demand jobs. As president, Dr. Huftalin works closely with industry 

leaders to strengthen SLCC’s responsiveness to workforce needs. 

Welcome. 

Next, Dr. Douglas Major is the superintendent and CEO of Meridian Technology Center in Stillwater, Oklahoma. The center provides customized education and training services for individuals, 

industries, and communities. The center partners with local business to align its curriculum with business needs and works with 

local high schools and 2-year colleges to ensure students may receive credit towards both a high school diploma and an associate’s 

degree. Dr. Major is a past president of the Association for Career 

and Technical Education and has served on the Oklahoma Employment Security Commission. 

Welcome, again. 

Dr. Irelene Ricks is director of Diversity in Life Science Programs 

with Keystone Symposia on Molecular and Cellular Biology here in 

Washington. Dr. Ricks oversees the Keystone Symposia’s Fellows 

program, the Underrepresented Scholarship and Early-Career Investigator Travel Award programs, and additional mentoring programs that take place in connection with Keystone Symposia’s life 

science research conferences. She has served as a grants administrator at Howard University and a policy analyst for the White 

House Office of Management and Budget. 

Welcome. 

Mr. Tim Johnson is director of government relations with the 

National Center for Construction Education and Research in Baton 

Rouge, Louisiana. The National Center for Construction Education 

and Research works with the construction industry to create standardized training and credentialing programs for the industry. In 

addition to his work with NCCER, Mr. Johnson has worked as the 

director of training for the Associated Builders & Contractors. 

Welcome to you. 

I will now ask our witnesses to stand and raise your right hand. 

[Witnesses sworn.] 

Chairman ROKITA. Let the record reflect that the witnesses have 

answered all in the affirmative. 

And you may be seated. 

Before I recognize you to provide your testimony, let me briefly 

explain our lighting system. You each have 5 minutes to present 

your testimony. And just like the traffic lights, when 1 minute is 

left the light will turn yellow. I’m not sure a traffic light stays yellow for a minute, but you get the point. 

I can say something about my spouse and traffic. 

When your time has expired, the light will turn red. At that 

point, I’ll ask you to wrap up your remarks as best you are able. 

Members will each have 5 minutes to ask questions of you then. 

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So we’ll start with Dr. Huftalin. You are recognized for 5 minutes. 

TESTIMONY OF DR. DENEECE G. HUFTALIN, PRESIDENT, SALT 

LAKE COMMUNITY COLLEGE, SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH 

Ms. HUFTALIN. Good morning, Chairman Rokita, Ranking Member Fudge, and members of the committee. Thank you for the opportunity to appear today to discuss this important issue. My name 

is Deneece Huftalin, and I serve as the president of Salt Lake Community College, having served at the college in various leadership 

capacities for over 23 years. 

Salt Lake Community College, as you heard, is an accredited, 

student-focused, comprehensive community college meeting the diversities of the Salt Lake Valley. Home to more than 60,000 students each year, Salt Lake Community College is the largest supplier of transfer students to Utah’s 4-year institutions and a perennial top 10 college nationally for total associate’s degrees awarded. 

Twenty percent of our students identify as minority, 10 percent 

identify as having some disability, and last fall 64 percent of our 

incoming students were first generation. We are also proud to serve 

642 veteran students and have consistently been named as a top 

college for veterans by Military Times. 

The college is also Utah’s leading provider of workforce development programs, with more than 28,000 students enrolled in CTE 

courses last year. With 211 certificate and degree programs, SLCC 

offers a breadth of workforce training opportunities for Salt Lake 

County residents. 

Career and technical education programs are designed to prepare 

students to enter the workforce immediately upon completion. Students can enter our college in noncredit or credit-bearing CTE programs and can earn short-term certificates as well as associate degrees. Our CTE programs range from traditional vocational programs, like welding and building construction, to newer programs, 

such as biomanufacturing and digital animation. 

The Carl D. Perkins Act is a vital source of financial support for 

Salt Lake Community College and for all community colleges. Over 

the last several years, as the recession weakened State investment 

toward higher education, Perkins funding was crucial to our ability 

to maintain and grow key CTE programs for our students at a time 

when our enrollment was rapidly increasing. 

For the 2016 fiscal year, Salt Lake Community College received 

approximately $1.25 million in Perkins funds. The college uses 

those funds to improve CTE offerings throughout the institution. 

Acquiring modern equipment is imperative for state-of-the-art 

CTE programs. These programs are costly to maintain and often 

require significant financial investment to ensure we have the latest technologies and equipment to train our students to enter today’s ever-advancing and technical workplace. 

The college has used Perkins funds to purchase a wide range of 

items, such as dental hygiene x-ray view boxes, materials fatigue 

testers, and CNC machining equipment, all items we would be unable to purchase without the Perkins funding. In addition, Perkins 

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quality training in automotive diesel training and building construction, all critical industries which contribute to a healthy economy. 

While Perkins funding primarily supports advanced equipment 

needs, Perkins dollars also strengthen the essential student support services many of our students need to be successful. As we 

strive to increase our completion rates, Perkins funding is essential 

to enhance advising and disability resource center services. 

As I close my remarks, I’d like to share two brief examples of 

how we are using Perkins funding to meet the needs of both our 

employers and our students. 

A few months ago, the Boeing Company of Salt Lake, on behalf 

of several major aerospace manufacturing companies, approached 

the State and its educational partners about working collectively to 

provide more trained workers for the State’s rapidly growing aerospace industry. Within a short timeframe, we created the Utah 

Aerospace Pathways Program. Under this pilot program, high 

school students enroll in a specialized set of courses in aerospace 

manufacturing. 

The students take one semester in high school, followed by a second semester at Salt Lake Community College or the Davis Applied 

Technology College. They then participate in a 48-hour paid internship with local aerospace partners, and upon successful completion 

of their coursework and internship will graduate with a certificate 

in aerospace manufacturing. The certificate allows students to 

begin a career immediately in the aerospace industry at a livable 

wage. 

The training provided through this program will center on machining, fabrication, and composite skills, all CTE fields that are 

increasingly in demand in aerospace and other advanced manufacturing industries. We are proud to be part of this collaborative effort which demonstrates best practices in CTE using local industry 

data to establish relevant, strong career programs between secondary, higher, and industry leaders. 

My second example of CTE at work relates to one of our recent 

graduates. As a single mother of two and a 14-year veteran of the 

United States Army, Darlene needed a career change. Working as 

a concrete contractor, she knew it would be a matter of time until 

the physical strain took its toll. 

Darlene enrolled in our Non-Destructive Testing program with 

hopes of coupling her critical thinking and analytical skills with 

her strong work ethic. Darlene completed in 2 years and received 

multiple employment offers promising exceptional benefits. 

Career and technical education has always been and will be the 

very core of our mission at Salt Lake Community College. The Perkins program is critical to our ability to provide these in-demand 

programs for industry and for thousands of students like Darlene. 

We appreciate your past support of the Perkins program and encourage your current support as this worthwhile program is considered for reauthorization. I would be happy to address any questions 

from the committee. 

[The testimony of Ms. Huftalin follows:] 

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Chairman ROKITA. Thank you for your testimony. 

Dr. Major. 

TESTIMONY OF DR. DOUGLAS MAJOR, SUPERINTENDENT/CEO, 

MERIDIAN TECHNOLOGY CENTER, STILLWATER, OKLAHOMA 

Mr. MAJOR. Thank you, Chairman Rokita, Ranking Member 

Fudge, and all members of the committee, for the invitation to be 

with you today to testify on behalf of Meridian Technology Center 

and career and technical education, or CTE, a topic that I’m very 

passionate about. Today I’m representing Meridian Technology 

Center in north-central Oklahoma, where I serve as superintendent. I’m also a past president of the Association for Career 

and Technical Education. 

Meridian Technology Center is a publicly funded CTE school. We 

offer opportunities in health, trade and industry, information technology, and STEM-related curriculum to a diverse range of both 

secondary and postsecondary students. This morning, I would like 

to take a few minutes to highlight some of the hallmarks of our 

quality CTE programs. 

First, our curriculum is based upon industry-recognized standards and is guided by employers, trade association representatives, 

and community leaders working with our teachers and administrators. This year, 294 individuals are involved in our advisory committees and give us in-depth input on curriculum as well as commit 

to helping our students throughout the year by providing ongoing 

support, job-shadowing opportunities, and on-the-job training placements. 

In addition, Meridian is also involved in statewide industry sector initiatives. For example, we participate in an aerospace consortium in which multiple technology centers contract with the liaison 

between our local schools and the aerospace employers in our 

State. This ensures that our program offerings meet the needs of 

employers and students beyond our geographic bounds. 

Second, we have high expectations for our students to demonstrate the technical, academic, and employability skills they need 

for success. Experience tells us that once engaged in technical curriculum, many students begin to recognize the importance of their 

academic classes. Many also begin to consider college as a viable 

pathway for the first time. 

We encourage our students to be prepared for entry into postsecondary opportunities, regardless of whether that is their immediate 

plan or not. Through our Citizenship Ready efforts, including working with career and technical student organizations, we help students learn the employability skills that businesses want in addition to their technical skills. 

Third, we focus on career exploration opportunities and career 

guidance and counseling. Students too often pass through the educational system without a plan for their future. Meridian uses some 

of our Perkins funds for career exploration and guidance to ensure 

that all students, even prior to their enrollment at Meridian, can 

access information that will help them make smart career decisions, an area that we would like to see expanded in the use of Perkins earlier in the educational cycle for more career exploration. 

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Fourth, our coursework is relevant to students, and for many the 

opportunity to participate in CTE courses as a high school student 

is the hook that keeps them in school. Because our courses are 

typically project based and address real world problems, it’s easy 

for students to find a purpose in the curriculum. For example, a 

student who aspires to be a labor and delivery nurse can apply 

their science, English, and math lessons in clinical rotations at 

their local hospital while still in high school. 

For the vast majority of secondary students, the opportunity to 

participate in applied learning provides them with the engagement 

for success and has resulted in higher graduation rates on our campus, 98.7 percent, compared to the rates of our partner schools, 

ranging from 75.5 percent to 95 percent. 

Finally, we work to ensure that there are clearly defined pathways for our students, or Programs of Study as they are defined 

in Perkins, from secondary to postsecondary education. In many 

curriculum areas, Meridian works with degree-granting institutions 

to ensure that our programs of study aligns with theirs. Students 

who graduate from Meridian have the opportunity to receive higher 

learning credit at those institutions and may earn up to half of the 

credits they need for a 2-year degree while still in high school. 

Through my involvement in ACTE, I’ve had the opportunity to 

visit numerous other States and have discovered that my school is 

not unique. High-quality CTE programs are prevalent across this 

country and have success rates similar to ours. We need to shine 

a spotlight on these programs to make sure that all students are 

given the opportunity to learn in a way that meets their needs in 

an applied, hands-on learning environment. 

At the Federal level, the reauthorization of Perkins is Congress’ 

opportunity to ensure that these learning experiences are available 

to every student nationwide. As Congress considers reauthorization, I would like to encourage emphasis on the high-quality elements that have made Meridian a success, but in a way that allows 

local flexibility for each educational institution to meet the needs 

of their students and their local economic environment. We also 

need more resources to support more students. CTE should be recognized as an integral part of a robust education system, and Perkins funds should be available to all schools that are willing to embrace quality. 

In closing, I would love to see CTE embraced as a way to engage 

students in a rigorous academic study and prepare them for postsecondary success, whether that takes them directly into a career 

or further study, and I strongly believe that this should be the new 

norm for our K-12 education system. 

Again, thank you for the opportunity to provide testimony, and 

I look forward to your questions. 

[The testimony of Mr. Major follows:] 

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Chairman ROKITA. Thank you, Doctor. 

Dr. Ricks, you are recognized for 5 minutes. 

TESTIMONY OF DR. IRELENE RICKS, DIRECTOR, DIVERSITY IN 

LIFE SCIENCE PROGRAMS, KEYSTONE SYMPOSIA ON MOLECULAR AND CELLULAR BIOLOGY, SILVERTHORNE, COLORADO 

Ms. RICKS. Good morning, Chairman Rokita, Ranking Member 

Fudge, and members of the subcommittee. Thank you for the opportunity to submit testimony to the Committee on Education and 

the Workforce and to share my perspective on improving career 

and technical education to help students succeed in the workforce. 

Specifically, I will discuss the role of the importance of technical 

education in the development of career pathways in nontraditional 

fields for underrepresented groups. 

For more than 25 years I have served as an educator, advocate, 

and social science researcher. I currently serve as the director of 

Diversity in Life Sciences for Keystone Symposia on Molecular and 

Cellular Biology in Silverthorne, Colorado. My responsibility is to 

manage programs to serve underrepresented, or what we call UR 

students, postdoctoral Fellows, and early career scientists, including our flagship Fellows programs for UR assistant professors and 

research scientists. Many of the UR researchers who participate in 

our meetings and professional development programs come from 

public and private universities in States represented by members 

of this committee, including but not limited to institutions such as 

Emory, Stanford, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of 

Virginia, the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and Michigan State 

University. 

I am also a member of the Board of Directors of the Augustus 

F. Hawkins Foundation, a public education and workforce foundation founded by and subsequently named after the former chairman of this distinguished committee. 

In the past, career and technical education, or CTE, was associated with vocational education as a training platform for low-income and immigrant populations who had little access to more 

highly paid jobs that require formal postsecondary education. And 

in the past, CTE teachers were fairly low-salary workers. But according to 2012 Bureau of Labor Statistics, the median salary for 

CTE teachers was $51,910, placing those teachers squarely into the 

American middle class. 

A 2014 U.S. Census report cited statistics that non-Hispanic 

Asians were most likely to hold a bachelor’s degree or higher, followed by non-Hispanic whites. While 31 percent of Asians hold a 

bachelor’s degree as their highest level of attainment and 18 percent hold an advanced degree, 20 percent of non-Hispanic whites 

hold a bachelor’s degree and 12 percent an advanced degree. 

However, Blacks and Hispanics of any race were most concentrated at lower levels of educational attainment. Only 39 percent of Blacks and Hispanics reported high school completion as 

their highest level of traditional educational attainment, and 13 

percent of blacks and 28 percent of Hispanics or Latinos did not 

complete high school at all. 

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When you total this, nearly 41 percent of minorities, African 

Americans and Latinos, don’t complete high school. These are 

shocking numbers for any Nation, but for the most industrialized 

Nation in the world, an inability to ensure secondary educational 

completion signals a critical failure in the system. If students are 

unable to master basic skill sets—that’s reading, writing, computation, and critical thinking—it is far more difficult for them to secure and sustain gainful employment. 

However, one of the advantages of CTE is its emphasis on technical training and soft skills development, such as interviewing 

techniques, job persistence, and interpersonal communication. 

Short-term education is a possible way to lift groups, including 

Latinos and African Americans with low levels of educational attainment, into better economic standing. Recent economic challenges have pushed many Americans towards short-term education 

options and this short-term education may pay off. CTE programs 

and the credentials that they offer provide access to higher wages, 

higher-demand jobs, particularly in emerging industry sectors. Almost 30 percent of people with less than an associate’s degree, including licenses and certificates, earn more than many of the average bachelor degree recipients. 

It is a fact that many Americans do not attend college. However, 

as a birthright, every American expects to have a job that allows 

them to feed their families, have access to affordable health care, 

and live with dignity. Fortunately, although CTE was once stigmatized and relegated to the dungeons of education, it is now considered as a viable opportunity for both nontraditional and collegebound students. In fact, just this year, the United States Presidential Scholars Program established a new category of outstanding scholars in CTE. 

The resurgence of apprenticeship programs is a welcome addition 

to the CTE portfolio, and I am pleased that legislation such as the 

Apprenticeship and Jobs Training Act of 2015 are gaining currency. 

I thank the members of the committee for the opportunity to share 

a realistic perspective of how CTE can serve as a transformative 

toolkit for the education and workforce development of U.S. current 

and future labor markets. I look forward to your questions. 

[The testimony of Ms. Ricks follows:] 

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Chairman ROKITA. Thank you, Doctor. 

Mr. Johnson, you are recognized for 5 minutes. 

TESTIMONY OF MR. TIM JOHNSON, DIRECTOR OF GOVERNMENT RELATIONS, NATIONAL CENTER FOR CONSTRUCTION 

EDUCATION AND RESEARCH, BATON ROUGE, LOUISIANA 

Mr. JOHNSON. Good morning, Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member 

Fudge, members of the subcommittee. My name is Tim Johnson, 

and I serve as senior director of governmental relations for the 

NCCER. Thank you for letting us participate in this hearing this 

morning. 

NCCER is a not-for-profit 501(c)(3) educational foundation created in 1996 as the National Center for Construction Education 

and Research. It was developed with the support of more than 125 

construction CEOs and various associations, including the Associated Builders & Contractors and the Associated General Contractors, and academic leaders, who united to revolutionize training for 

the construction industry. 

Sharing the common goal of developing a safe and productive 

workforce, these companies and their organizations created a 

standardized training and credentialing program for the commercial and industrial construction industries. This progressive program has evolved into curriculum in more than 70 craft areas and 

a complete series of more than 70 assessments offered by 700 

NCCER accredited sponsors in more than 5,000 training locations 

across the United States. The NCCER programs and processes annually engage more than a half a million—500,000—individuals. 

Our Board of Trustees is a who’s who of industry: ExxonMobile, 

Shell, DuPont, Bechtel, Fluor, Jacobs, Turner Industries, Performance Contractors, ISC Constructors. We also have board members 

from organizations—great organizations—like Skills USA and the 

Association for Career and Technical Education. 

NCCER develops standardized construction and maintenance 

curricula and assessments with portable credentials. These credentials are tracked through our registry and allow organizations and 

companies to confirm the qualifications of their craft professionals 

and/or check the qualifications of possible new hires. NCCER’s registry also assists craft professionals by maintaining their records in 

a secure database. 

Our workforce development process of accreditation, instructor 

certification, standardized curriculum, registry, and assessment 

certification is a key component in the construction industry’s 

workforce development efforts. NCCER also drives multiple initiatives to enhance career development and recruitment efforts for the 

industry, primarily through our Build Your Future campaign. 

NCCER is headquartered in Alachua, Florida, and is affiliated 

with the University of Florida’s M.E. Rinker School of Construction 

Management. And I will tell you, as a proud LSU Tiger, that’s 

sometimes difficult for me to say. 

The NCCER is a believer in and supporter of career and technical education. We believe that CTE is being transformed across 

the United States and great pockets of excellence have been created. Our challenge is to take these pockets of excellence and turn 

them into standard practices based on regional and specific needs. 

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We must place additional focus on what I call the Four P’s of 

CTE: Public policy and public perception. The focus of my remarks 

today will be the critically important link between industry-specific 

needs and the education and training that CTE programs provide. 

All of the NCCER programs and processes are driven directly by 

our industry partners. Our 70-plus craft curriculum titles are developed and regularly updated by construction industry subject 

matter experts. For example, our process identifies and brings together some of the premier electricians in the United States to 

originally develop and constantly update our electrical programs. 

We must ensure that what is being taught includes the very latest 

technology and practices in all of our programs. The NCCER does 

just that. 

We are working in other ways to more closely link industry and 

education. We have developed the Construction Career Pathways 

initiative to provide guidance, best practices, and practical tools 

that can be used by industry and education to connect. This initiative has created an online connection map that allows industry representatives and educators to connect locally. By providing a 

fillable form to list contact information and needs, local teachers 

can find contractors in their area that are willing to help with their 

programs through presentations, curriculum guidance, and/or career events. 

We also know that successful CTE programs must identify and 

employ skilled and capable instructors. I had the great pleasure of 

managing a large, privately funded craft training program for a 

number of years and I learned very quickly that instructors are the 

lifeblood of any training program. I say often that it is easier to 

turn a pipe fitter into a teacher than it is to turn a teacher into 

a pipe fitter. That means no disrespect for professional educators. 

I come from a family of them. 

The key to CTE is to find skilled professionals who have some 

communication skills and provide them with the instructional 

training and resources they need. The NCCER does this through 

our Instructor Certification Training Program and our Master 

Training Program, and these programs ensure that individuals who 

instruct in our accredited programs have the craft and teaching 

skills to bring learning to life for their students. 

In my home State of Louisiana, where more than $80 billion of 

industrial development expansion has been announced, the NCCER 

is helping to drive great collaboration between industry, the contractors who build and maintain their facilities, educational providers, State government agencies. The Louisiana Department of 

Education, K through 12, and the Louisiana Community and Technical College System are both accredited by the NCCER to provide 

our programs and processes. 

The NCCER has developed into one of the premier workforce development organizations in the United States, and that success can 

be directly linked to the fact that we are and have been from our 

inception specifically driven by industry needs. 

We look forward to your questions. 

[The testimony of Mr. Johnson follows:] 

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Chairman ROKITA. Thank you, Mr. Johnson. I appreciate that. 

Let me start the subcommittee’s questioning session by recognizing the chairman of the full Committee of Education and the 

Workforce, the gentleman from Minnesota, Mr. John Kline. 

Mr. KLINE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for the courtesy and for 

the hearing. 

I thank the panel of witnesses. You’re a terrific, terrific panel of 

witnesses. 

We have been grappling with how do we organize Federal efforts 

and how do we spend Federal money to good end, and what we’ve 

heard for a long time was that industry just couldn’t find people 

with the skills that they needed, they just couldn’t find them, and 

schools were providing skills that weren’t needed. And so we went 

through quite a process here of looking at WIA, the Workforce Act, 

and we came up with WIOA. I don’t know how we actually came 

up with that name, but we’ve got a new system. 

So, again, all of this was designed, if we’re going to put taxpayer 

money into this, and if we’re going to do something to help people 

who need jobs and to help industries who need workers, it ought 

to work, it ought to come together and not be working across purposes. 

So, Dr. Huftalin, you talked about partnering with local employers, and I think we’re seeing evidence of that around the country. 

What kind of relationship do you have with these workforce development boards? Do you have partners there? Are you part of it? 

How is that working under the new rules? 

Ms. HUFTALIN. Let me share, one of our examples is the Utah 

Aerospace Pathways Program which I talked about. And I think 

part of the beauty of that program is that we literally have those 

industry partners at the table with us, not only for curriculum, but 

we’re in the process of planning and building a brand new career 

and technical education building. That building is located in the industry area, so we’re literally right across the street from Boeing 

and several other aerospace partners, with the idea that these industry leaders can not only help us with curriculum and state-ofthe-art training and equipment needs, but can also provide internship opportunities for our students and job-shadowing partnerships, so that it’s a very applicable training that they receive right 

there in that kind of industry corridor. 

So there’s more than just curriculum that industry can be involved in. They can be involved in industry, partnerships, and onthe-job training. They’ve also been very, very helpful with us in the 

legislative session in trying to help our economic development. Our 

Governor understands the importance of this training opportunity 

for the Utah citizens. 

Mr. KLINE. That’s a good report. I like to hear that. But what 

about the workforce development boards? You go to a one-stop, Salt 

Lake probably has one, are you connected with that? Somebody 

goes in there, they are out of a job, they are looking for help, how 

do they get connected to you, Salt Lake Community College? 

Ms. HUFTALIN. So we work with our division of workforce services quite carefully. Is that the work board that you’re referring to? 

Mr. KLINE. Yes. 

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Ms. HUFTALIN. We work with them quite carefully in terms of 

grants that they offer us to develop particular skill-based programs 

that they are seeing industry needing, and they’ve got underemployed or unemployed workers that need those jobs. They work 

with us to provide funding to ramp up specific state-of-the-art curriculum that those students can then benefit from and get into the 

workforce. 

So there’s a strong connection between what our local industry 

leaders are saying they need help with, what our division of workforce services is funding, and the training that we provide at Salt 

Lake Community College. 

Mr. KLINE. Great. Thank you. 

Dr. Major, basically the same question. What kind of partnerships does Meridian Tech have with the local workforce development agencies? 

Mr. MAJOR. We have a very close working relationship with the 

workforce development board in our area and have a representative 

of our school that serves on the board. As a result, we’re able to 

provide information to them about the opportunities for students at 

Meridian Technology Center, and we have several students who 

are funded through the workforce funds to attend school on our 

campus. 

Mr. KLINE. Okay. Thank you very much. 

I yield back, Mr. Chairman. 

Chairman ROKITA. I thank the gentleman. 

Ranking Member Scott, you’re recognized for 5 minutes. 

Mr. SCOTT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate the opportunity. 

And I want to thank our witnesses. 

I want to follow up with one of the questions the chairman mentioned. Ms. Huftalin, in working with the various agencies, how do 

you make sure that you’re training the right number of people, not 

too many and not too few? 

Ms. HUFTALIN. Part of what we’ve looked at with several different industry sectors is job projections, and within those job projections, jobs that are going to help our students get a livable wage 

or above a livable wage. So that we really target particular clusters, what is the job necessary, and how many of those are likely 

to be developing in the next projected, let’s say, 2 to 3 years. 

So for instance, in our new career and technical education building that we are creating, we’ve looked at about, maybe at the 28 

programs that we’re going to offer there, which are the ones that 

show a growing need, which are the ones that our industry, local 

industry leaders are saying they cannot fill. And we work with 

them to try to increase wages when necessary to make them a popular and livable wage, but we also then work with our faculty to 

develop the curriculum to allow the students to take up opportunities of that training. 

Mr. SCOTT. Thank you. 

Dr. Ricks, career training used to be known as vocational education, which traditionally was a dumping ground for people that 

weren’t going to make it academically. Can you say a word about 

how important it is that the career training include the basics, so 

if a person wants to get into career training and decides, ‘‘Well, 

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maybe I want to go to a 4-year liberal arts college after all,’’ that 

they are not left behind? 

Ms. RICKS. It’s actually quite critical that the basic skills are 

adopted in the CTE programs, because one of the things that employers are finding, and it doesn’t matter what industry, including 

the biomedical sciences, is that students are coming into the workforce very poorly prepared to write, to think critically, to be creative in the ways that they approach a problem. 

So CTE curricula typically offer those kinds of opportunities for 

their participants. So they build in on-the-job training, so they give 

them scenarios, they set up case studies for them to learn how to 

learn on the job. And I think that that is critical. I think it’s critical 

for everyone. 

Even in the industry that I’ve been working in for the last 20 

years, with biomedical science researchers, those skills are still 

very important for them. Whether they’re going to NIH, whether 

they’re going to the National Science Foundation for research 

grants or to conduct research, those are critical stills, and CTE provides those skill sets. 

And I think we have typically sort of divided students based on 

who’s going to college, who’s not going to college, what kinds of 

skill sets are needed. And that’s really an artificial construction, 

because everyone needs the same skill sets. Everyone needs to 

know how to think, how to read, and how to write well. 

Mr. SCOTT. And so if someone gets in a career track, it’s never 

too late to switch back to an academic track and go to college. 

Mr. Johnson, did you want to comment? 

Mr. JOHNSON. I did. Thank you, Mr. Scott. Because I think that’s 

part of this public perception that we have to deal with in CTE. 

We used to think that, you know, if you’re bright you go to the 4- 

year university, if you’re not you go into some other track. I will 

tell you that a good layout pipe fitter will do as many mathematic 

calculations in his or her workdays as an engineer will do, and they 

are no less critically important. 

And so we’ve got to change that perception, and the CTE programs that provide those basic skills have to do it. 

Two things. One is that we use terminology often as well. We 

refer to CTE track programs as middle-skill jobs. I can tell you that 

a highly trained combination welder does not have middle skills. 

That individual has very high-level skills. And so just the words 

that we use sometimes we need to think about in terms of the perception of career and technical education. 

Mr. SCOTT. Thank you. 

Dr. Major, you alluded to the 2-plus-2 program. Can you say a 

word about that? I think you have commented on the others. I 

don’t have much time left, so you can take the rest commenting on 

those two. 

Mr. MAJOR. Okay. I think too often students who enroll in career 

and technical education are viewed as not going to college. What 

we find is that many of our students through career and technical 

education decide that college is the best path for them. 

And so we try to make sure that our students before they leave 

us are ready for that, and so we not only expect them to learn the 

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technical skills, but we also focus on numeracy, literacy, and critical thinking. 

Most students who enter into a community college in Oklahoma 

are 27 years old, which means that they didn’t go there directly 

from high school, but at some point they made the decision to go 

back. Career and technical education needs to prepare those students for when they are ready to go into a college pathway. 

Chairman ROKITA. Thank you. The gentleman’s time has expired. 

The gentleman from Pennsylvania is recognized for 5 minutes. 

Mr. THOMPSON. Chairman, thank you. Thank you for this hearing. Career and technical education is obviously something I’m very 

passionate about, and I happen to believe that of the domestic 

issues that this Nation is facing economically, a robust investment 

in career and technical education training is a solution to many of 

those problems. 

Thanks to the members of the panel for your experience, your 

passion, and your leadership. On behalf of the Career and Technical Education Caucus, which I co-chair with my good friend, Jim 

Langevin, who submitted something for the record already, despite 

some difficult economic times around here, we’ve actually—and I 

think it is an acknowledgement of the importance of career and 

technical education—we’ve actually gotten a plus-up. You know, 

not much, $52 million, it’s kind of minimal in the scale of a $1.3 

billion program, but any kind of a plus-up is a sign of recognition 

of importance, I think. 

Dr. Major, we all know it’s important to ensure that parents and 

students are receiving the necessary information about the vast opportunities that career and technical education can provide. In your 

testimony, your written and your verbal testimony, you talked 

about more flexibility, the use of Perkins money earlier in education to pursue career exploration. Can you put a little more meat 

on the bone of that, just a couple of examples of what and when 

do you think would be effective? 

Mr. MAJOR. I would like to see more flexibility for us to use Perkins funds in the middle school grades with younger children to 

help expose them to career options so that they can determine the 

best educational pathway to get to their chosen profession, recognizing at that time in their life it’s probably going to be more an 

affinity toward an industry sector rather than a specific career. 

Too often children in the middle school aren’t able to see how 

that formal education will affect their future. And so if we have the 

flexibility to provide more career exploration, more career guidance 

in those middle school levels, I think in the long run it will help 

with our high school success and high school graduation rates. 

Mr. THOMPSON. I couldn’t agree more. Long before I came to Congress, I worked on workforce development issues, and it amazed me 

that that time period of middle school was where we really need 

to zero in on, as kids are exposed to so much more today. 

Dr. Ricks, you had noted that, and I’m going to quote you from 

your testimony, ‘‘Fortunately, although career and technical education was once stigmatized and relegated to the dungeon of education, it is now considered as a viable opportunity for both traditional and college-bound students.’’ I certainly agree with you on 

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that, I’m excited about that, but I don’t think we’ve gotten everybody yet. 

So within your research, have you really looked at that—because 

I feel that there’s still a stigma out there among parents, and parents are the leading—I mean, they’re steering the decision making, 

they’re exposing the kids to opportunities. Has your research found 

anything there and anything that would be helpful for turning that 

stigma around? 

Ms. RICKS. Well, one of the things that I’ve discovered is that 

guidance counselors need to be approached. And I think that we 

need to look at it in a collaborative way with parents and guidance 

counselors working together to talk about CTE and the benefits of 

CTE and looking at the professional association of guidance counselors. I attended a meeting, I think it was last year, here in Washington, and they were talking about the role of guidance counselors 

and steering students away from CTE and how they need to be 

brought into the fold. Because surprisingly, many guidance counselors aren’t that aware of CTE. They still call it vocational education. They still see it as a two-tiered system. And so they tell 

their college-bound students not to go into CTE coursework. 

So I think that there can be more effort made in the school. 

Mr. THOMPSON. With the guidance counselors? 

Ms. RICKS. Absolutely. 

Mr. THOMPSON. Now, we have language within the Student Success Act that, hopefully, will be going to conference soon with 

ESEA that really looks at parental engagement centers. Is there 

anything the panel, any of the panelists have anything in terms of 

thoughts in terms of how do we get to the parents and help change 

that stigma, that these are great paying jobs, they are low debt 

coming out? I mean, the facts are all on our side, I think, we just 

need to communicate. 

Dr. Huftalin, you have 30 seconds. 

Ms. HUFTALIN. Congressman, If I can just share, two things I 

would say. One of the things is marketing around the wages. I 

think parents are very, very unaware of the wage data associated 

with many of our career and technical education fields and the 

kind of career their son or daughter can have in that career. So 

wage data I think is critical. 

The other thing I would share is I had no idea what happened 

behind the doors of the Boeing plant. And we went on a tour of 

that Boeing plant and watched them make that horizontal fin. And 

I am telling you, if we had sixth and seventh graders and their parents walking that floor, that would shift dramatically, because it is 

impressive, it is high engineering, it’s high technology, and it’s 

very, very exciting. 

Chairman ROKITA. The gentleman’s time has expired. 

Mr. THOMPSON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Chairman ROKITA. I thank the gentleman. 

Ranking Member Fudge, you’re recognized for 5 minutes. 

Ms. FUDGE. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. 

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ately negative effect education policies have had on Black and Hispanic students. 

The racial divide is compounded when funding streams for 

hands-on, short-term education and career training are cut. We do 

know that funding for Perkins has declined by 24 percent since 

1998, and in particular because of sequestration over the last few 

years. 

Can you tell me how these cuts have affected underrepresented 

students in CTE programs? 

Ms. RICKS. The underrepresented students, because of some of 

these challenges with the budgets and with the lack of parental involvement and guidance from the guidance counselors, has resulted 

in fewer students of color participating in CTE, and that’s a problem. And I think that we need to rebrand CTE. We have tried to 

change the name CTE rather than voc ed. 

So I think that we need to consider creative ways. And I go back 

to what I said earlier about the role of CTE in stimulating creativity and critical thinking in our students. We need to do the 

same here in Washington and in all the other policy institutes that 

look at education in a very serious way. 

And I think what has happened with underrepresented students 

is that they become even more discouraged. And one of the things 

that we study as social science researchers in education is looking 

at the emphasis on role modeling. The less likely you are to see 

yourself in a particular role, the less likely you are to participate 

in that role. And so that’s what’s happened. 

Ms. FUDGE. Thank you very much. 

Mr. Johnson, can you tell me about the availability of CTE instructors and what we can do to help support craft professionals to 

become CTE teachers? 

Mr. JOHNSON. Well, I think there are probably a number of 

things, Ms. Fudge. I will tell you that if you look in the industrial 

sector, particularly along the Gulf Coast, one of the major struggles 

that we have is that there is so much expansion going on and there 

is such availability for high-wage jobs that many instructors who 

may have retired and gone into CTE have decided to go back on 

their tools because they can simply make more money. 

And so a part of it is helping to identify those existing craft professionals, those retired craft professionals who might be willing to 

be instructors. But certainly being able to pay them at a rate that 

makes it attractive to them is a critical part of that effort. We have 

programs in place to begin to help us identify those individuals 

who might be interested in becoming instructors now, but certainly 

the pay rate is one of the issues that we face. 

Ms. FUDGE. Thank you very much. 

Dr. Major, can you provide us some insight as to how CTE programs can more effectively reach secondary school students and engage them in a career path? 

Mr. MAJOR. I think one of the issues we face goes back to the 

guidance and the perception of who CTE is for. And it is true that 

at one point in time CTE was seen as the educational system in 

which students who weren’t going to college could be successful. 

And that is true, but more and more students are leaving our 

school and going into a college pathway. 

CEWDOCROOM with DISTILLER

43 

Like the terminology of middle skills, I think we need to reshape 

postsecondary education and be more cognizant of their many 

forms of postsecondary education, one of which is a colleague degree pathway. But through apprenticeship, through licensed trades, 

through on-the-job training, postsecondary education is a successful 

route to entry and a shorter route to entry for many lucrative careers other than college. 

Ms. FUDGE. I certainly hope you all are successful, because the 

young people I know don’t know how to do anything with their 

hands. So I’m hopeful that we’ll still have electricians and plumbers and brick masons and all those people. 

And with the last about 40 seconds that I have, Dr. Huftalin, you 

have seemingly been very successful at trying to predict the future 

and know what job skills are going to be needed. How do you do 

that? 

Ms. HUFTALIN. I’m not sure I can take that credit one bit. I do 

know that we’re trying diligently in Utah to get better relationships with our job forecasters, with the folks that look at the kind 

of tomography of the State, and to use that in a much more essential way. 

I don’t think we’ve mastered that yet, honestly, but I do think 

we’re being very clear about looking at projected jobs that are going 

to be available and then making adjustments to meet that demand. 

That is just data that we’ve had for a long time, but we haven’t 

shared it regularly. I think our relationship building and our collaboration is stronger than ever, and that needs to continue to improve. 

Ms. FUDGE. Thank you. I yield back. 

Chairman ROKITA. I thank the gentlewoman. 

The gentleman from Georgia is recognized for 5 minutes, Mr. 

Carter. 

Mr. CARTER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

And thank all of you for being here. This is very informative, and 

I appreciate it very much. 

Dr. Huftalin, there’s a technical college in my district, Coastal 

Pines Technical College. It operates a program that’s called Move 

on When Ready. It allows students, high school students, to actually take classes at the technical college to get credit for the classes 

for a college degree as well as for their high school degree. It comes 

at no cost, not even the books are charged for. And it’s very well 

attended, very well participated in. Is this the type of program that 

you see implemented anywhere else? 

Ms. HUFTALIN. We have a very similar program in the State of 

Utah called Concurrent Enrollment. And so students can in their 

high school journey take both general education and/or CTE classes 

as a high school student and earn high school credit and college 

credit simultaneously. And that’s very well adopted across the 

State of Utah. 

We look at curriculum carefully. And I think we’ve been much 

more willing to kind of look at the pathways, and where there are 

no pathways pull back on certain courses, and where there could 

be stronger pathways be very intentional about putting additional 

courses in the high school to allow students to articulate into an 

associate’s degree when they come to the college. 

CEWDOCROOM with DISTILLER

44 

Mr. CARTER. Great. 

Let me ask you something. The way that these funds are being 

appropriated right now is through a formula system. If we were to 

go to some type of competitive grant system, do you see that working? Do you think there would be problems with it? 

Dr. Major, I see you. 

Mr. MAJOR. I think if you move away from a formula process to 

a grant, you’re going to remove the opportunity for many students 

in the United States to have access to career and technical education. The Perkins Act originally was that act that allowed access 

by all students to career and technical education. If you go to a 

competitive grant, you’re going to have some that have access and 

some that don’t have access. 

Mr. CARTER. Anyone on the panel disagree with that? 

Do you think that a combination of both might work? I mean, obviously, if we have a program like this Move on When Ready that 

we’re very proud of in the State of Georgia and that has proven to 

be very beneficial we would want extra funding for something like 

that. 

Mr. MAJOR. And I think history will tell us that we’ve the basic 

grant, but then we’ve also had some additional moneys for innovative programs. And I think that those innovative funds have started some really great movements in the United States around career and technical education. So I think if we do something competitive, it needs to be in addition to the basic grants. 

Mr. CARTER. Okay. 

Mr. Johnson, you mentioned wage disparity in the words that we 

use. I’m always reminded, when I was in the Georgia State Senate 

I chaired higher education, and one of the things that we always 

stressed, technical colleges. And we changed it to technical colleges. 

Is that the case with all of you? Is it now a college or is it still 

technical school. 

Mr. JOHNSON. I think that’s becoming more universal, the technical college. But we think about that as well. We talk about at the 

technical college there are four credit courses and, quote, ‘‘noncredit courses,’’ right? And so if I’m in an entry-based certification 

and I’m going through the process and you tell me that my course 

is not for credit, what kind of imagine does that display? 

So those are the kind of terms, the kind of words that I think 

we need to think very carefully about and look to change how we 

characterize career and technical education. Changing from, you 

know, vo-tech to technical college is a very critical thing that we 

do, but we must continue that process so that we look at it differently. 

Mr. CARTER. You know, again, one of my favorite stories about 

the wage disparity is about the doctor who calls the plumber in on 

the weekend for an emergency. And you’ve heard this. 

Mr. JOHNSON. Yeah. 

Mr. CARTER. Anyway, the plumber’s working on the plumbing. 

The doctor looks down and says, ‘‘How much are you making per 

hour for this emergency call?’’ He says, ‘‘I’m making $150 per 

hour.’’ And the doctor says, ‘‘Wow. I’m a doctor and I don’t make 

that much.’’ And the plumber looks up and says, ‘‘Yeah, I know, I 

didn’t make that much when I was a doctor either.’’ 

CEWDOCROOM with DISTILLER

45 

Mr. JOHNSON. Exactly right. 

Mr. CARTER. But it is true. The last thing is, are you working 

with the businesses? One of the things that we have a problem 

with in Georgia that we’re really concentrating on is identifying 

those jobs that are going to be needed and trying to fill that void, 

if you will, in making sure those personnel are available. For instance, we have two nuclear plants that are being built right now, 

and we’re having welders. And we want to make sure those welders are available, that we’re not having to go out of State to get 

them, that we can provide them there in State. 

Mr. JOHNSON. We work very closely with industry through the 

NCCER and most of our programs also do. It’s critical to make that 

connection. If we think about projecting jobs that will be available, 

as you are doing in your State, we’ve got to get those employers 

engaged at a high level. 

I will tell you that I’ve been in the workforce development game 

for over 20 years now, and I think we’ve done more to change perception and more to connect employers with education over the last 

3 or 4 years than we did in the previous 15 or 16 that I was involved in it. 

So I think we’re headed in the right direction. There’s more work 

to do, but any time we can link an employer directly to a— 

Chairman ROKITA. The gentleman’s time has expired. I thank 

the gentleman for his time. 

Ms. Bonamici, you’re recognized for 5 minutes. 

Ms. BONAMICI. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. 

And thank you to the witness. This is such an important conversation. As, we know that the CTE courses can help prepare students to succeed in careers, but also on college campuses, as we’ve 

discussed, and help them be prepared. 

But that isn’t all. The students also learn the soft skills as well 

as the hard skills, and I know Dr. Ricks mentioned this, like teamwork and the ability to communicate. And that serves them 

throughout their lives, regardless of where they end up in a career. 

The good-quality CTE classes accomplish this while also preparing students to do well academically in postsecondary education 

as well as the workforce. And I really want to emphasize, because 

we’ve been talking a lot about how we message this and what’s 

happened in our conversations, the ‘‘E’’ part of CTE stands for education. So we’re not trying to convert education into job training. 

This is about educating students to be prepared for whichever path 

that they take. 

And I want to mention, we’re talking about success stories, I 

have several from the district I represent. Sherwood High School 

in Sherwood, Oregon, they have an all-girls welding class, fills up 

every year. They also have a program where the students build a 

house. They take architecture classes, interior design, environmental science and construction, and then they build and sell the 

house. It’s a great experience. And they have a mobile fab lab 

where the teacher has an RV and he drives around, not just to 

other schools, but to other districts to help inform their teachers 

about what they can do. 

But the tremendous benefit, and I’ve seen and talked with the 

students who participate in these classes, that they get inherent 

CEWDOCROOM with DISTILLER

46 

benefit from making something tangible. And those lessons are 

really important. Newberg High School in my district has a whole 

range, from culinary classes to CAD labs. And when I was out 

there, they really emphasized the importance of the Perkins funding. Yamhill Carlton High School, which is down in wine country, 

not only do they have a manufacturing class with a local polymer 

manufacturer, they have also started a viticulture class at their 

high school. 

And then there are courses that continue at the community college. Portland Community College has one of the Nation’s top job 

training programs as recognized by the White House, where they 

use an innovative approach to help unemployed workers complete 

short-term stackable credits that give them skills. 

So those are just a few of the examples. 

And Dr. Ricks, I mentioned the all-girls welding class at Sherwood High School and their homebuilding class. Now, that district 

has about 5,000 students. This beautiful pen you might have noticed because we’re in a small room today, that wood pen was made 

by a student at Gaston. They have 564 students total in their entire school district. When their teacher gave me this pen, he talked 

about what this means to the students to actually make things and 

how engaged they are. Warrenton High School, over on the Oregon 

coast, has only 285 students, but they run a fish hatchery at their 

school and have an aquaculture program. 

So, Dr. Ricks, how do you bring high quality academic programs, 

especially to rural and underrepresented communities? And I share 

your concern about—and Dr. Major and all of you on the panel— 

about what a shift to competitive funding would mean. But how do 

you really bring those programs around the country to rural and 

underrepresented students as well as in large urban districts? 

Ms. RICKS. Well, it’s not easy. One of the things that I’ve done 

in the past, I’ve worked in different organizations that have tried 

to especially reach out to rural and underrepresented communities. 

When I was at NOAA, I was on a contract with the Office of Education, and they have a mandate to try to do that. When you talked 

about the aquaculture and fisheries, I thought about NOAA and 

how they’ve been doing that for some time with K through 12 students. 

And there’s a number of activities that the different Federal 

agencies have been engaged in looking at how to build interest, especially because I come from, you know, the STEM background, 

looking at how science, technology, engineering, and math can be 

integrated to grow interest in— 

Ms. BONAMICI. Thank you. I’m sorry to interrupt. I want to get 

another quick question in. 

Ms. RICKS. Oh, okay. 

Ms. BONAMICI. I want to talk about STEAM, integrating art and 

design into STEM. 

Dr. Major, you really talked about the students who consider college as a viable pathway once they get into a CTE course or program. Can you discuss what an effective CTE program can do to 

make sure that students do receive a well-rounded education that 

includes language, art, science, math, other subjects? 

CEWDOCROOM with DISTILLER

47 

Mr. MAJOR. I think we made to make sure that our CTE programs incorporate the use of high-level academics. Through projectbased learning students have to do research. The house that they 

build, they have to do research, they have to be able to read technical documents. So we need to encourage their success in those 

academic studies in addition to the career and technical education 

studies. And that comes as a part of the definition of a high-quality 

CTE program. And we talk about accessibility, but we also need to 

hold programs accountable, and accountable for offering high-quality programs to the students. 

Ms. BONAMICI. Thank you. I see my time has expired. Thank 

you, Mr. Chairman. 

Chairman ROKITA. I thank the gentlelady. 

The gentleman from Wisconsin is recognized for 5 minutes. 

Mr. GROTHMAN. Okay. First of all, I’d like to make a comment. 

I can tell you, I’m 60 years old, I think in my lifetime I have never 

felt that people look down on, or I think Congressman Scott used 

the word as tech schools as being a dumping ground. There may 

be some segments of society where they are bigoted or, you know, 

snobbish people look down on people who didn’t go to a 4-year degree. I think among me and my peer group, when I was coming up 

we never had that idea. And I think it is unfortunate that we had 

people here today use those terms. 

But a question for I guess any one of the four of you. One thing 

that I find in my area is that sometimes when I talk to people who 

run the local tech schools they talk about people with literally a 

college degree going back. I know Dr. Major talked about people 

being an average age 27. I’d like to you to comment as how often 

you do see people who have a full 4-year degree and eventually realize that they got something without a great deal of value and 

come back. 

Mr. MAJOR. I’d like to respond to that. We’re seeing more and 

more students coming back in our postsecondary programs who do 

possess a degree. And what we’re finding is that the rate of change 

in industry is so significant now that the jobs that they prepared 

for when they were in high school don’t exist. And no matter what 

we do, we need to continue to learn. And there are specialized skill 

sets that we’re able to offer through our work with business and 

industry that allow adult students to come back regardless of 

whether they have a degree. 

We recently worked to help recruit an aerospace manufacturer to 

our district. When they arrived in our community they needed employees with a diverse set of skills and we weren’t able to identify 

those. But working with that company, we put specific educational 

programs in, focused on their job descriptions, so that students 

could come back and gain the knowledge and skills they need to 

be successful for that particular company. 

Ms. HUFTALIN. Congressman, I’ll just share that we are also seeing a trend in students that have a bachelor’s degree or beyond and 

then are retraining later in life and coming back and finding a new 

field that they never even knew existed. I can tell you that our 

dean of the School of Technical Specialties is with us this morning. 

His son is a great example of that. Bachelor’s degree in history, returned to our Non-Destructive Testing program 2 years ago, and is 

CEWDOCROOM with DISTILLER

48 

now very well employed in the non-destructive testing field, a field 

he didn’t even know about as an undergraduate when he attended 

the University of Utah. 

Mr. JOHNSON. I would just say quickly too, Louisiana Community 

and Technical College System is seeing that in a big way. Process 

technicians are in huge demand for industry in Louisiana. That’s 

a 2-year associate degree generally. They created a program within 

the Community and Technical College System that says that if you 

have a bachelor’s degree you can now come back and get that associate degree in 16 weeks because of the other academic accomplishments that you have. So innovative programs like that that allow 

those bachelor degree individuals to come back and get their training quickly. 

Mr. GROTHMAN. Okay. One more question. One thing that people 

always are concerned about, or at least I feel contributes to the 

high cost of education today, is the number of nonteaching personnel hired by all institutions of higher learning. 

One of the things I wondered about, I notice—well, Dr. Ricks, a 

couple comments on your testimony. First of all, you say we can 

no longer afford to educate only an elite class of citizens. That’s 

kind of a damning statement about America and I don’t think 

that’s been true throughout my lifetime. Do you really believe in 

America—or when was the last time you really feel we only educated an elite class of citizens in this country? 

Ms. RICKS. Well, when you look at the numbers of the students 

who actually graduate from college, it’s typically, in the Department of Education NSF report, it’s typically students who can afford to go. And because income has been a barrier, it has become— 

and it hasn’t always been—but it has definitely become a system 

that discourages students who cannot afford to go. They cannot afford to persist beyond their first year of undergraduate education. 

And I’m talking about students who did not come in with meritbased or need-based scholarships, just students who are just, you 

know, your average student trying to get into college and graduate. 

So those numbers are— 

Mr. GROTHMAN. Let me cut you off. You’re saying something I 

didn’t expect. In other words, you’re saying right now it’s harder 

to get through college if you’re kind of middle class as opposed to 

the people who qualify for the Pell Grants? Is that what you’re telling us? 

Ms. RICKS. Not in—well, there’s two different issues. You have 

the students who come in need-based, and then you have the students who don’t anticipate the need that they will require to graduate. And so there’s a slight difference there. So you can have students that have received financial aid that still there’s a gap, 

there’s a huge gap between what they receive and what they need 

in order to fully participate in the college experience. And I’m not 

even talking extracurricular. I’m talking about when— 

Chairman ROKITA. The gentleman’s time has expired. 

Thank the gentleman. 

Ms. RICKS. Sorry. I talk too much. Sorry. 

Chairman ROKITA. Mr. Takano, you’re recognized for 5 minutes. 

Mr. TAKANO. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

CEWDOCROOM with DISTILLER

49 

I want to talk about this idea of the people coming back at age 

27. I just spoke to someone today who grew up in a household with 

a mother, a single-parent household. The mother was on food 

stamps. He worked as a box boy full time. Could have qualified for 

the Pell Grant, all these things early on, but worked his way up 

to management in this food supermarket area. Hard-working person, working full time, had a kid. Decided that he couldn’t stay up 

all night dispatching the trucks in the morning, sleeping all day, 

and being a good dad. So he wanted to back and get his education. 

So he never used the Pell Grants, worked his way up. You know, 

did all the things. I mean, he was impelled. 

I’m wondering how many of those kind of folks do we have coming—you know, they don’t even have their first bachelor’s, but 

they’re going to come back and try to earn their first degree. But 

for him to leave the workforce, really, we know that going to school 

full time is probably a good idea for many people in order to complete their programs. 

I mean, how big a segment of the society is this, and do we need 

to do something about it? 

Ms. HUFTALIN. Congressman, I will share with you that one of 

the difficulties we have at the community college is that many of 

our students work. Seventy-four percent of our students work while 

they’re attending. And of those 74 percent, 40 percent work full 

time. So they’re working full time and they’re trying to come to 

school. And very often they choose, because of the realities of that 

schedule, to go at a part-time load, take 9 credit hours. 

Mr. TAKANO. Well, here’s the thing, though. I’m wondering how 

this person got this huge debt, right? I mean, he would have qualified in the front end if we had gotten him in a place to go to community college and then transfer or even just go from community 

college into the workforce. But he would have qualified for those 

all those grants, but he worked and worked and worked and then 

worked himself up to a level, then decided to go back to school, decided, oh, in order to do this I got to take all of these loans to be 

able to go to school full time. 

So the choice is that you work part time, maybe not be as effective in the school as a student. Or at that point in your life you 

don’t qualify for anything because your income was too high, right? 

But his beginnings were, you know, very, very humble. 

So I’m wondering, I have to imagine there’s a lot of people in our 

country that are examples of that. You know, worked really hard, 

his mother was on food stamps, needed to get a job, went through 

various levels of employment and got fairly well paid. But then in 

order to go and get an education, to get a different track, there’s 

nothing for him. I mean, he’s either got a choice of working full 

time and going to school in a job that he’s up all night, he really 

can’t go to—I mean, this is a very specific example. 

But I’m thinking there’s a lot of people in that 27-year-old, 28- 

year-old category that may have already gotten a degree, but many 

of them who haven’t even gotten the first degree, but we don’t have 

an affordable way for them to go back and get training or CTE education. What are your thoughts on that? 

Ms. HUFTALIN. I guess my response to that would be that that’s 

part of the reason why as a community college we keep our tuition 

CEWDOCROOM with DISTILLER

50 

and fees as low as possible. I mean, literally as a returning adult, 

even though you may not qualify for Pell, you can attend—you can 

go for a year of college with us full time and only pay $6,000. 

Mr. TAKANO. Let me switch tracks a little bit. Let’s talk about 

what it means to be college and career ready and how we can improve that transition into a training, you know, either a CTE program or a transfer program. I noticed that you have a lot of concurrent enrollment programs, you have early college. 

What could the Federal Government do to help make this—I just 

spoke to a superintendent who’s reduced his remediation rate by 50 

percent. What can we do to help you all do things like that, reduce 

your remediation rate, get the community colleges to communicate 

more with the high schools and work together? 

Ms. HUFTALIN. I think part of, for my response, it would be that 

continue to hold us responsible for having secondary partners very, 

very deliberately and very intentionally. We have to be able to 

work with our superintendents and our districts and the faculty 

there have to work with our faculty to identify what are the math 

competencies necessary to move without any kind of problem— 

Mr. TAKANO. So high school faculty knows, has a clear idea what 

they need to do to get the kids prepared— 

Ms. HUFTALIN. Exactly. 

Mr. TAKANO.—for both career and— 

Ms. HUFTALIN. And the writing faculty and the communication 

faculty. 

Mr. JOHNSON. SkillsUSA students graduate at a 95 percent rate. 

Those individuals who are involved in SkillsUSA programs, those 

CTE programs across the United States, their graduation rates are 

up at 95 percent. It’s a proven winner. 

Chairman ROKITA. The gentleman’s time has expired. I thank 

the gentleman. 

The gentleman from Virginia is recognized for 5 minutes. 

Mr. BRAT. Thank you, Chairman. 

Thank you all for what you do. I just met with all my career and 

technical folks a couple weeks back. I’ve been working in this Virginia State Senate with some of the leaders there for 7 or 8 years. 

I was a college professor for 20 years. Went to seminary before 

that. I don’t know what went wrong. So I’ve been in education my 

whole life. 

Congresswoman Bonamici says, ‘‘I know what you’re going to ask 

every time,’’ because I ask the same question every time one way 

or the other. But my challenge to you, you’re all doing the Lord’s 

work, et cetera, but there’s a problem in K to 12, and people have 

been asking, the parents, and there’s all this inside baseball up 

here, all these terms, and, you know, like we’re going to fix this 

through policy. And so we’re spending $13,000 a year per kid for 

13 years and they don’t know what business is when they get out. 

It’s unbelievable. 

So you guys are saying let’s find some skills for them. Well, I 

don’t blame you, right? So if you’re coming out and you don’t know 

what a business is and you don’t know about free markets and economics or any of that, then you’re doing the next best step. Let’s 

get these kids some skills and fit them into empty sectors where 

there’s some jobs, right? So I get that. 

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51 

I’ll just go through all for you real quick. Just how can we start 

to teach kids about free markets and get them excited about business? They’re going to spend every waking hour of their life in 

business. And yet sometimes we tell them business is bad, right? 

So the rest of your life, all your waking hours, is going to be spent 

doing something morally bad, right? It’s no wonder the kids look 

at you and go, ‘‘I don’t get it.’’ 

My Governor in Virginia is on the other side of the aisle. He’s 

going around the world doing great stuff. He’s getting jobs from 

China and India and all this kind of stuff. And yet we don’t work 

together to convey that energy to the kids. This is the way it works 

up here in the big leagues, right? All the business people know 

what you have got to do to make money and be successful. But we 

don’t give those secrets to the kids. 

And I’ll just put on my econ hat, did economics for years. The industrial revolution skills, they’ve been with us forever. They didn’t 

cause modern economic growth, I want to be clear on that. And you 

can go look at a bipartisan author, favorite of mine, Deirdre 

McCloskey. She’s got a six-volume set out, she’s a Nobel-caliber 

economist, and I’d recommend that to all of you, on why markets 

matter more than all these other subsets, right, education, skills. 

We have to do all of the above, but if you don’t have working markets for kids to plug those skills in, if you go to a top-down communist society, you got skills, you’re not going to get growth and 

kids won’t end up rich. 

What can we do to pump up and motivate the K to 12 system 

so that the kids are more prepared for the skills when they get to 

you? And I’m not leaving you enough, but if you can just all weigh 

in as you see fit. 

Mr. MAJOR. I’ll start with that. And one of the opportunities we 

have in career and technical education is we hire teachers that 

have the technical content to come into the classroom and help 

them become teachers. When you look at your traditional academic 

teacher, and I had the greatest ninth grade English teacher in the 

world, but her whole professional experience was being a teacher. 

She liked school so she became a teacher. And so she had little 

knowledge as to what business and industry needed from students. 

So I think a way to address that is to provide professional development opportunities for teachers, provide externships for teachers 

that allow them to go out and interface with the business community so they can help make that connection between the academic 

content and the world beyond high school. 

Mr. BRAT. Good. Anyone else? 

Ms. HUFTALIN. I will just share that one of the things that we 

built into the Utah Aerospace Pathways Partnership was that our 

professional development in the secondary schools, the teachers 

had to be part of that training. They had to go to Boeing, they had 

to go to Hexcel, they had to be part of that so that they could be 

on the floor in the environment understanding that particular industry much more clearly than if they would had just been in kind 

of the shelter of their own secondary school. 

Ms. RICKS. I was going to say some of the larger corporations 

have been doing that for some time, like IBM. Their employees give 

CEWDOCROOM with DISTILLER

52 

back and they get community service credit for going into the local 

schools and talking about business, talking about their industries. 

Mr. JOHNSON. I would recommend that you go the NCCER’s career awareness site, BYF.org, that’s Build Your Future. There are 

a ton of resources there that do exactly what you’re talking about. 

Mr. BRAT. Thank you all very much. 

Chairman ROKITA. The gentleman yields back. 

Ms. Clark, you’re recognized for 5 minutes. 

Ms. CLARK. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

And thank you to all the panelists who are with us today for this 

really interesting and important discussion. 

I had a question maybe for you, Mr. Johnson. You were talking 

about students coming back who maybe had the BA and you’re 

quickly allowing them to get that associate’s degree. How do you 

find the balance between helping business fill that short-term talent pipeline and the longer best educational goals for our students, 

maybe sort of the reverse of what you were describing? How do we 

find that balance? 

Mr. JOHNSON. Well, I think part of it is having a clearer recognition about career paths and what’s available. We’ve created a culture that says if you want to be successful you graduate from high 

school, you go directly into a 4-year university, you get a degree, 

and you go to work. And I think that there are so many more pathways. 

We talk about electricians all the time. What if a young man or 

young woman is thinking that maybe they would like to be an electrical engineer at some point? What better preparation could they 

possibly have than to get into a CTE program and become a practicing electrician for a few years, save their money, understand 

what it’s like to work in the field, then go back in to pursue their 

degree? What advantage does that individual then have over the 

rest of the individuals in that program that have come right out 

of high school and gone into that career track? 

So I think a lot of it has to do with understanding clearly about 

career paths and flexibility within career paths. I don’t think we 

talk about that enough. So we’ve all talked specifically about the 

need to ensure that basic education. When we talk about CTE, 

we’re never asking for less rigor. We generally ask for more relevance, right? I mentioned before, that pipe fitter’s got to know as 

much math as the engineer does. 

So I think that the answer to that is more clear understanding 

of the potential that’s out there in each individual career path. 

Ms. CLARK. Great. And to pick up on a discussion we were having with my colleague from California, how do you think the assessment tests and sort of this remedial course work—I hear from 

students in my district that it’s a big barrier. Students, as you were 

talking about, are trying, especially in our community college system, to either balance work or get to that first job as quickly as 

possible while they continue their education. 

How can we do a better job of aligning with the K through 12 

system? And do you have any models that you think are really 

working? 

Ms. HUFTALIN. I think for us at Salt Lake Community College 

we’ve been looking at our kind of developmental education and the 

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53 

major need that students are coming to us with those, both in math 

and writing, and really trying to stem that. As I mentioned earlier, 

we’re working diligently with our math and writing faculty at the 

high school level to try to get that curriculum much more aligned. 

But we’re really looking at accelerated developmental ed, corequisites, concurrent learning, supplemental instruction. So rather 

than make them take isolated developmental courses that kind of 

pushes off their degree, they can take them in conjunction with the 

training that they’re interested in. 

The other thing I would suggest is that we’ve been very intention 

about stackable credentials so that students can take a very shortterm certificate, get out into the world of work, start making 

money for their family, and then as the time is available, come 

back to the college and add to that another credential, eventually 

leading to an associate’s degree. As their career trajectory changes, 

maybe they want to go into management, they can build on that, 

and none of that has been wasted time, if you will, in terms of articulation. 

Ms. CLARK. Great. Thank you. 

And, Dr. Ricks, you have had tremendous experience on bringing 

women and people of color into the STEM field. Can you talk a little bit about that experience in Washington, D.C., and what lessons 

you think that we can incorporated for the Perkins program? 

Ms. RICKS. One of the things that I think that underpins the barriers for women and underrepresented groups is this—and what 

they’re now calling unconscious, biased, or stereotype threat, where 

they feel that they can’t do the work, that they can’t compete. And 

so I think if we give enough opportunities and we provide enough 

role modeling, I think that that goes very, very far. And organizations like the American Women in Science, AWIS, and other groups 

like that have gone very far in making sure that women and girls 

in particular are given these kinds of opportunities to see themselves in the roles that they envision. 

I think we tend to kind of minimize the importance of that, but 

it matters. Like when you look around this room, they’ve done 

studies on how even the Congress, they’ll say, you know, to young 

girls and people of color, ‘‘Do you see yourself becoming a 

Congressperson one day?’’ And more frequently now the answer is 

yes, because they see themselves. And so that is critical in the 

sciences in particular. 

They still do—and I think it’s kind of funny—they’ll do these 

kinds of studies where they’ll ask young children who are the scientists. And typically they will choose a white male in a lab coat. 

That’s changing now. So now you see scientists of different colors, 

different backgrounds, different ages, because it was always someone over 50. Now it’s someone under 50. So I think that we could 

do a lot in doing that. - 

Chairman ROKITA. The gentlelady’s time has expired. 

The gentleman from Michigan is recognized for 5 minutes. 

Mr. BISHOP. Thank you, Mr. Chair. 

And thank you to those of you who are here today to testify. Very 

interesting. 

I’m from the great State of Michigan where we are known for our 

skilled workers. And over the years we’ve kind of moved away from 

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54 

that in Michigan and we’re trying to do whatever we can to ramp 

up our vocational environments again. 

And I’m wondering, I was just noticing, Dr. Huftalin, the Utah 

Aerospace Pathways Program is a fascinating example of partnership between local educators and industries. And I’m wondering if 

you can share with us how that internship program enhances the 

students’ experience. 

And also in that same regard, what advice can you give to other 

learning environments, vocational learning environments, to continue updating their processes and continuing to align with changing needs to ensure they are properly preparing their students for 

the jobs that are available today? 

I ask that question because as I work my way through my district, I note that there is an emphasis on vocational training, but 

I’m not sure that it’s just there to say it’s there rather than being 

dynamic and moving with the economy. We have 96,000 unfilled 

jobs in Michigan, manufacturing jobs primarily, and it’s very important for Michigan, and we’re really trying to get this right. 

Ms. HUFTALIN. First, let me address the Utah Aerospace Pathways Program and how that came to be. When we created the partnership, we had very little time to move on this. And in higher education, it’s rare that things move quickly. So this is remarkable in 

the sense that we were put together in about 6 months and got this 

thing off the ground. 

But one of the things that was always center to that pathway 

was this idea that students would spend time in the industry in 

that 48-hour paid internship. Paid is important because students 

don’t have—a lot of our students, if they’re 27, 28 years old and 

they’re already working in our adult pathway that we’re creating, 

that makes that very difficult, right? 

So young students in high school starting into that pathway will 

have a paid internship on the floor in Boeing, Hexcel, ATK Orbital, 

and really get to see with the real workers there what’s going on 

in that industry, how dynamic that industry is, what does a day 

look like in that field. And we believe that kind of active learning, 

that very hands-on experience is going to definitely enhance their 

learning experience. So that was always part of our idea formation. 

The other piece I would ask or answer about your second question is that I think you have to be very careful. We have program 

advisory committees that are industry and education partners for 

every discipline. And you need to be, I think, mindful of those program advisory committees and the makeup and composition of who 

is on them, so that that’s rotating, that that’s reflecting the new 

energy of an industry, the up and coming innovations in an industry. You get them on the program advisory committee rather than 

people that have been in the industry for maybe 20 years and have 

kind of maybe lost sight of some of the advancements, making sure 

that’s a dynamic composition so that you’re getting the best information about your curriculum. 

Mr. BISHOP. Very nice. Thank you very much. 

And I’d kind of like to, Mr. Johnson, continue with the conversation you were having with Mr. Carter. You were emphasizing the 

importance of partnering with practitioners. And I agree with that. 

And I’m wondering if you could—you were starting to talk about 

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55 

it, and I want to make sure that you had time to speak about it 

and talk about the importance and why you think it’s important to 

partner with practitioners. 

Mr. JOHNSON. Well, if you look at the way NCCER programs are 

delivered, they are delivered, you know, obviously at the local level 

by skilled craftspeople who have gone through an instructor certification and training program very closely tied into construction 

companies that hire the individuals that go through our programs. 

I don’t know of any other way for us to do it, quite frankly, than 

to be closely partnered with the practitioners, with the companies, 

with the individual skilled folks. 

Just a note. We have a lot of available jobs in the State of Louisiana as well, a lot of industrial expansion going on there. I’ve 

seen a study from the Louisiana Community and Technical College 

System that says of the tier one jobs, that’s our five-star and fourstar jobs, these are the best jobs available in Louisiana, some 

15,000 to 20,000 a year for the next 5 years, 85 percent of them 

require something less than a 4-year college degree. 

Now, all of them require something more than a high school diploma, an industry-based certification or associate degree, but 85 

percent of them require something less than a 4-year college degree. So we have to engage those practitioners to develop those 

skills and we’re doing that in a significant way. 

Mr. BISHOP. Thank you very much for that. 

And I yield back. 

Chairman ROKITA. The gentlemen yields back. I thank the gentleman. 

Mrs. Davis, you’re recognized for 5 minutes. 

Mrs. DAVIS. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Appreciate you all being here. 

One of things that you talked about just a few minutes ago was 

sort of that back and forth with industry and the ability of instructors, teachers to really get a sense of what’s going on in the real 

world and be able to translate that for their students. 

I wanted to ask you, though, about the curriculum for CTE 

teachers themselves. You were just talking a little about that. You 

have to know your—if you’re teaching a craft, you sure as heck 

want to know how to do that. But are there some other attributes 

and ways of training for—I think, Dr. Johnson, you talked about 

citizenship ready skills. 

What is it that perhaps within this range of classes is really required of the instructors themselves, the kind of role model that 

those individuals are? What have you seen that perhaps is different, you know, from an English teacher, from a history teacher? 

Mr. JOHNSON. Well, I’ve said often that you can be the best pipe 

fitter in the world. It doesn’t necessarily mean you can teach pipe 

fitting, right? I mean, there are some very specific instructional capabilities, communication skills, motivational skills, the ability to 

connect and attach. 

I think if you look at the way the NCCER programs are laid out, 

generally in four levels, if you are in the core curriculum level one, 

the demand on you in terms of your overall craft skill maybe is not 

as high, and so we can make some allowances at those levels when 

we’re teaching those at, say, the K-12, the secondary level, that 

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maybe that individual does not need to be what we would call an 

A level or journey level crafts person. 

But as we get up into those higher levels, those levels three and 

four, particularly in private programs and at the community and 

technical colleges, we need to make sure that those individuals 

have the relevant skills and abilities and have been in the industry 

so that they’re attached to what’s going on. 

Mr. MAJOR. I might add to that just a little bit. We hire most 

of our instructors from industry. And so when they come in, we put 

them through an assessment, like NCCER, in our construction 

trades, to make sure that they have the technical knowledge. But 

we also look for what other employers look for, and that’s the ability to communicate and work together as a team. 

Once they’re on our staff and they begin teaching, we also put 

them in the role of an adviser of a career tech student organization, 

and the career tech student organizations are our tools to help instill those employability skills to our students. We all learn best 

when we teach. And so as our teachers are guiding and being a role 

model and adviser to those organizations, they too are modeling 

those soft skills. 

Soft skills tend to be a big topic when we have our advisory committee meetings because it’s the first thing that employers want to 

talk about, is how do we enhance that. And so we try to work in 

combination of providing a good balance between the technical, the 

academic, but also those employability skills that students are 

going to need. 

Mrs. DAVIS. These are sometimes very diverse populations that 

people are teaching, perhaps not the way that they grew up necessarily. And so how is that inculcated? I mean, we talk about cultural competency, of course. But what is it that may be important 

even in terms of how we engage, recruit individuals as well within 

these fields? I mean, is that working? Are we seeing the diversity 

that we should have? 

Ms. HUFTALIN. I might just share that at Salt Lake Community 

College, one of the shifts that we’re making, as I’m sure many institutions are making, is the shift from this idea that the focus is 

on teaching to that the focus is on learning. So that you have a variety of students walking into your classroom from very diverse 

backgrounds, age backgrounds, gender, you know, religious backgrounds, and most importantly, academic preparedness, right? 

So our faculty, and I would say faculty in CTE and academic are 

really moving into more about how do we assess the learning 

throughout the semester or throughout in short term so that we’re 

giving students academic confidence early on. Many of our students 

are at jeopardy for dropping out. They’re first generation students, 

they’re nervous, they don’t think they’re college material. They 

need to see early progress, and they need to have early wins to see 

themselves as career ready or a college student. 

And so we’re working with our faculty to help them. How soon 

can you give students really critical feedback? How do you create 

that feedback so that it’s accessible to the student and then they 

can learn from that so that they feel confident and they feel like 

they can persist? 

Mrs. DAVIS. Yeah. Dr. Major. 

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Mr. MAJOR. One other comment that I might add. We have our 

students for 3 hours a day, whether they’re a high school student 

or an adult, and they spend more time with our instructor than 

they do with their own families. One of the things we really talk 

about on our campus is culture and climate. And students need to 

know that you care, you care about them in their technical studies, 

you care about them in their academic studies, but you also care 

about them in their lives. 

And so you can’t measure that, but you can observe that. And I 

can tell you our teachers do a great job of wrapping their arms 

around all of our students to help them succeed. 

Chairman ROKITA. Thank you. The gentlelady’s time has expired. 

I’ll now recognize myself for 5 minutes. 

I appreciate everyone’s leadership and the testimony and trying 

to encapsulate it all here at the end. 

I guess one question I still have, and then I want to yield the 

remainder of my time to the gentleman from Pennsylvania who’s 

going to follow up on the parental engagement centers and maybe 

some other things, is I heard about best practices. I heard about 

things that are going right. I heard about things are needed more. 

Teach the teacher programs and guidance counselor education, and 

that kind of thing. But I’m not hearing that Perkins is prohibiting 

that specifically, right? So this is a hearing that’s ahead of us writing a bill that’s going to reauthorize it. 

So I’d be remiss—it’s not that I’m looking for more work, we have 

enough problems that present themselves quite fully already—but 

I’d be remiss if I didn’t get you all on record to say, hey, what’s 

not working in Perkins, or what can be changed, maybe the focus 

on the State plan, or anything, the requirements there or the fact 

that you have to do two State plans versus maybe one. Any suggestions? Thirty seconds only each, please, if you have anything to 

add. 

Dr. Huftalin. 

Ms. HUFTALIN. I would just add that as you’re looking at any 

kind of metrics or accountability, that you look at consistent 

metrics across multiple acts. So that right now we often have to 

meet different burdens of proof in terms of our accountability using 

different metrics. And to the extent that you could align those so 

that community colleges—so we are all looking at the same things 

for our different requirements, that would be less of a burden on 

us. 

It would also help us as a community college, is that oftentimes 

we are asked to look at metrics that may be not as salient to community colleges as a 4-year institution. So to the extent that you 

can look at completion, that would be great. 

Chairman ROKITA. Great. Thank you, Doctor. 

Dr. Major. 

Mr. MAJOR. I would continue that discussion in saying that I 

think the Perkins Act needs to continue to focus on high-quality 

programs that lead to a recognized outcome, and that in order for 

programs to have access to the funds, that they fall within that definition of high quality. 

Chairman ROKITA. And who gets to define that? 

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Mr. MAJOR. I think that can be defined broadly in the legislation, 

but then also hold the States accountable. The delivery systems for 

career and technical education— 

Chairman ROKITA. So the states could define high quality individually? 

Mr. MAJOR. Within the guidelines of the overall act. 

Chairman ROKITA. And that’s okay with you, Dr. Huftalin, given 

your previous comment? 

Ms. HUFTALIN. Well, I would want met consistent metrics being 

used. 

Chairman ROKITA. Does that include definitions? 

Ms. HUFTALIN. Yes. 

Chairman ROKITA. Okay. See, you’re making our job harder. I 

love it. 

Dr. Ricks? 

Ms. RICKS. I would say to embed some of the principles and practices of Perkins in minority-serving institutions. That includes 

HBCUs, HSIs, and tribal colleges. And also metrics. 

Chairman ROKITA. Would you put specifics in writing to us after 

the hearing? 

Ms. RICKS. Absolutely. 

Chairman ROKITA. Thank you so much. 

Chairman ROKITA. Mr. Johnson, in about 30 seconds. 

Mr. JOHNSON. Can’t improve on what’s been said. 

Chairman ROKITA. Thank you, Mr. Johnson. You made up for 

going over all those other times. I appreciate it. 

I yield the rest of my 2 minutes, 8 seconds to the gentleman from 

Pennsylvania. 

Mr. THOMPSON. Mr. Chairman, you are amazing and generous. 

Thank you. 

I just want to note, in terms of I picked up on a new terminology 

from Dr. Ricks, which certainly applies to career and technical education, the K through gray. I’m hoping for gray. I’m on the losing 

end of that. But the fact is K through gray in terms of career exploration, career preparation, and career launching, mobilization, and 

that’s the exciting part about career and technical education. It is 

the life span. 

This committee has done great work. The Workforce Innovation 

and Opportunity Act. We really focused on just zeroing in on that 

early—not the earliest, but the 16, we have specific language specifically for 16 to 29, you know, trying to help folks break into the 

workforce through the Workforce Investment Act reauthorization 

that is law today. 

And then with ESEA, I want to come back to the parental or the 

family engagement centers. We have language within the Student 

Success Act. That, again, we have to get ESEA done. 

So if we are successful—when we are successful—looking for how 

do we utilize that as a model to utilize to support career and technical education with the family engagement centers? Any thoughts 

and ideas? 

Dr. Huftalin, you talked about emphasizing the salaries, the 

moneys. I think that’s a great strategy. Other ideas? 

Ms. HUFTALIN. One thing I might add is that we are working 

very carefully with the community council in this neighborhood 

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where we’re hoping to build this new building. And I think to the 

extent that you can get the residents of the neighborhood and the 

community in the space to see how state of the art it’s going be, 

to see how exciting the training’s going to be, that could perhaps 

lend some support to the parents really supporting that for their 

family. 

Mr. THOMPSON. Any other strategies come to mind? 

Mr. MAJOR. I think if we can encourage parents to be more involved in their student’s program of study, starting at the earlier 

grades, so that they’re aware of the coursework that they’re taking 

and where that coursework might lead them in the future, would 

be helpful. 

Mr. THOMPSON. Okay. Thank you, Chairman. 

Chairman ROKITA. The gentleman’s time has expired. The gentleman yields back. The gentleman’s time has expired. 

I thank the witnesses again for their testimony. 

And, Ms. Fudge, you’re recognized for closing remarks. 

Ms. FUDGE. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. 

And thank you all so much for being here. 

I have for many years talked about the fact that America once 

again needs to build and make things. We have always been the 

Nation that everyone looked to for quality. And so we need people 

who are skilled to do this work. 

Once we get back to being who we are as a Nation, certainly 

young people will have jobs, and they will see the alternatives that 

you are trying to present. 

So I just hope that you are successful. And I certainly hope that 

this Congress moves forward to reauthorize this act and to once 

again understand who we are as a Nation, that we are the best, 

and that we need to continue to be the best by making sure we 

have a workforce that is able to keep us on the top. 

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. 

Chairman ROKITA. I thank the gentlelady, and I echo the 

gentlelady’s comments. 

In closing, I want to thank our witnesses again. And I appreciate, I really do, your leadership and what you’re doing for Americans’ future, our best asset, our children and our students. 

And with that, seeing no further business before the committee, 

this hearing adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 11:47 a.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.] 

Æ 

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