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S. HRG. 110–789 

MAKING THE CONNECTION: CREATING PATHWAYS 

TO CAREER SUCCESS FOR THE NEXT GENERATION 

OF WORKERS 

FIELD HEARING 

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON EMPLOYMENT AND WORKPLACE 

SAFETY 

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON HEALTH, EDUCATION, 

LABOR, AND PENSIONS 

UNITED STATES SENATE 

ONE HUNDRED TENTH CONGRESS 

FIRST SESSION 

ON

EXAMINING WAYS TO BETTER EDUCATE AND TRAIN THE NEXT GENERATION OF WORKERS TO CREATE PATHWAYS TO CAREER SUCCESS 

NOVEMBER 28, 2007 

Printed for the use of the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions 

( 

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.gpoaccess.gov/congress/senate 

COMMITTEE ON HEALTH, EDUCATION, LABOR, AND PENSIONS 

EDWARD M. KENNEDY, Massachusetts, Chairman 

CHRISTOPHER J. DODD, Connecticut 

TOM HARKIN, Iowa 

BARBARA A. MIKULSKI, Maryland 

JEFF BINGAMAN, New Mexico 

PATTY MURRAY, Washington 

JACK REED, Rhode Island 

HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON, New York 

BARACK OBAMA, Illinois 

BERNARD SANDERS (I), Vermont 

SHERROD BROWN, Ohio 

MICHAEL B. ENZI, Wyoming, 

JUDD GREGG, New Hampshire 

LAMAR ALEXANDER, Tennessee 

RICHARD BURR, North Carolina 

JOHNNY ISAKSON, Georgia 

LISA MURKOWSKI, Alaska 

ORRIN G. HATCH, Utah 

PAT ROBERTS, Kansas 

WAYNE ALLARD, Colorado 

TOM COBURN, M.D., Oklahoma 

J. MICHAEL MYERS, Staff Director and Chief Counsel 

KATHERINE BRUNETT MCGUIRE, Minority Staff Director 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON EMPLOYMENT AND WORKPLACE SAFETY

PATTY MURRAY, Washington, Chairman 

CHRISTOPHER J. DODD, Connecticut 

TOM HARKIN, Iowa 

BARBARA A. MIKULSKI, Maryland 

HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON, New York 

BARACK OBAMA, Illinois 

SHERROD BROWN, Ohio 

EDWARD M. KENNEDY, Massachusetts (ex 

officio) 

JOHNNY ISAKSON, Georgia 

RICHARD BURR, North Carolina 

LISA MURKOWSKI, Alaska 

PAT ROBERTS, Kansas 

WAYNE ALLARD, Colorado 

TOM COBURN, M.D., Oklahoma 

MICHAEL B. ENZI, Wyoming (ex officio) 

WILLIAM KAMELA, Staff Director 

GLEE SMITH, Minority Staff Director 

(II) 

C O N T E N T S 

STATEMENTS 

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 28, 2007 

Page 

Wakefield, Jill, President, South Seattle Community College ............................. 1 

Murray, Hon. Patty, Chairman, Subcommittee on Employment and Workplace Safety, opening statement ......................................................................... 2 

Stadelman, Kris, CEO, Workforce Development Council of Seattle-King County, Seattle, WA ..................................................................................................... 4 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 5 

Aultman, John, Assistant Superintendent, Career and College Readiness, Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction, Olympia, WA ............................. 9 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 10 

Bender, Rick S., President, Washington State Labor Council, Seattle, WA ....... 12 

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

Allen, David E., Vice President of Market, McKinstry Company, Seattle, 

WA ......................................................................................................................... 13 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 14 

Veliz, Carlos, CEO, PCSI Design, Bothell, WA ..................................................... 16 

Osborn, J.D., In Demand Scholar, Snohomish, WA .............................................. 18 

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

Nash, Meisha, Student, New Market Skills Center, Tumwater, WA .................. 19 

Gulliot, Don, Secretary-Treasurer, Washington State Association of Electrical 

Workers, Seattle, WA ........................................................................................... 20 

Harrison, David, Chair, Washington’s Workforce Training and Education Coordinating Board, Olympia, WA ......................................................................... 21 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 22 

Drewel, Bob, Executive Director, Puget Sound Regional Council, Seattle, WA . 24 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 26 

Seaman, Terry, Vice President, Seidelhuber Iron & Bronze Works, Inc., Seattle, WA ............................................................................................................... 27 

Steinhoff, David, Electrician’s Apprentice, Sumner, WA ..................................... 27 

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

Mitchell, Charles H., Chancellor, Seattle Community College District, Seattle, 

WA ......................................................................................................................... 28 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 30 

ADDITIONAL MATERIAL 

Statements, articles, publications, letters, etc.: 

Dave Johnson, Executive Secretary, Washington State Building & Construction Trades Council, AFL–CIO ............................................................ 54 

Pat Martinez Johnson, King County Work Training Program ..................... 55 

Bob Markholt, Program Director, Seattle Vocational Institute Pre-Apprenticeship Construction Training (SVI PACT) ....................................... 56 

Shepherd Siegel, Seattle Public Schools ......................................................... 59 

Linda Tieman, RN, MN, FACE, Executive Director, Washington Center 

for Nursing .................................................................................................... 62 

Letter to Senator Murray from Terry Seaman .............................................. 65 

(III) 

(1) 

MAKING THE CONNECTION: CREATING 

PATHWAYS TO CAREER FOR THE NEXT 

GENERATION OF WORKERS 

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 28, 2007 

U.S. SENATE, 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON EMPLOYMENT AND WORKPLACE SAFETY, 

COMMITTEE ON HEALTH, EDUCATION, LABOR, AND PENSIONS, 

Seattle, WA. 

The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 9:28 a.m. in South 

Seattle Community College, Olympic Hall, Room 120, Seattle, 

Washington, Hon. Patty Murray, chairman of the subcommittee, 

presiding. 

Present: Senator Murray. 

STATEMENT OF JILL WAKEFIELD, PRESIDENT, SOUTH 

SEATTLE COMMUNITY COLLEGE, SEATTLE, WA 

Ms. WAKEFIELD. I’ll stand close to my microphone. Good morning. My name is Jill Wakefield, and I serve as president at South 

Seattle Community College. As I have reminded myself, I did a 

quick check—about five times, I’ve done a quick check to make 

sure that my cell phone is off, so some of you might want to do the 

same thing, just to double check. 

On behalf of our faculty, our staff and students, I’m pleased to 

welcome U.S. Senator Patty Murray to this field hearing of the 

Senate Subcommittee on Employment and Workforce Safety, which 

Senator Murray chairs. 

As we try to tackle the needs in our global economy, Senator 

Murray has been a leader on education and workforce issues for 

Washington State and for the Nation. She’s been a champion for 

our students and for preparing them for the jobs for the future. She 

works tirelessly to ensure that the needs of our employers are met 

so that our local economy can continue to grow and thrive. I believe 

that some of this commitment may have come from her experience 

and leadership at Shoreline Community College, providing her with 

great preparation as a Washington State Senator and now in the 

U.S. Senate, where she is our senior Senator, serving her third 

term. 

We’re especially honored to host this hearing at South Seattle, 

because we are very active in today’s topic of creating pathways to 

career success. In September, 2 months ago, we began our first RN 

program, one that started several years ago as a CNA program 

that led to an LPN program, and now we have the third piece, the 

component of that, the RN program. Almost 90 percent of those 

2 

students are English-language learners. This fall, we also started 

our bachelor of applied science degree program in hospitality management, making it possible to start in the laundry room and work 

up to the boardroom, building on high school and community college culinary, hospitality, and business programs, providing pathways to higher-level employment. 

Senator Murray also is a strong supporter of our apprenticeship 

program, where South provides one-third of the State’s apprenticeship training down at our campus at Georgetown. Most recently, 

we’re taking leadership in providing green technology for building 

trades. 

We’re so honored that you’re here to lead this discussion of solutions as we move together to create a bright future for our community and our residents. Welcome, Senator Murray. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR MURRAY

Senator MURRAY. Thank you very much. 

Well, with that, this official hearing will be called to order. First, 

Jill, let me thank you very much, for you and your tremendous 

team here at South Seattle Community College, for being very gracious hosts for our very first field hearing of the Senate Employment and Workplace Safety Subcommittee. 

Let me also thank all of our witnesses who are taking time out 

of busy schedules to be here today to join us in this very important 

discussion on how we can better educate and train a new generation of workers. 

Before I begin, I want to give a brief explanation of the procedure 

that we’re following here today. This is an official U.S. Senate 

hearing, and, because of that, we have to follow the same procedures that we would be using at a hearing that would be held in 

Washington, DC. That means that our testimony this morning is 

limited to the invited witnesses, and that we have a court reporter 

here, who is creating a formal record of our proceedings. Unfortunately, what that also means is that we are not allowed to take 

questions or comments from the audience during the hearing, but 

I do want to make sure that everyone here has an opportunity to 

share their view, if they so desire. 

We do have comment forms that are available for all of you, if 

you would like to fill them out. I have a number of staff members 

who are here with me, as well. If you have an additional comment 

or question or some issue that you would like to add, please feel 

free to find one of our staff members—there is a desk outside, 

where you can locate them and give them your additional comments. We are interested in all of your questions and comments, 

so please make sure to take the time to do that, if you are in the 

audience today. 

I also want to encourage all of you, if you are interested, to visit 

my official Web site. You can use that to sign up for updates on 

education and other critical issues that we’re working on in the 

U.S. Senate. There’s a lot of information there, and we invite you 

to look at that Web site and use that as an access point, as well. 

Again, I have a number of staff members here, and encourage 

you to contact them afterwards if you would like to provide additional information. 

3 

Let me begin this hearing by saying that I have traveled intensively around the State, and I’ve had the opportunity to talk to 

workers, employers, teachers, students and families about Washington State’s education and workforce needs. I was up in Bellingham recently, and I heard from our shipbuilders that they are 

desperate for workers in the shipbuilding industry. There are a lot 

of contracts out there they’d like to bid on, the work is there, but 

they are limited by the fact that they don’t have enough workers 

to be able to build those ships here in the Puget Sound region. 

I was talking to some leaders in Spokane recently who are trying 

to develop some of their infrastructure, highways and bridges, critical to the economic development there. They were limited by the 

fact that they couldn’t get enough construction workers to actually 

do those jobs. I’m also hearing a lot about an emerging need for 

skilled workers here for the green jobs that are going to be available in the near future. There are a wide range of other highly 

skilled jobs that are in demand all across our region. It’s become 

very clear to me from all of these experiences that, in order for our 

State, our economy and our communities to remain strong, we have 

to focus on the connections between secondary education, higher 

education, and workforce development. I believe it’s time to create 

a seamless system to help all of our students go on to successful 

careers while also meeting the needs for skilled workers here in 

our region. I know this work can’t be done individually, but, rather, 

all of us have to come together to help our students navigate their 

way from high school to postsecondary education and on to careers. 

That will help us ensure that our State’s workforce needs are met, 

and it will make sure that our students are prepared to get the 

jobs that will be out there in the future. 

Today, we are taking the first step by coming together. The partnerships I hope we develop here will be the engine that drives that 

effort. In fact, to reinforce the importance of building these partnerships, I decided to break away from the traditional format for a 

congressional hearing that would have panels in front of us with 

individual witness statements and formalities. Instead, what I decided to do was have this more informal roundtable format that I 

think will provide us all with an opportunity to listen, learn and 

to share the tremendous wealth of experience that we have here 

today. 

Right now, the United States is struggling to address the gap 

that exists between the need for a highly skilled workforce and the 

shortage of highly skilled workers. Our Nation is also struggling to 

make sure that students stay in school and graduate prepared to 

enter college and the workforce. Today here in Washington State, 

there are about 87,000 job vacancies—87,000 job vacancies—but we 

have over 145,000 people who are unemployed and looking for 

work. We also know that in past generations workers often only 

needed a high school education to secure a good-paying job. Today, 

we know that 70 percent of the new jobs being created require a 

college education, and that percentage is likely to increase and rise 

in the future as the United States continues to transition from a 

manufacturing- to an information-based economy. Each of us recognizes that in the global economy, the path to economic success depends on education. Currently, though, many of our students are 

4 

struggling. For every 100 ninth-grade students in the State of 

Washington, only 70 of them will graduate from high school in 4 

years. About half of all African-American and Hispanic ninth-graders leave school without a diploma. Half. Almost 10 percent of 

Washington State teens between 16 and 19 are not enrolled in 

school and are not working. Most new jobs and almost all familywage jobs require at least some education and training beyond high 

school, even at the entry level. Students need both academic learning and career skills in order to succeed in our global economy. 

Thomas Friedman has described this new global economic connectedness as a flattened world. This new, flat, competitive landscape requires that our students here in Washington State and our 

youth across the country are more highly educated than our youth 

from the past, and not only must our young people be more knowledgeable when they start their work lives, they must have the capability to continue learning throughout their life. Undoubtedly 

workforce and education issues are interconnected. I believe, as I 

said earlier, it will take partnerships, like those we’re going to hear 

about today, involving all of our major stakeholders to find solutions to Washington’s education and workforce development needs. 

As chairman of the Senate Subcommittee on Employment and 

Workplace Safety, and as a former teacher, parent, and now a 

grandparent, I continue to be concerned about how we best address 

this critical issue. I know we have to provide options to students, 

options that raise the expectations for their learning and support 

them in achieving progress. That’s why we’re here today: to learn 

about the options that are serving our students here in Washington 

State, to hear from those involved in providing academic and occupational learning to our students, to highlight the economic demands in our State, to explore the needs in our workforce, and to 

further the effort to provide our young people with multiple pathways to success. 

We have an exceptional group of experts here today, and I know 

each one of them brings a very unique perspective to the table, and 

I look forward to hearing the contributions of each and every one 

of you. Thank you, again, for participating in this morning’s hearing. 

At this time, I’m going to turn to our distinguished panelists and 

ask each one of them to introduce themselves and to provide some 

introductory remarks. 

We’re going to start on my far right. Kris, if you want to introduce yourself, make your remarks, then we will continue around 

the table. I’ll have some additional questions, and I hope our discussion will follow. 

So, Kris, why don’t you introduce yourself and begin. 

STATEMENT OF KRIS STADELMAN, CEO, WORKFORCE DEVELOPMENT COUNCIL OF SEATTLE-KING COUNTY, SEATTLE, WA 

Ms. STADELMAN. Good morning. I’m Kris Stadelman, and I’m the 

CEO of the Workforce Development Council for Seattle and King 

County. 

The first thing I want to do is thank the Senator. I appreciate 

the invitation today. I’m greatly honored to be here. I so appreciate 

you having a hearing on this key topic right now. I know that, as 

5 

Jill Wakefield said earlier, that our Senator, Senator Murray, is a 

leader in this field, but I just want to reiterate that, among my 

peers, the Workforce Investment Board of Directors from around 

the country, I’m envied because we have Senator Murray here in 

our State, and I want to personally thank her for the millions of 

dollars in Department of Labor grant funding that she has assisted 

us in receiving; most recently, a $3-million wire grant for the State 

of Washington, and, just a couple of weeks ago, $2 million for King 

County to serve youth offenders. I greatly appreciate that. Thank 

you. 

[Applause.] 

Ms. STADELMAN. The Workforce Development Council is a private, nonprofit, mostly federally funded. What we do, we have a 

Board of Directors that scans the environment and looks at the gap 

between labor supply and demand, and tries to work with education, organized labor, and employers to fill that gap. One of our 

main functions is to prepare Washington State’s youth for careers. 

We need to do that in two ways. We need to ensure we have a 

skilled workforce to meet the needs of employers, and we need to 

find ways of ensuring that youth have access to a path for economic 

security and family self-sufficiency. 

At the Board, we address these goals by partnering with the private sector to bring youth into contact with the world of work and 

to promising careers. I want to say that I think, along the path, 

somehow, of looking at the new world and how we need a skilled 

workforce to be globally competitive, we focused on those high-end 

jobs, those B.A. degrees and master’s degrees and Ph.D.s at the 

high end for research and development, and maybe we’ve lost sight 

of the fact that career and technical education is also key to economic success, also key to having a strong middle class. I think in 

many of our high schools, we have seen the path diverge to an either/or—either career and technical skills or academic skills and a 

path to college—and that the investment and the intention has 

been focused on the path to academic skills and college, really, to 

the detriment of career and technical education. 

At the WDC, we think that everyone needs ‘‘both/and,’’ not ‘‘either/or’’—everyone needs ‘‘both/and’’ academic skills and career and 

technical education. We think that what is most important for 

those of us in this field—and I want to compliment my community 

college partners, who have been a great asset in helping us with 

the needs of both low-income adults and youth in finding careers. 

We care about family economic self-sufficiency, and we believe that 

all of us at this table, all of us working on preparation for our 

workforce, need to keep our eye on that prize. For youth, the path 

to family economic self-sufficiency and economic security starts 

early, it starts with career and technical education, and it starts 

with summer jobs. 

Thank you, Senator. 

Senator MURRAY. Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Ms. Stadelman follows:] 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF KRIS STADELMAN

Chairman Murray and Honorable members of the subcommittee: Thank you for 

inviting me to participate in today’s hearing. My name is Kris Stadelman and I am 

CEO of the Workforce Development Council of Seattle-King County. I am honored 

6 

and grateful for this opportunity to talk with you about one of our time’s most vital 

issues: the preparation of Washington State’s youth for careers. 

This preparation has two goals: to ensure a skilled workforce to meet the needs 

of employers, and to ensure that today’s young people can become happy, self-sufficient adults. The first goal is all the more urgent because of the demographic tidal 

wave of Baby Boomers who are set to retire in the next decade. The second goal— 

self-sufficiency for today’s young people—is also subject to a shifting economy. More 

specialized work requires more training, often including college, to put good-paying 

jobs within reach. 

As the local Workforce Investment Board, the WDC of Seattle-King County addresses both goals by partnering with the private sector to bring youth into contact 

with the world of work and promising careers. 

In 2005, the WDC published a report called Youth@Work that called attention to 

the serious decline in employment for teens and young adults. The previous summer, the national teen employment rate was the lowest in 57 years. African-American and other youth of color are far less likely to have work opportunities. 

Why, when we need to focus on the problem of high-school dropouts, does this 

matter? Shouldn’t youth be focusing on education and college instead of work? 

The answer is no—not instead of work. Youth should be focusing on education because of work, and in addition to work. When we show them the connection and 

allow them to learn in the context of the real world, they are less likely to drop out 

of high school. They are more likely to pursue further education and training. They 

learn social and work skills that cannot be taught in school. And they are given both 

the tools and the inspiration to forge their own futures. 

But if, in the name of academic rigor, we cut young people off from work experience and career education, we are failing them—especially at-risk youth who do not 

have role models or connections to help them chart a path. 

In Seattle-King County, we at the WDC have seen the results of work-based 

learning opportunities, career exploration, internships, work experience and other 

employment services. We have linked these important services to high-demand occupations and industries that offer career paths ending in high wages. We have linked 

them to academic support for staying in school and credit retrieval for returning to 

school, as well as GED preparation for dropouts. And we have linked them to case 

management and other services to address the barriers of at-risk youth—mental 

health, chemical dependency, homelessness, basic-skills deficiencies, disabilities including learning disabilities, and criminal activity/court involvement. 

SECTOR-FOCUSED EFFORTS

In Seattle-King County, according to the State’s 2007 job vacancy survey of employers, 73 percent of vacancies paid a median wage of $10 an hour or less—dismal 

in the face of our area’s high cost of living. The top seven occupations (including 

laborers, cashiers and security guards) had an average median wage of $8.81. 

But right behind them came Registered Nurses, with an average wage of $32 an 

hour, and Carpenters, at an average of $16 an hour. This dichotomy illustrates the 

challenge of workforce development in an area where both our economy and our individual prosperity depends on the ability of our education and training systems to 

meet the needs of industry for high skills. 

As a result of intensive research into the sectors in our region, the WDC of Seattle-King County selected five that provide living-wage jobs, opportunities for advancement and partnerships with employers. These five are health care, life 

sciences/biotechnology, construction, manufacturing, and information technology. We 

brought together industry, higher education, labor, K–12 and community leaders in 

each one to discuss the most critical workforce issues. 

This work has allowed us to address both supply and demand in each industry: 

we understand better how to connect employers to the skills and workers they need, 

and we understand better how to open pathways for workers—and youth—to higher-skilled, higher-paying jobs. 

The following provides a few examples of our work to connect low-income and atrisk youth to high-demand sectors in our region, using Workforce Investment Act 

youth dollars and leveraged funding from our partners. 

HEALTH CARE

This vital industry, with multiple well-paying jobs for nurses and technicians, is 

experiencing critical staff shortages which will be exacerbated as more of the healthcare workforce retires. Since 2003, the WDC has led a series of partnerships with 

hospitals, colleges, and public schools that start students on career paths in health 

care. 

7 

These programs, with the full commitment of the private sector, linked young people in and out of our Workforce Investment Act youth programs directly to healthcare certificate programs at local community/technical colleges and to work-based 

learning opportunities in hospitals. Youth could take prerequisite and training 

courses while still in high school and be assured of earning an LPN or even higher 

certificate within a year of graduation. 

One young person, Shenise Gordon, took advantage of several WDC programs. 

When she was just 14, she began exploring careers and getting real-life work experience at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center. As a sophomore in high school, she 

began taking courses at Renton Technical College through another WDC partnership, and passed the State-certified nursing assistant exam in her junior year. 

Shenise graduated last June with 4 years of nursing experience under her belt— 

and her RN degree less than a year away. 

The newest WDC program to address health careers for youth is a public-private 

partnership that includes the Washington State Hospital Association, the city of Seattle, several local community colleges, and faculty/staff of Seattle public high 

schools. The 19 students earned high-school credits for courses such as Fundamentals of Health Care, CPR, Orientation to College and CNA coursework and are taking the CNA exam as a gateway to a wide range of nursing and other health care 

professions. Most are enrolled in both high-school and college courses, earning credits for both. 

LIFE SCIENCES/BIOTECHNOLOGY

In 2005, the WDC partnered with the Puget Sound Regional Council, Prosperity 

Partnership, and the Washington Biotechnology and Biomedical Association to bring 

together a panel of 30 leaders in the life sciences industry, the education system, 

employers, local government and economic and workforce development. 

Recognizing the importance of drawing young people into the field to ensure a 

pipeline of trained workers for these highly technical jobs, the WDC worked with 

the panel partners to offer a 6-day workshop to local science teachers to help them 

understand the latest research and technology—in hopes they would use the information in the classroom to inspire students. 

The panel also worked to develop a dynamic Web site on life-sciences careers that 

can be used by youth and others who are interested in entering this growing field. 

CONSTRUCTION

The construction industry has been a leading source of job growth in Washington 

State over the last decade. Over 80 percent of all jobs in the industry and 67 percent 

of entry-level jobs pay a living wage. 

In YouthBuild, funded by the WDC and other partners, dropout youth alternate 

between 2 weeks of work and 2 weeks of school, constructing a house for a family 

in need as they earn wages, build work experience, complete high school, and transition into a job or further education/training. 

A WDC-led partnership for Pre-Apprenticeship Construction Training (PACT) 

helps prepare students at Seattle Vocational Institute—most of whom are young 

adults—to enter union apprenticeships in the construction trades. The two-quarter 

program covers foundation skills for construction as well as ‘‘soft skills’’ such as 

work ethic and positive attitude. At the end of the program, PACT helps to place 

students in union apprenticeships. 

INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY

Information technology jobs and careers are spread throughout almost all industry sectors, making IT skills as fundamental as literacy for well-paying careers. The 

WDC has incorporated IT into our youth employment services in a variety of ways. 

In addition, we help to fund the Digital Bridge Technology Academy, which provides technology training to low-income, at-risk youth. This collaboration of partner 

organizations and agencies is for students between the ages of 16 to 21 who have 

dropped out of high school and are currently working to earn a high school diploma 

or G.E.D. Youth explore technology and careers through hands-on classes, workshops, guest speakers, job shadow opportunities, field trips, service learning, and internships. Students also install and maintain computer labs at community centers 

throughout Seattle as a way of both putting their learning into practice and giving 

back to their community. 

8 

MANUFACTURING

Manufacturing remains a significant industry in terms of volume of jobs, quality 

of jobs and wages, encompassing welding and machinist jobs that pay up to $34 an 

hour through electrical engineering at $50 an hour. The WDC has long-established 

partnerships with local industry groups and with the nationwide Dream It, Do It 

campaign to interest and train youth in manufacturing careers. 

In addition to these high-demand sector efforts, the WDC targets specific barriers 

that keep young people from succeeding in school and charting their futures. These 

include homelessness. The WDC helped to establish the Barista Training and Education Program, which trains homeless youth to be baristas—an occupation always 

in high demand in Seattle-King County. Youth in the barista program find skills 

to earn money today as well as a springboard, through case management, housing 

and on-site services, to further education and training that lead them away from 

hopelessness and poverty. 

These barriers also include criminal involvement and court adjudication. King 

County’s Juvenile Court has been a strong supporter and partner of WDC employment/education programs for their effectiveness with this population. Just a few 

weeks ago, the WDC learned that we have been selected for a $2 million Department of Labor grant that will enable us to create two new career and education centers to focus on youth offenders. We have you, Senator Murray, to thank for your 

assistance in bringing this extremely important funding to our community. It will 

allow us to serve 200 youth offenders with intensive support both for education and 

employment goals—a model that has proven highly effective in stopping the cycle 

of criminal involvement. 

All these pathways and partnerships have been possible because of Federal funding for youth employment programs—all Workforce Investment Act youth funds, except for the new youth offender grant. Once again, we thank you, Senator Murray, 

for being a champion of WIA youth funding. You have fought hard for this community against the tide of severe funding cuts over the past few years. 

But in the context of these budget cuts, I would like to emphasize to the subcommittee that despite all of our work to bring career-focused services and work experience to at-risk youth, we know it is only a drop in the bucket when we consider 

the thousands of youth who are dropping out of our education system without work 

skills. These innovative programs are extremely staff intensive and serve only a few 

dozen young people, compared to the hundred who could thrive with these opportunities. Without Federal investment, highly effective programs such as PACT and 

Health Careers for Youth will remain pilot projects that eventually fade, along with 

the vital employer and education partnerships that made them a success. Continued 

funding is needed to take them to scale and perpetuate them. 

In addition, if we have hopes of affecting the dropout rate, our legislators and 

communities must support career and technical education in schools. High-stakes 

testing and budget constraints are leading schools to shortchange CTE—programs 

that integrate academic coursework with career awareness and exploration, occupational training, and work-based learning. In many school districts, CTE programs 

are still seen as educational ghettoes (with all that implies for youth of color) for 

low-achieving students whose teachers have given up on them. Our experience, and 

the research, shows that the conflict between college and career training is a false 

one. In Washington State, those who complete a CTE program are expected to earn 

almost $60,000 more by the time they are 65 than those who have not participated 

in CTE. These students understand not only what they are asked to learn in school, 

but why they are learning it. We must find a way to support career and technical 

education alongside rigorous academics. 

I also urge you as legislators to support Federal funding for summer job programs, which have suffered greatly in the past decade and experienced a one-third 

decline just since 2001. Because of these cuts, thousands of low-income, at-risk 

youth in Washington State no longer have the option of spending the valuable summer months gaining work experience. We need to bring summer job programs back 

into our communities—not just for the experience itself, but for the better outcomes 

it brings during the 9 months of the school year. 

In Washington State, we have some important assets. We have employers and industry associations who are eager to work with education and workforce development partners to ensure that the next generation is a skilled workforce. We have 

excellent community and technical colleges that are responsive to the needs of both 

students and employers. We, in workforce, development have many successful models of partnerships among all these stakeholders, and a wealth of experience in 

making them work. With adequate investment and shared goals with the K–12 eduVerDate Nov 24 2008 15:05 Apr 06, 2009 Jkt 035165 PO 00000 Frm 00012 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 S:\DOCS\39476.TXT DENISE
9 

cation system, we can address both the high-school dropout issue and the critical 

need for future skilled workers. 

But if we continue to consider workforce issues and education issues separately, 

we will not be successful in addressing either. 

Once again, thank you for allowing me to participate today and for your consideration. 

Senator MURRAY. Mr. Aultman. 

STATEMENT OF JOHN AULTMAN, ASSISTANT SUPERINTENDENT, CAREER AND COLLEGE READINESS, OFFICE OF 

SUPERINTENDENT OF PUBLIC INSTRUCTION, OLYMPIA, WA 

Mr. AULTMAN. Thank you, Senator. 

My name is John Aultman. I’m an assistant superintendent for 

career and college readiness at the Superintendent of Public Instruction’s Office. On Dr. Bergeson’s behalf, I’d like to say thank 

you for inviting K–12 to the table to be part of this discussion. 

Today, I’d just like to talk about a few strong examples that 

make career and technical ed, that segue from what Ms. Stadelman 

was talking about, into reality. Successful career and technical ed 

programs need a few key elements. They need strong business and 

industry partnerships, strong—or the programs need to be aligned 

with the economic strategies of the State of Washington. What’s 

the economic engine, and how are the programs in the high schools 

aligned with those? They need strong academic and technical applications. So, you have both. It’s not the either/or. The programs 

need to be personalized, meaningful, connected to the student, employer, and industry demand that they might be looking toward 

pursuing. 

In the last piece of this is the transition of the students to postsecondary, and that postsecondary includes anything that is posthigh school—a 1-year certificate program, 2-year transfer, a technical degree, or a 4-year baccalaureate. I think the key piece there 

is, our workforce right now has a 10-year gap, and that 10-year gap 

is the average age of the individuals in the community and technical colleges. If we can close that gap, the economic strategies will 

be empowering the individuals as they go forward. Imagine a high 

school diploma 1 week, and I think you’re going to hear today 

about an individual that had a high—or has a high school diploma 

1 week, a registered apprentice the next week. Imagine a hospital 

taking individuals in and giving them 40 hours worth of shadowing 

experiences, watching ER, diagnostic imaging, every aspect from 

open-heart surgery throughout, and the hospitals being the strong 

partner. Imagine the in-demand scholars, that Senator Murray has 

sponsored in the past, to provide those incentives to go on to the 

postsecondary. 

The last piece I will leave here is that the State of Washington, 

this last year, invested over $100 million to re-engage career and 

technical ed, building skill centers in the State, funding activities 

around expanding the FTE, and also putting middle-level career 

and technical ed—back into the course offerings. 

With that, I’ll wait for the questions. Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Aultman follows:] 

10 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF JOHN AULTMAN

Honorable Chairman Senator Murray and members of the committee, thank you 

for inviting me to share examples of success, challenges, and opportunities of K–12 

career and technical education (CTE) programs in Washington State. 

Successful career and technical education programs include the following elements: 

1. Strong business and industry partnerships. 

2. Programs aligned with the economic strategies of Washington State. 

3. Strong academic and technical application. 

4. Personalized, meaningful, connected to student, employer, and industry demand. 

5. Transition of students to postsecondary training, apprenticeship, and workforce. 

STRONG BUSINESS AND INDUSTRY PARTNERSHIPS

The business and industry partners view strong program offerings as the ‘‘Talent 

Pool’’ for their future economic viability. One example is the Washington State Apprenticeship Council’s commitment to form partnerships with local school districts 

and construction trades programs across Washington. New Market Skills Center in 

Tumwater has established such a strong relationship with the local Joint Apprenticeship Training Councils that the students who meet certain criteria are directly 

offered and enrolled in apprenticeship training programs after graduation. ‘‘High 

school diploma 1 day, and registered apprentice the next day.’’ These graduates are 

earning over $19.00 per hour with benefits and retirement. By utilizing the In Demand Scholars program for required tool and safety equipment they are able to 

walk onto the job site ready for ‘‘the original 4-year degree.’’ 

Another example of a strong partnership is the commitment the DigiPen Institute 

of Technology has to continuing growth and partnership support with schools in the 

State of Washington by providing computer science course offerings. DigiPen Institute of Technology has seen the direct benefits of partnering this last year as the 

first graduate of New Market Skills Center High School computer science program 

completed his Bachelors of Science degree in computer engineering this past spring. 

The individual received the first Presidential Scholarship from the DigiPen Institute 

of Technology and was one of the first graduates that had to make the tough decision of ‘‘Which company should I choose? ’’ because he had multiple offers starting 

at over $50,000-plus bonuses. 

I could site multiple other examples of strong partnerships with health care, preengineering, veterinary sciences, emergency services, and power generation. 

PROGRAMS ALIGNED WITH ECONOMIC STRATEGIES OF WASHINGTON STATE

This past year Governor Gregoire, Washington State Legislature, and Superintendent Bergeson invested over $100 million in career and technical education 

programs. The funding to build new skills centers and enhance comprehensive CTE 

programs needs to align with high demand and high wage occupations. The opportunity we have today to enhance programs and align opportunities for students does 

not happen often and we need to keep the ‘‘future economic engine of Washington 

State’’ moving forward. 

STRONG ACADEMIC AND TECHNICAL APPLICATION

The recognition of strong academic content imbedded with technical skill attainment allows programs to succeed and provide such success stories. The career and 

technical core curriculum can have many outcomes such as high school graduation 

requirements, college credit through Tech Prep, industry certification, and Advance 

Placement (AP) College Board testing. A few examples of multiple outcomes include 

Environmental Studies, Commercial Graphic Design, Professional Medical Careers, 

Clinical and Scientific Investigation (CSI), Pre Vet Technology, Emergency Medical 

Services, and Computer Science programs at New Market Skills Center. Currently, 

procedures are in place for students to earn Tech Prep credit, Advanced Placement 

and industry certifications while participating in CTE programs. The Washington 

State legislature has directed School Districts to adopt policy for academic recognition within CTE programs. The Legislature required a taskforce to make recommendations on models that districts could use for cross crediting. Procedures will 

be developed by the task force to help individual departments, schools, and school 

districts to grant academic credit for imbedded content. 

11 

PERSONALIZED, MEANINGFUL, AND CONNECTED TO STUDENT, EMPLOYER, AND INDUSTRY DEMAND

The ‘‘Rigor, Relevance, and Relationship’’ comes alive for students when they have 

investments in their future. Scott Bond, CEO of Providence Saint Peter Hospital in 

Olympia, stated to his Department Managers ‘‘We have an opportunity and an obligation’’ to help grow our future workforce. Over the past 5 years St. Peter Hospital 

has allowed students from the Professional Medical Careers program to observe 40 

hours of clinical applications within the hospital departments. The students enter 

the program knowing of two careers, doctor or nurse, and not about the other 50 

medical and patient care careers available. After the clinical rotations, students 

have observed open heart surgeries, emergency room, obstetrics, physical therapy, 

diagnostic imaging, administration, lab activities, acute care and other departments. 

When the students return to the classroom they re-organize their schedules to fit 

in more math and science courses before graduation. Most health care students do 

not have the opportunity to observe professionals, working in their careers, until the 

second or third year of their college program. 

This example reinforces the need to ask all students three questions: 

1. Who am I? 

2. What can I be? 

3. How do I get there? 

These are the core questions within the Navigation 101 guidance plan. The examples are clear that when students connect the high school experience with real life 

examples they become engaged! 

Career and technical education programs have strong impacts on dropout prevention, intervention, and retrieval programs. The dropout intervention program (DPI) 

pilot at New Market has retained and retrieved over 200 students in the past 3 

years. The key to the program is personalized attention to assist the students to advocate for themselves. This has a direct financial impact to future employment opportunities. One student said it best, ‘‘I returned (to school) so I could learn the 

skills to earn a living.’’ He did take the CTE program of his choice and the additional academic requirements to earn his diploma last June. 

TRANSITION OF STUDENTS TO POST SECONDARY TRAINING, APPRENTICESHIP, 

AND WORKFORCE

Career and technical education programs must continue alignment with postsecondary and apprenticeship programs to decrease the ‘‘10-year’’ gap that now exists. 

The average age in Community and Technical Colleges is 27 years old. The individual and collective earning power is dramatically decreased with this gap in advanced training. The recent construction of the New Market Life Sciences building 

included five construction apprentices. Two of these apprentices were recent graduates of the New Market construction trades program and the other three apprentices were 28, 34, and 52 years old. All five apprentices started within 1 month of 

each other and at the end of the construction project the 34- and 52-year-old apprentices had quit. 

The common theme all educators must be conveying is ‘‘are you college ready? ’’ 

with college being defined as any education post high school. This would include 

technical certificate programs, 2 year, 4 year, and apprenticeship programs. New 

Market administered the AccuplacerTM community and technical college and apprenticeship placement test to all juniors and seniors allowing them to see if they 

were college ready. The results provided students the opportunity to refresh basic 

skills while still in high school and for others it built confidence that they were college material. South Puget Sound Community College agreed to accept the testing 

results for placement at the college. When Tech Prep college credit, AccuplacerTM

scores, online unified community college application, 13th-year plan, and scholarships are added together, many of the obstacles and excuses such as, ‘‘In a few 

years, I need to work, or I don’t know how to apply’’ are removed. 

FUTURE OPPORTUNITIES

• Align and provide incentives (start up funds) for high demand occupation programs; 

• Expand middle school CTE exploratory programs—integrated math, science, 

and technology; 

• In Demand Scholars Program; 

• In Demand CTE Instructor Certification Scholarships; 

• Integrated Academic Articulation—Statewide Cross Credit Guidance; 

• Assist CTE programs to become Advance Placement (AP) Course Approved; 

12 

• Connecting K–12 CTE with the State Board for Community and Technical Colleges (SBCTC) Centers of Excellence; 

• Secondary Integrated Basic Education Skills Programs—ESL Populations; 

• Middle and Secondary CTE Summer School—Math, Science, and Technology 

using CTE as the delivery model; and 

• Early Learning Linkages—State STARS Certification. 

Career and technical education programs can and will provide an instructional delivery model for high demand, high wage occupations. CTE program offerings are 

vital to students, business and industry, and the economic strength of Washington 

State. 

STATEMENT OF RICK S. BENDER, PRESIDENT, WASHINGTON 

STATE LABOR COUNCIL, SEATTLE, WA 

Mr. BENDER. I’m Rick Bender. I’m president of the Washington 

State Labor Council. We represent about 400,000 union members 

here in the State of Washington. 

Senator, I want to thank you for the focus on this population. So 

often, we hear about the need for more baccalaureates, or higher, 

in terms of our economy here in the State of Washington, but very 

few people talk about that 75 percent who don’t get a baccalaureate, but may get a AA degree or go to an apprenticeship or 

some other type of technical program. There is a real need by employers for these type of skilled workers, and there’s no question, 

we are facing a shortage. We have about 12,000 apprentices right 

now in our classes across the State, and these are some of the largest we’ve ever had. But we’re going to need to maintain this level 

for the next 8 to 10 years, because, as you well know, we’re facing 

the retirement of a lot of baby-boomers right now in this State and 

across the country. So, this is something that we have to deal with. 

But I’m proud of the building trades, because they’ve been spearheading a number of areas, in terms of legislation, to help fill these 

gaps. They, for example, have, passed, several years ago, Apprenticeship Opportunity Program, which sets a threshold of 15 percent 

on our public works projects for apprentices. This should provide 

more opportunities for young people, for people of color, and 

women, to come into our construction trades. We think this is a 

major step forward. The building trades have spearheaded Running 

Start to the trades, where you can come out of high school and be 

ready to go right into the trades when you graduate from high 

school. 

Then, of course we have the Helmets to Hardhats that was 

spearheaded by the building trades—which is the Iraq veterans 

coming out from the war, getting direct access to our apprenticeship programs. The building trades have been spearheading a lot 

of programs to provide more opportunities for a whole lot of folks 

to come into these skilled trades. 

But we’ve still got a lot of work ahead. There is one area that 

I have a real concern, and there’s a lot of discussion and debate 

talking about the need for another year of mathematics to graduate 

from high school, which we support. But it can’t be just strictly an 

academic pathway. We think there has to be some type of career, 

technical education equivalent, some type of applied mathematics 

that people can go into, other than the academic route. We think 

this is extremely important, and we hope that we’ll give young peoVerDate Nov 24 2008 15:05 Apr 06, 2009 Jkt 035165 PO 00000 Frm 00016 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 S:\DOCS\39476.TXT DENISE
13 

ple more than just one pathway, which is just academic, but give 

them a pathway in other areas, as well. 

Thank you, Senator. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Bender follows:] 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF RICK S. BENDER

Good morning, Madam Chairwoman, and thank you for inviting me to appear before you at this Field Hearing. My Name is Rick Bender and I am the President 

of the Washington State Labor Council, AFL–CIO. Our organization represents approximately 400,000 working women and men in Washington State. I have been a 

member of Washington State’s Workforce Board for more than 10 years, working to 

address the advancement of workers into family wage jobs with benefits and retirement security; by and large those are union jobs in Washington State. Washington 

State ranks fifth in the country in union density with one out of five workers being 

part of organized labor. 

Recent surveys of Washington employers state that currently 45 percent of the 

jobs in demand require 1 to less than 4 years of training—mid-skill jobs. Those jobs 

generally pay $16.00 to $30.00 per hour, are in construction trades, technician level 

skills of many occupations, health sciences, etc. The trend to 2015 is that 43 percent 

of those mid-skill jobs will still be in demand. 

Here in Washington, we have worked in coalition to create Running Start to the 

Trades as a pathway for high school students to achieve credit with an apprenticeship while they are still in high school; much like Running Start which provides 

community college credit while in high school. 

We worked to achieve legislation that requires 15 percent utilization of apprentices on State prevailing wage jobs, so that all public infrastructure investment also 

provides an investment in training the future workforce. We would be very pleased 

if you would consider championing similar legislation for Federal Davis Bacon 

projects so that training was an integral component of our public Federal investment, Senator. 

We have a shortage in the skilled construction trades at present. For years we 

had approximately 9,000 enrolled apprentices in any given year. Currently we have 

more than 12,000 enrolled apprentices and our apprenticeship training centers are 

bursting at the seams. There will be a continued need to train apprentices for the 

next 8 to 10 years at current or higher rates, not only for the work that is already 

sited and bid, but to replace the retiring construction workforce which is the oldest 

in American history. But our high school faculty and career counselors don’t know 

about apprenticeship or about the demand for mid-skill occupations. 

We have begun to address that in Washington by working with the K–12 system 

and employment training providers and business and labor to expand Navigation 

101, which is a career exploration curriculum for high school. Unfortunately, it is 

not required nor is it available in all school districts in our State. This tool has done 

a great deal to give real information and choices to high school students that are 

about aptitudes and real jobs that do not require a baccalaureate route. 

We are very concerned right now that Career and Technical Education (CTE) and 

our Skill Centers are at risk. We are working to ensure that additional math requirements for high school graduation (third year math) are not required to be academic. We are looking for acceptance of third year math that is equivalent, but can 

be an applied course that demonstrates job relevance to students. Your assistance 

in working with educators, employers and labor to ensure that more students graduate and join the labor market would be greatly appreciated. 

Thank you for the opportunity to make these introductory remarks, and I look forward to your questions. 

STATEMENT OF DAVID E. ALLEN, VICE PRESIDENT OF 

MARKET, McKINSTRY COMPANY, SEATTLE, WA 

Mr. ALLEN. Thank you, Senator. 

I’m David Allen. My brother and I own McKinstry Company, a 

1,500-person design/build/operate/maintain firm, working in the 

Pacific Northwest. We’re nearing our 50th birthday, and a lot has 

changed in those 50 years, including my age. 

[Laughter.] 

14 

I’m not going to spend much time talking about the academic 

side of the battle, until the questions come up, because I think I 

need to make some comments, as an employer, that’s really important, particularly to some of the young people in the audience and 

for the record. 

I agree with what Rick said, that McKinstry hires from apprenticeship programs. We are signatory to seven labor union agreements. We have some 1,000 building trades workers doing everything imaginable, from designing, building, operating, maintaining, 

fixing, energy auditing, facilities all over the West. We also have 

a lot of the 4-year college-degreed people: in engineering, in purchasing, in marketing, and all that kind of stuff. But, I think, from 

an employer’s standpoint is, we are kind of a microcosm of the 

problem, because we need sharp young people at all the places 

around McKinstry. 

The Senator’s office asked me to address clean technology. I’m 

the chairman of the board of Enterprise Seattle, the Economic Development Council of Seattle-King County, so I get a pretty cool 

picture of what’s happening in our region by economic cluster. I’m 

also the HELP foreman and co-chair of the newly established 

Washington Clean Tech Alliance, which, as I mentioned to the Senator’s staff, that in my written testimony, it may very well be the 

next industrial revolution. By ‘‘clean technology,’’ I mean energy efficiency, renewables, alternate energy, biomass, water conservation, 

remediation, doing the right thing to the Earth. That industry—we 

think we’re in the top two to four in North America in the fight 

for our brand as a place for clean technology to prosper. 

With that said, unlike a lot of our last century’s industries, the 

clean technology industry is highly solution- and idea-based, so it’s 

going to require, not only the sciences, which are obvious, but it’s 

also going to require people that believe in it, people that understand it. It’s more about creating an idea, implementing an idea, 

taking care of an idea. There’s going to be jobs from young people 

that run green buildings, to engineers that design them, we’re 

working on two plants right now. The reason we were awarded the 

project is that no one owns the space. One’s a biodiesel plant award 

in Washington, and one’s a tire recycling plant. The owners didn’t 

really have any history of who builds that kind of stuff, because it’s 

sort of new. Both facilities have asked us to operate it when they’re 

done. Also something new that comes out of the clean technology. 

In closing, and I’m anxious for the questions, because there’s a 

lot to say. I think we look to the community colleges, the vocational—and as I told the Senator earlier, we’re in trouble. We need 

to get into middle schools and high schools and these community 

colleges and give you guys a better picture of what the opportunities are out there, and where the careers are. With that, I’ll close, 

so we can get to the questions. 

Thank you, Senator. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Allen follows:] 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF DAVID E. ALLEN

During the past several years, as a result of the perfect storm of rising oil prices, 

energy dynamics and increased awareness of climate change our State has seen an 

explosion of investment in research, products and construction of all that is ‘‘Clean 

Technology.’’ Like many other regions in the Nation Washington State has built an 

15 

early reputation for its leadership in Clean Technology and in fostering growth of 

this ‘‘new’’ economic sector. Clean Technology with its many ‘‘clean the planet’’ aspects clearly represents an opportunity to become the next industrial revolution. 

Nationally, investment in the Clean Tech industry has grown 78 percent in the 

past year and nearly 400 percent in the past 5 years (source: American Venture 

Magazine). Clean Tech is now the third largest venture investment category, with 

projections boasting some $19 billion in investments by 2010 that is expected to create more than 500,000 new jobs. The most notable and talked about subsectors, renewable and alternative energy, are growing exponentially but those are just part 

of the story. Energy efficiency, recycling, bio-synergy (waste to power), sustainable 

design, product re-engineering and remediation technologies are all creating a buzz. 

Washington State possesses many of the critical elements required to be successful in Clean Technology cluster. It has natural resources second to none. It has a 

citizenry that is known for its stewardship of the environment. Washington State 

is regularly recognized for its entrepreneurial and innovative workforce. And those 

are the attributes that will attract and grow firms in this sector; a sector that will 

make a significant impact on the Washington State economy and job creation for 

many years to come. 

JOBS, SKILLS, OPPORTUNITIES

One of the most compelling aspects of the emerging Clean Tech industry is that 

it brings with it a wide array of jobs/careers across many disciplines. Unlike its 

predecessor ‘‘industrial’’ industries in the 20th century, Clean Tech will require a 

much broader workforce representing myriad skill sets and educational backgrounds. Because of the innovative nature of this cluster the field of science will 

play a key role. Chemistry, physics and biology have made their presence known 

already and several other science needs are emerging. Engineering is a clear driver 

of Clean Technology with mechanical, electrical, automotive, ceramic, geosciences, 

thermal and civil engineering some of the leaders. 

On the ‘‘execution’’ side of Clean Tech positions in the ‘‘executive suite’’ will be 

in high demand as well. Business and financial management is critical here, as 

many firms will be of start-up nature and most facing an incredible growth profile. 

Manufacturing, production and operations positions will be needed and will have to 

adapt to new processes and industrial paradigms. Skilled crafts and career positions 

will flourish as well. Construction trades will also be in high demand and in fact 

are already experiencing upswings due to these new technologies. In addition many 

technical crafts will be emerging in and around the operation of plants and the delivery of services etc. 

The most exciting news here is wages and benefits. Unlike much of the workforce 

in traditional industrial type jobs, the Clean Tech sector will have primarily highwage or family-wage jobs with 21st century benefits! In the past few years virtually 

every Clean Tech type firm we have met, worked with or contracted to have primarily high wage positions. The emerging Clean Tech industry is dependent on and 

committed to working with all interested parties to enhance worker training and 

education. Because of the fact that many of the processes and applications will be 

new, training for these positions is a necessity rather than a luxury. We anticipate 

partnerships with trade unions, apprenticeship programs, workforce development 

organizations, community colleges, 4-year institutions and local government agencies will be required to meet the needs of the future. 

REGIONAL IMPACTS ABOUND

In Washington State there exist some 400 Clean Tech companies with more than 

5,000 jobs at the present time. Many of these firms are growing extremely fast. My 

firm, McKinstry has added more than 250 jobs directly attributed to our energy and 

Clean Tech work in just 3 years. Many others in biofuels, alternate energy and sustainable design have even steeper job growth! In fact, in a recent study Washington 

State was reported to be a leader in both alternate fuels and green building strategies. Our region is currently collaborating with other western States and provinces 

on fuel cell research and the ‘‘hydrogen highway’’ as well as greenhouse gas reduction programs. Also of note, our unique position as a gateway to the Pacific Rim 

is making Clean Tech a growth export industry. 

We are rapidly becoming a center for innovation and new technology, thanks to 

the University of Washington, Washington State University and PNNL/Battelle, 

among others. As of this report, new projects in the pipeline represent hundreds of 

millions of dollars of new investment and thousands of jobs. Research by 

enterpriseSeattle (formerly EDC of Seattle and King Co.) and its Clean Technology 

16 

Cluster team, indicate however, the growth and activity with new ventures is so robust that we are already depleting our current skilled workforce. 

WCTA IS BORN

In 2002 the Puget Sound Regional Council embarked on creating a regional plan 

to ensure the economic vitality of our region (and State). Coined the Prosperity Partnership, it developed a regional work plan that now serves as a great road map for 

many aspects of our growth. Its final report identified five economic clusters that 

will drive our economy for many years and set forth to bolster the infrastructure 

of each of those clusters (educational needs, workforce, economic development strategies, etc.) The first four were obvious drivers: aerospace, life sciences, trade and 

logistics, and IT/software. The fifth, Clean Technology was the ‘‘new kid on the 

block.’’ Because it was a new idea that needed to be congealed a small group of public/private volunteers worked for several months and decided to launch a vertical 

trade organization called the Washington Clean Technology Alliance. In February 

2007 WCTA hosted a kickoff event which yielded 35 charter members that represent 

virtually every element of the industry. From alternate energy to sustainability, recycling to clean manufacturing and from public representative to service firms, we 

have it all! 

The mission of the WCTA is to help strengthen the Clean Tech Sector by providing information, networking opportunities, and advocacy. Additionally we established an overarching goal to create a Washington State clean technology ‘‘Brand’’ 

to compete globally in this sector. We have been active with monthly networking 

sessions, member promotion, educational panels and sponsorships and will be representing the State at GLOBE 08, with a trade show delegation. GLOBE is one of 

the world’s largest and most revered clean technology/environmental conference held 

every other year in Vancouver, B.C. 

STATEMENT OF CARLOS VELIZ, CEO, PCSI DESIGN, 

BOTHELL, WA 

Mr. VELIZ. Thank you, Senator, for the invite today. My name is 

Carlos Veliz, the CEO of a company called PCSI Design, located in 

Bothell, Washington. I’m also on the board of trustees at Everett 

Community College, and also the chair for Snohomish County for 

the Washington State Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, Bienvenido 

a los que hablan Espanol. 

There’s a lot of things that are here today and that we’re going 

to be reviewing, and I’m going to try to touch on them as best I 

can. 

My topic today, or the area that I was asked, was ‘‘building 

bridges.’’ Mine was building bridges between the corporate small 

business and the educational system. Being that I’m on the board 

of trustees, you always walk around with your trustee hat on, and 

you’re always seeing what’s going on in the community. But one 

thing that our company has been doing over the past 6 years is 

speaking at the middle school level, and not in the sense of pounding the mindset that, ‘‘You have to go to a university, you have to 

get your 4-year degree, you have to be involved in the areas that 

are going to take you to either a free scholarship or what have 

you.’’ What we try to do in our mentoring program that is engaging 

with our students is find out where their wants are, find out where 

their wants are today. What is their passion? What we’re losing, 

I believe, in our school system today—whether it’s K–12, whether 

it’s high school or the college—is that we’re forgetting to do some 

touchpoint strategies with people’s passion, because the kids today 

aren’t the kids of yesterday, and there’s a different model that we 

have today and, they’re shaking their heads, ‘‘Yes,’’ you know, 

going, ‘‘Yes, he understands,’’ but there’s a different model today, 

and we have to find a way to build that bridge between what the 

17 

model is today of these students that do have a lot of passion for 

a certain career. I’m almost positive that most of them don’t just 

want a job. I’m sure that they’re looking for something that they 

can build on and be proud and be productive into our community. 

I love living here in Washington State. One of the things that we 

do here at our company, at PCSI Design, is that we go out of the 

State to bring the work back, because we talk about, ‘‘Wow, the 

work’s leaving.’’ As I speak of some of these things, you’ll see that 

there’s a pattern that talks about building the bridge between the 

corporations, small business, and education. Well, if we can go back 

in the educational system and try to implement some of those career mindset, going into the passion of these students and doing 

that, then we’re going to create those more small businesses. If we 

can get the small businesses to go mentor and go back into the 

schools, because they have the closer ties, then the corporations 

will feed the small businesses. We have a lot of bandwidth in our 

communities here, and I just don’t think that we finish the job. I 

think that we start a lot of things, and we just don’t follow 

through. These are some of the things that I hope we can get some 

Q&A here today. 

But I’ll close off with it—because there’s a lot of things I want 

to talk about—but I’ll close it off with this. Here’s a question. And 

don’t answer it, please, because I’ll answer it for you. 

[Laughter.] 

Do you know who designed the black box for the Xbox for Microsoft, the original black box? Do you know who designed the snow 

skis for the Apache helicopters and for the Black Hawk helicopters—which is a snow—it’s snow ski kits? Do you know who designed the Lamont fitness spin bike and/or recumbent bike? Now, 

you’re probably going, ‘‘Well, it must have been the companies that 

you just mentioned.’’ Talk about struggling, and talk about going 

through the paths that some of these folks mentioned, my company, PCSI Design, is the company that designed those products 

for those companies. We’re the only product design company in the 

State of Washington that is certified 8A, small business, and MBE. 

Now, you’re saying, ‘‘That’s great.’’ Well, no, it’s not great. We are, 

in 2007, going to 2008, and why in the world am I the only one? 

We have a lot of path to pave here, and I hope that we can start 

building those bridges sooner than later. 

Thank you, Senator. 

Senator MURRAY. Very good. Before Judy speaks, let me just say 

that we have three students here with us today who have—because 

I felt it was really important that we hear from business, we hear 

from education, we hear from labor leaders, but we also hear directly from young people who have gone through the process, or are 

going through the process. Because we can talk a lot about policies 

and resources at the top, but, if it doesn’t translate and work for 

the generation that is the recipient of it, it isn’t going to work. I 

felt it was very important to hear their voices. 

I especially want to thank J.D., who you’re going to hear from 

in a minute, Meisha, who’s to my left, as well, and, down the row 

here, David, in just a few minutes. Thank you very much. 

J.D. 

18 

STATEMENT OF J.D. OSBORN, IN DEMAND SCHOLAR, 

SNOHOMISH, WA 

Mr. OSBORN. Thank you, Senator. 

I’m really happy to share my perspective on this whole issue. I’m 

20—like she said, I’m J.D. Osborn, 20 years old. I graduated in 

2006 from Snohomish High School, and I was one of the recipients 

of the In Demand Scholar, which is why I’m here today. 

Well, first off, I started my first internship when I turned 18. I 

started in a machine manufacturing place as a machinist, and 

then, from there I went on to being a CAD technician for two other 

companies, and now I’m working for Carlos, here, at PCSI Design 

as an intern. I’m in sophomore status at Everett Community College right now, and I plan on transferring to Western Washington 

University after this year. 

The things that worked for me most, as far as education, is—I’ve 

always enjoyed the classes that restricted rules. I’ve always felt 

like rules have boxed me in and limited my creativity. A lot of the 

classes that I’ve liked are very relevant to what’s going on today, 

like green technology, the green jobs you mentioned earlier. That 

stuff ’s all very interesting to me. To have that in an educational 

setting, kind of, let’s you lose focus on the grade aspect of education 

and, kind of, gain an aspect on the importance and relevance of the 

subject. 

Senator MURRAY. OK, thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Osborn follows:] 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF J.D. OSBORN

The In Demand Scholarship that I received my senior year in high school acted 

as an incentive for me to continue my education. Although I would have most likely 

continued my education either way, the scholarship provided more than enough reason to continue on. 

As a kid I always enjoyed building things and creating but it wasn’t until my junior year in high school that I actually got involved in the wonderful world of manufacturing. I started interning in the field at a young age, I believe 17, because of 

the program I was involved in while in high school. Each internship acted as a stepping stone to the next. I went from a machinist at Aerospace Manufacturing Technologies to a CAD technician for Accra Manufacturing and then QPM Aerospace and 

now I work at PCSI Design as a Mechanical Designer. I have been working for PCSI 

Design for a little over a year now. It has been the best job of my life so far! 

I graduated in 2006 from Snohomish High School and I’m currently in sophomore 

status at Everett Community College. I’m getting my prerequisites out of the way 

in the most efficient manner. I plan on transferring to Western Washington University sometime next year. They offer a very good engineering technology program 

where I can both learn theory and apply it to real world situations. I will be gaining 

an engineering degree in Plastics with an emphasis in Vehicle Design. WWU just 

started offering this specific degree this year which is great because before I couldn’t 

decide which one to choose, plastics or vehicle design. The reason I chose this specific field of engineering is based on my work experience. Plastics and light weight 

materials such as resin-infused composites are the wave of the future because they 

are lighter and stronger. I predict that the demand in this field will only grow 

through my years of education ensuring a job upon graduation. Dedicating my life 

to solving future problems addressing issues like global warming is very self satisfying to me and I hope to make a positive difference every day of my life for the 

rest of my life. 

Some of the most enjoyable classes I have taken and learn most successfully in 

were the classes with very little structure and addressed real world situations frequently. They spoke deeper to me than textbooks or worksheets which allowed me 

to lose focus on the grade and gain focus on the material. Let me give a couple examples of great classes I have taken and why. I will talk about them in chronological order. 

19 

The first class was Science Fiction or commonly known as Scifi. Everyday I came 

to this class I left with something positive that I would take to my lunch table and 

share with my friends. A lot of it was based on the future and the cutting edge of 

technology. Everyday we engaged in class discussions and most of the time we 

would get way off track but we would all be awake, engaged and learning. 

The second class I want to talk about is my CAD and Precision Machining class. 

The technology in this class was very advanced and blows any engineering class 

that I’ve taken at Everett Community College out of the water. The teacher had interest in every single student’s success. Personally, he acted as my counselor and 

advisor and if it were not for him I would not be here today. He pushed me beyond 

what was required for the class and showed me how the things I was doing applied 

to the real world. I remain in very close contact with this teacher today. 

Onto college, I took three English classes from the same teacher. In these classes 

we learned all about semiotics, the specific reason to why things are the way they 

are and advertising/marketing techniques. I have hated my English classes for as 

long as I could remember but these three quarters were some of the best classes 

I have ever taken. I never knew that I would actually use the knowledge from my 

English classes as a fundamental basis for my engineering studies. My research 

paper was on a new building that just opened at Everett Community College. My 

perspective on architecture before and then after is something I hold priceless in 

my thoughts everyday. It was at this point that I learned the importance of education. 

The last class I would like to address is my speech class. The instructor in this 

class takes a different approach to public speaking. There are basically four types 

of speeches and she teaches this by letting the students pick their own topics, giving 

advice to make your speech great and limiting the rules and specifications, allowing 

you to be as creative as you’d like. 

In conclusion, I would like to close with my vision of what I feel programs should 

be like for future students in my position. The four examples I have presented have 

a few things in common which I feel should be the foundation of all structure in 

all education situations. The elements are bringing relevance to every class meeting, 

limiting rules to allow more creativity, and having teachers that take interest in the 

student’s success. I hope you can find my perspective as both relevant and helpful 

to solving this issue with the lack of pathways to career success for my generation 

and the next! 

Thank you. 

Senator MURRAY. Meisha. 

STATEMENT OF MEISHA NASH, STUDENT, NEW MARKET 

SKILLS CENTER, TUMWATER, WA 

Ms. NASH. My name is Meisha Nash, and I’m currently a New 

Market Skills Center student, and I’m here today to tell you a little 

about myself and the different experiences I’ve had in and out of 

school systems. 

Originally I’m from North Carolina. In elementary school, I received straight A’s. I loved school and the teachers. Basically, it 

was all I had. 

When I went to high school, there were so many people that I 

became a face in a crowd so large, the teachers barely had time to 

notice me. With this drastic setting and curriculum change, I was 

overwhelmed. I developed severe depression and eventually turned 

to drugs. I never had the support of a stable family life. So, without 

the school setting that I loved, I was ready to give up. 

I continued to struggle in school while maintaining a job that 

supported my increasing drug addiction. I eventually came to the 

conclusion that I did not want to be going in the direction I was 

going in, and I did not want drug use to be my future occupation, 

so I entered myself into a rehab program and got my drug addiction under control. After that, I continued to struggle in school and 

was far behind my fellow classmates. I figured it would be much 

easier to get my GED, and I was under the impression that it 

20 

would be equivalent to getting a high school diploma, so, when I 

was 16, I dropped out of school and, within 2 weeks, received my 

GED. For the next 2 years, I worked as hard as I could. While staying with family members, I ended up supporting them, as well as 

myself. I knew I wanted to get back into school, but did not have 

the resources or the means to do so. 

In January 2006, I was given the opportunity to come to Washington and stay with my aunt and uncle for a few months break 

from the chaos I was living in. A few weeks after I arrived, I read 

an article in the newspaper about a young mother who had earned 

her GED and returned to school to get her diploma. This sounded 

interesting, so I decided to look into the program. I found out that, 

not only could I get my diploma, I could also earn college credits 

at the same time, at no cost. This was exactly what I needed, and, 

within the next week, I decided to make my stay here permanent 

and began attending school. 

I had no idea if I could actually support myself here, but I knew 

I would give my best effort. It would have been impossible if I had 

not had the help and support of so many caring people that I met 

in my school and community. They have done so much to help me 

with my financial situation, such as transportation and food vouchers, to make it easier to concentrate on my education. But what I 

am most appreciative of is the moral support they have given me, 

telling me that I am worth it and I deserve the opportunity to do 

the best I can in life. For that, I may never thank them enough. 

With this newfound confidence and skills and abilities I have 

learned, I will go much further in life. I will be getting my high 

school diploma this June, and I’m in my third quarter at South 

Puget Sound Community College. I was recently hired by Sodexho 

at New Market, as a cashier for the culinary arts program. 

While attending this program, I have found what I love to do. I 

plan to get a degree in culinary arts and business, and one day I 

plan to own my own restaurant. I know I’m a long way from 

achieving my dreams, but I now know that it is possible. 

Thank you. 

Senator MURRAY. That’s great. Thank you very much, Meisha. 

Sorry, you get to follow that. 

[Laughter.] 

Mr. GULLIOT. I beg your pardon? 

Senator MURRAY. I’m sorry, you get to follow Meisha. 

[Laughter.] 

STATEMENT OF DON GULLIOT, SECRETARY-TREASURER, 

WASHINGTON STATE ASSOCIATION OF ELECTRICAL WORKERS, SEATTLE, WA 

Mr. GULLIOT. Good morning, Senator Murray and members of 

the committee. Thank you for the opportunity today to address you. 

My name is Don Gulliot. I am the business manager of Local 

Union 77 with the IBEW. We represent the employees that provide 

you power from the utilities in our State. Thank you for inviting 

us to comment this morning. 

Local 77 represents 6,800 utility and construction workers in our 

State. This includes investor-owned public utilities, municipalities, 

REAs, and Federal and nuclear power plants. We currently have 

21 

approximately 68 collective bargain agreements in the State. 

Today, what I’d like to speak to, which is a common thread, is the 

aging workforce and what we are doing, and what we are not 

doing, about it. 

The other thing is regional training centers, what our union is 

doing, and what our international union is doing, and what we’re 

doing with the junior colleges here in the State of Washington; 

workplace safety, which goes along with training—on-the-job training; and a concern about the use of foreign workers and the reducing of carbon emissions. 

That’s what I’m prepared to speak to today, and that concludes 

my presentation, at this time. 

Senator MURRAY. OK. 

STATEMENT OF DAVID HARRISON, CHAIR, WASHINGTON’S 

WORKFORCE TRAINING AND EDUCATION COORDINATING 

BOARD, OLYMPIA, WA 

Mr. HARRISON. Senator, I’m David Harrison. As you know, I am 

chair of the State Workforce Training and Education Coordinating 

Board, which is a partnership of education, labor, government, and 

business to help skill Washington for a high-skill, high-wage economy. You already know that, from what you’ve heard already, that 

we face huge challenges in this State, and we’re addressing those 

challenges, all the more so because of what you’re doing in the 

other Washington, and your relentlessness on these matters. So, 

next time you’re at 38,000 feet over North Dakota, being served the 

mystery snack, know that we appreciate it. 

[Laughter.] 

Today, November 28, is the day in our history where knowledge, 

skills, and information are most critical, not just to our human opportunity, but to our economic vitality. Until tomorrow. This is, as 

you well know, a central strategy for our State, to prepare for the 

future. In that context, both you and the Governor have expected 

us to get it, and get it done, primarily by emphasizing and responding to the central matter, which is the skill gap, the gap between 

what employers need and workers have. The existence of such a 

gap, as you know, makes employers less competitive, and makes it 

less likely that youth entering the workforce will receive a sustainable wage. 

The annual employer survey by the Workforce Board shows that 

we’re meeting only about 70 percent of the demand for people with 

1 to 2 years of postsecondary training. This is numerically, the biggest single skill gap in our State, just that particular element of 

the skill gap translates to around 25,000 people short. And as your 

obsession, to the extent we can put young people on a pathway, 

and keep them on the pathway, we can and will close that gap. We 

have numerous initiatives in progress to close the gap. My written 

testimony calls out high-demand programs of study at the community and technical colleges, opportunity grant program, increasing 

support of skill centers, and, as you know, Navigation One-on-One, 

which is an all new, all school counseling model that helps put 

youth on a pathway. 

It would not be whining, I don’t believe, to say that we are not 

always seeing our Federal partner with us in these matters. As you 

22 

try and sharpen the focus of the national government on the young 

person’s transition to work, we do have further schemes and 

dreams, and I want to quickly call out three. 

The Board and its partners are intent on using the reauthorized 

Perkins Act to create and sharpen clear programs of study. We 

worked hard on Perkins. The resources behind Perkins are a big 

deal, because those dollars, as John would attest, go toward better 

curriculum and better articulation between programs of study at 

the high school level and what happens at the community and 

technical college. As you know, that pathway, to be a pathway, has 

to be clear. 

Second, I wanted to call out the fact that, as you well know, 

we’re running on fumes with regard to WIA youth dollars, and WIA 

youth direction; so, as you work on the future of the Workforce Investment Act or in other venues, whatever you can do to sharpen 

the sense of pathways and the resources and approaches that the 

national government takes to these matters would be treasured, as 

we, at the same time, in the State, I think, are looking for—and 

the Governor’s looking for—continued improvements to how career 

and technical education works, and how it connects to the community and technical colleges. If you can help make a WIA that connects to those challenges a little bit more sharply, that would be 

a wonderful thing. 

There are considerable WIA youth resources, including discretionary resources we use now for dropout prevention in really exciting ways. 

And then, last, a big dream, and that is more support and 

incentivization of work-based learning for young people. As you 

know, there are really exciting models in and outside of the skill 

centers as to how employers connect, not just with existing workers 

and the older worker or the skilled worker, but the young person 

on the path. We can keep the path broader, well lighted, keep the 

ditches further away from the path if employers are there with us. 

There are some great examples—robotics in Mukilteo, healthcare 

in Yakima, all the very exciting construction industry work that’s 

going on in schools in Spokane in all these cases. Whatever you can 

do to connect those schemes to the weight the Federal Government 

moves the employers would be a wonderful thing. 

So, just those few schemes and dreams. Thank you, again, for all 

your work. 

Senator MURRAY. Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Harrison follows:] 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF DAVID HARRISON

Honorable Chairman Senator Murray and members of the committee, thank you 

for the opportunity to speak and present written remarks to the Employment and 

Workplace Safety Subcommittee of the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions 

Committee. Senator Murray, your leadership on workforce development issues has 

been a beacon to the Washington workforce community. We appreciate your commitment to helping students prepare for careers and meeting the workforce needs of 

industry. We believe that enhancing career pathways for students is an indispensable strategy both to help students succeed and to help companies compete. As 

promising as are the efforts we will all discuss today, they represent only a beginning of a job that must be done. 

A vital role of Washington’s Workforce Training and Education Coordinating 

Board (Workforce Board) is to identify the skill and training needs of businesses in 

Washington State and the supply of trained individuals provided by educational inVerDate Nov 24 2008 15:05 Apr 06, 2009 Jkt 035165 PO 00000 Frm 00026 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 S:\DOCS\39476.TXT DENISE
23 

stitutions and to advance strategies to close the gap between the two. Our analysis 

based on projected job openings and employer surveys have consistently shown that 

the greatest gap in meeting employer demand is for mid-level postsecondary training—training that is more than 1 year but less than 4 years in length. Such training is provided by our community and technical colleges, apprenticeship programs, 

career and technical education programs in comprehensive high schools and ‘‘skills 

centers’’ (local school district collaboratives that focus on CTE preparatory 

coursework). Since 1998, this system has only been meeting from 66 percent to 77 

percent of projected employer demand annually for persons completing these midlevel programs. In order to close this skill gap at the mid-level by 2010, we would 

need 26,000 more community and technical college student FTEs than were enrolled 

in 2005. 

Under Governor Gregoire’s leadership, we have been redoubling the efforts to 

close the gap. At the community and technical college level, we have addressed 

‘‘high employer demand programs of study’’ which are undergraduate certificate or 

degree programs in which the number of students prepared for employment per year 

is substantially less than the number of projected job openings in that field—statewide, or in a sub-state region. In Washington, these high demand programs of study 

include accounting, aircraft mechanics and technicians, auto diesel mechanics, construction trades, education, healthcare practitioners, science technology, transportation, and installation, maintenance and repair. 

In addition, we have sought to expand access to this outstanding community and 

technical college system. A major success toward accomplishing this objective was 

an appropriation of $25 million in the 2007–2009 State-operating budget to expand 

the ‘‘Opportunity Grant Program’’ which provides wrap-around support services and 

financial aid to low-income adults for 1 year of training in mid-level high demand 

programs of study. This will enable low-income students to reach the ‘‘tipping point’’ 

of education required for economic self-sufficiency. 

The initiatives to confront the skill shortage at the earlier steps of the pathway 

are equally critical, as too many high school students face a situation where no path 

is clear to them. In ‘‘High Skills, High Wages,’’ Washington’s 2006 Strategic Plan 

for Workforce Development, the Board has established the following system objective: 

‘‘There should be secondary CTE programs throughout the K–12 system that 

enable students to explore career pathways and complete preparatory 

coursework that matches their aspirations. The career pathways should be articulated with postsecondary education and training and result in industry certification.’’ 

The recently re-authorized Perkins Act is a tool in furthering this objective. The 

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

for the development and implementation of career and technical education (CTE) 

‘‘programs of study’’ that include a nonduplicative progression of courses that align 

secondary education with postsecondary education. The Workforce Board and its 

K–12 and community and technical college partners are in the process of planning 

the implementation of the Perkins Act, including designing a process for development and approval of CTE programs of study. 

The focus of the No Child Left Behind Act, on the other hand, has presented obstacles to furthering career pathways. Many local school districts are assigning more 

coursework centered on test performances, causing a reduction in skills courses in 

some districts. In response, the Workforce Board is working on a number of initiatives with its partners to ensure career pathways are available to students throughout the State, including the following: 

• We completed a study and recommendations for the 2007 legislative session on 

improving access to ‘‘skills centers’’ and many of those recommendations are being 

implemented; 

• In preparation for the upcoming legislative session, we are working with the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI) to secure funding for implementing ‘‘high demand’’ CTE programs of study and the development of articulation 

agreements between secondary and postsecondary programs that provide a program 

of sequenced courses and ensure all students have access to dual enrollment options; 

• The Board is part of a legislatively mandated advisory committee to the Legislature that is examining how CTE programs can guarantee rigorous academic content 

and thus be recognized as meeting academic course equivalencies; and 

• The State Legislature has implemented a grant program that enables local 

school districts to work with apprenticeship councils on aligning curriculum to provide direct or preferential entry for students who complete pre-apprenticeship programs. 

24 

While we are making important progress in this State in building multiple career 

pathways for students, much remains to be done. Tech Prep programs have developed a number of articulation agreements between individual high schools and individual community colleges. The skills centers in the State have been increasing 

their course alignment with postsecondary opportunities as well—New Market and 

Sno-Isle Skills Centers have been leaders in this effort. However, more resources 

need to be allocated to the development of model curriculum and accompanying articulation agreements that can be replicated statewide. This is a time-intensive 

process that involves bringing business, labor, and K–12 and postsecondary faculty 

together to establish standards and develop curriculum frameworks. While some 

States (California and South Carolina) have been successful in securing significant 

State resources for this work, additional monies allocated through the Perkins Act 

would go a long way to making sure these opportunities exist throughout the State. 

An important part of career pathways for students is work-based learning. We 

need to do more to involve business and labor and provide opportunities for students 

to learn at workplaces. This can take the form of co-ops, internships, pre-apprenticeship programs and other strategies. Some examples in this State include the mentoring by Electroimpact in the robotics program in the Mukilteo School District and 

the ‘‘Youth Works’’ internships provided by Memorial Hospital for a number of high 

school students in Yakima County. Much more needs to be done in this respect. 

Congress should explore providing incentives to business and other mechanisms to 

increase work-based learning opportunities for students. 

It is critical that we continue to acknowledge the vital role that career and technical education plays in providing opportunities for secondary students to achieve 

academic success and prepare for careers. We know that secondary students must 

be engaged and motivated to learn. Career and technical education provides the relevance for many students needed for their engagement, as well as an opportunity 

to learn academics in a ‘‘hands-on’’ manner. Career and technical education programs of study options are a necessary tool for ensuring all students learn the skills 

they need to be successful in today’s economy. 

STATEMENT OF BOB DREWEL, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, 

PUGET SOUND REGIONAL COUNCIL, SEATTLE, WA 

Mr. DREWEL. Well, thank you, Madam Chair, for this opportunity. My name is Bob Drewel, and I am the executive director of 

the Puget Sound Regional Council. I just want to take a moment 

to join the chorus of thank-yous to you, and I do this with appreciation and admiration and affection for your boundless energy and 

passion and care for the citizens of this State and this Nation, and 

we’re very grateful for your leadership. 

The Puget Sound Regional Council is the home to a coalition 

known as the Prosperity Partnership, and our goal is to develop 

100,000 new jobs in this region by the year 2010. I might add that 

two of the co-chairs of this organization, Mr. Bender and Dr. Mitchell, are on the panel here this morning, so I’ll try and be as useful 

as possible when you have two of your bosses in the room. 

Fundamental to our effort is the linking of the education system 

with the demands of the workforce. This is particularly important 

in a State like Washington, which is, by many measures, the best 

educated in the United States. Again, the size and the scope of this 

program is not only in this State, but in the Nation. Washington 

has more engineers per capita, and ranks in the top 10 in life 

sciences, recent graduates in science and engineering, and computer scientists. Seattle was recently named as the best-educated 

city in America, with over half of its adults holding a bachelor’s degree. Of course, this means for our citizens to be competitive for a 

job in this State, you must be educated beyond high school. 

Research by the Partnership for Learning on behalf of the College and Work-Ready Agenda, tells us that 77 percent of the jobs 

25 

in our State that pay a family wage require some college, and over 

half of the family wage jobs require at least a bachelor’s degree. 

However, in our State, like many States in the Nation, we are 

simply not providing our students enough opportunities to participate in this economy. Even though we lead America here in this 

region and in the State in high-tech job categories that I described 

earlier, we are 37th in production, in the 50 States, in conferring 

of bachelor’s degrees, and 38th in conferring degrees in science and 

engineering. 

Consider the following: between now and the year 2012, just 

under one-half of the job openings in Washington that require a 

bachelor’s degree will come in six fields: computer science and engineering, life sciences, research, secondary teachers, health sciences, 

and nursing. In 2005, our colleges and universities were only able 

to provide 14 percent of their graduates these degrees. That’s not 

a match that will carry us into the future for the economy. It’s just 

not simply a problem for our colleges and universities, all too often, 

students are leaving high schools not prepared for the study in 

fields—that’s been mentioned on a number of occasions—to earn 

these degrees, and basically not prepared for college or other advanced learning. According to the report by the Washington State 

Board for Community and Technical Colleges, 52 percent of incoming students to our community and technical colleges must take 

pre-college remedial courses—to earn their college degrees—during 

their careers. This number is as high as 63 percent for AfricanAmerican students and 67 percent for Latino students. 

However, Prosperity Partnership and its 250 member organization believe that we see a solution. First, we must invest in the capacity of our colleges and universities to provide access to highquality bachelor’s degrees, and we have identified the need for 

10,000 additional bachelor’s degrees by the year 2020. I suspect the 

same could be said for many of the States in our Nation. 

Second, we must concentrate our increased degree production in 

the fields where we know the jobs are. Consider computer scientists. The State of Washington estimates that each year between 

now and 2012, 3,900 jobs will come open in our State requiring a 

computer science degree. Currently, fewer than 700 such degrees 

are conferred across the State each year. We must simply invest in 

those degrees so that the skill sets that you’ve heard described up 

to this point, and the excitement that Meisha feels about her future, we can deliver the opportunities. 

Third, we must inform students, parents, teachers, counselors, 

and, frankly, anybody who will listen to us, about the opportunities 

that I just mentioned. 

In summary, the economic reality is that we are simply not providing our students with the education they need to be successful 

in this economy. Through a series of steps—and there is more to 

be done than the three issues that I’ve just chatted about—we can 

meet this challenge, but it requires rethinking how we deliver 

these skills to our students and what the appropriate roles of government are. 

I look forward to the opportunity to respond to questions. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Drewel follows:] 

26 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF BOB DREWEL

Thank you, Madam Chair, for the opportunity to testify before this committee 

today. I am Bob Drewel, Executive Director of the Puget Sound Regional Council. 

My agency is the home of a coalition known as the Prosperity Partnership, which 

is an effort to secure long-term economic prosperity and grow 100,000 new jobs in 

this region by the year 2010. 

Fundamental to that effort is the linking of our education system with the demands of the workforce. This is particularly important in a State like Washington, 

which is by many measures the best educated State in the United States. Washington has more engineers per capita than any State, and ranks in the top 10 in 

life scientists, recent graduates in science in engineering and computer scientists 

per capita. Seattle was recently named the best-educated big city in America, with 

over half of its adults holding at least a bachelor’s degree. 

Of course this means that in order to be competitive for a job in this State, you 

must be educated beyond high school. Research by the Partnership for Learning, on 

behalf of the College and Work Ready Agenda, tells us that 77 percent of the jobs 

in our State that pay a family wage require some college, and over half of the family 

wage jobs require at least a bachelor’s degree. 

However, in our State—like in many other States around the country—we simply 

are not providing our students enough opportunities to participate in this economy. 

Even though we lead America in the high tech job categories I described earlier, 

Washington is 37th among the 50 States in per capita conferring of bachelor’s degrees, and 38th in conferring degrees in science and engineering. 

Consider the following information: between now and 2012, just under half of the 

job openings in Washington that require a bachelor’s degree will come in six fields: 

computer science, engineering, life sciences research, secondary teachers, health 

technicians and nursing. In 2005, only 14 percent of the graduates from Washington’s colleges and universities earned a degree in one of these fields. 

Let me say that again . . . half of the job openings that require degrees will come 

in these fields, but only 14 percent of our students are receiving the appropriate 

education to fill one of those jobs. The natural consequence of course is that we are 

importing people—either from other States or from around the world—to fill the 

jobs that our students cannot. 

This is not simply a problem for our colleges and universities, however. Our students all too often are not leaving high school prepared to study the fields that are 

necessary to earn these degrees, and are often simply not prepared for college. According to a report by the Washington State Board for Community and Technical 

Colleges, 52 percent of incoming students to our community and technical colleges 

must take pre-college remedial courses during their college careers. This number is 

as high as 63 percent for African-American students and 67 percent for Latino students. 

However, the Prosperity Partnership sees a solution. First, we must invest in the 

capacity in our colleges and universities to dramatically expand access to high-quality bachelor’s degrees. We have identified a need of 10,000 additional annual bachelor’s degrees by 2020, and I suspect the same could be said of many States around 

the country. 

Second, we must concentrate our increased degree production in the fields we 

know the jobs are. Consider computer scientist: the State of Washington estimates 

that each year between now and 2012, 3,990 jobs will come open in our State requiring a computer science degree. Currently fewer than 700 such degrees are conferred 

across the State each year. We must invest in these degrees. 

Third, we must inform students, parents, teachers, counselors and anyone else 

who will listen about the opportunities our increasingly technology-driven economy 

presents, the fields of study that allow participation in that economy, and the classes students should be taking in middle and high school to study these topics. An 

emphasis must be placed on allowing students to experience the exciting fields 

growing in our economy—not just telling them about it. 

This is an excellent opportunity for the Federal Government’s participation. I am 

reminded of the effort our Nation put into science and engineering following the 

launch of Sputnik, and I am heartened by the success the national government in 

Ireland has had in helping its citizens understand the opportunities before them, 

and how to reach their true potential. I look forward to discussing this in more detail during the roundtable. 

In summary, Madam Chair, the economic reality is that we are simply not providing our students with the education they need to be successful in this economy. 

Through a series of steps—and there is more to be done than the three I have laid 

27 

out above—we can meet this challenge, but it requires rethinking how we deliver 

these skills to our students and what the appropriate roles of our governments are. 

I would be pleased to answer any questions and look forward to our discussion. 

STATEMENT OF TERRY SEAMAN, VICE PRESIDENT, 

SEIDELHUBER IRON & BRONZE WORKS, INC., SEATTLE, WA 

Mr. SEAMAN. Thank you, Senator. 

My name is Terry Seaman. My wife, Heidi, and I own and operate Seidelhuber Iron Works, a 101-year-old steel fabrication plant 

started by Heidi’s grandfather in 1906. We employ about two dozen 

people, including ourselves. 

I’m a proud member of the Seattle Manufacturing Industrial 

Council, and have served as its co-chair for 5 years. 

Over the past several decades, my volunteer work includes serving on the board of the Seattle-King County Workforce Development Council and as chair of its Youth Council, serving on the 

King County Children and Families Commission, and chairing the 

Advisory Board for the King County Juvenile Detention Facility. 

In my view, too many people and agencies dismiss traditional industry as a relic of the past. However, there continues to be good 

job and career opportunities on an extremely large scale in this sector. Many of these jobs are accessible to people who may not have 

the skills and aptitudes to obtain comparable wages and benefits 

in other employment sectors. 

Industrial employers tend to be forgiving regarding past poor life 

choices, but value a new employee for an honest work ethic and 

willingness to learn new skills while on the job. Entry-level positions generally pay well, and there’s considerable opportunity for 

career advancement and wage progression. According to a recent 

employment security job vacancy survey, industrial employers in 

the State have over 15,000 unfilled job openings. The metal trades 

cluster, which I’m part of, according to B&O tax records, has enjoyed 96 percent revenue growth and 15 percent job growth over 

the past 5 years. That compares favorably with the economy as a 

whole, which grew 39 percent revenues and 12 percent in job 

growth in the same period. 

Good economic development policies build on a region’s 

strengths. Our workforce and youth programs should do the same. 

One of our region’s greatest strengths is industry. I hope that today 

we can discuss how we can better educate and train young people 

to take advantage of the excellent career opportunities in the industrial sector. 

Thank you. 

STATEMENT OF DAVID STEINHOFF, ELECTRICIAN’S 

APPRENTICE, SUMNER, WA 

Mr. STEINHOFF. Thank you, Senator Murray. 

I’m David Steinhoff, and I went through the ‘‘Get Electrified Program,’’ which is a program sponsored by the Workforce Development Committee. And it was a great program. I got into the Residential Wiremen Union, which is the JTC, member of the IBEW, 

and I just recently graduated, and now I am a residential wireman. 

Along the way, it was interesting to find a career that I would 

enjoy, because, going into this program, I, frankly, had no idea in 

28 

what I wanted to do, and this program offered the perfect solution 

to testing it out with not completely committing myself to going 

into the Residential Union. 

In closing, it was a great program, and the same with the apprenticeship in the JTC. 

Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Steinhoff follows:] 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF DAVID STEINHOFF

As a freshman in high school I won the regional International Science and Engineering Fair and traveled to Louisville Kentucky to participate in the International 

fair. This was an indicator that college was the path for me. 

My sophomore and junior year I took electronics and advanced science and math 

classes to prepare me for my college years. 

During my junior year I went to the career office to find out about a job for the 

summer. There were three options: a 2-week program at Bates Vocational School 

for electricians, a 4-week program with Bonneville Power, and the Get Electrified 

program. I was accepted in all three programs and chose the Get Electrified program because it continued through my senior year. I began working that summer 

as an electrical apprentice and decided becoming an electrician was the right career 

for me. 

During my senior year I went to school for half the day and spent the rest of the 

day working as a pre-apprentice Monday—Thursday. On Fridays the Get Electrified 

program provided training in conflict resolution, research into the electrical field, 

safety training, resume writing and other basic job skills. 

After graduation from high school I continued my education as an electrician 

while working full time at City Electric of Tacoma. The Pierce County Workforce 

Development Council In Demand Scholar program provided me with scholarship 

funds to help pay for books, tuition, tools and other work-related items. The classes 

provided through the union are accredited and will give me 25 credits toward an 

AA or higher degree if I decide to continue my education. 

I am currently working as an electrician for City Electric of Tacoma. I have completed my 2 years of training as a residential electrician. The next step for my career is to take the test so I can be a licensed Residential Journeyman Electrician 

B. 

My near-term future career plans include training to become a licensed commercial electrician. 

For students who struggle to complete high school, more emphasis needs to be 

placed on vocational training and apprenticeship programs. When I attended the career fairs at my high school, the colleges were well represented, but I found very 

little information on the construction trades. 

More funding to help students pursue a career in the construction trades is needed. Funding for part time or after school work programs are needed to give students 

who struggle academically or who choose not to pursue college a chance to try out 

other career options. The School to Apprenticeship program is a proven program 

which would benefit from increased funding. 

The Pierce County Workforce Development Council provides an excellent opportunity for those students who are not college bound. Increased funding for scholarships is needed to help students with continuing education to get ahead in their chosen career. 

STATEMENT OF CHARLES H. MITCHELL, CHANCELLOR, 

SEATTLE COMMUNITY COLLEGE DISTRICT, SEATTLE, WA 

Mr. MITCHELL. Thank you. Senator Murray, I, too, would like to 

offer our thanks for this opportunity to discuss this much needed 

item in our State. 

I couldn’t help but hear David and how he’s come through a preapprenticeship program, and now—he’s gone through the apprenticeship, and now you’re a regular card-carrying individual. I say 

that, because we have—here on the front row—we have Bob 

Marcos, who’s with the Seattle Vocational Institute, and he’s 

brought with him some of our students, and they are in the preVerDate Nov 24 2008 15:05 Apr 06, 2009 Jkt 035165 PO 00000 Frm 00032 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 S:\DOCS\39476.TXT DENISE
29 

apprenticeship program right now. I know they’re looking forward, 

through those pathways, so that they will be in the same seat here. 

My name is Charles Mitchell, and I’m chancellor of the Seattle 

Community Colleges. I think, around the table, I represent the 

community college system. 

Statewide, we have 34 community college districts. Annually, we 

graduate about 500,000 students. That’s about 60 percent of the 

students in higher education. Coming down more locally, in Seattle, we have three colleges, and we have Seattle Vocational Institute, and we have five other learning institutions. 

I’d just like to say, about community colleges—I always say that 

I think, along with the GI Bill and the community colleges—community and technical colleges, we kind of democratized education, 

because we gave people who, before, never had an opportunity to 

go into higher ed, that opportunity. 

We have three basic missions. Of course, we have the transfer 

programs and—of our colleges, including the University of Washington, 41 percent of those students who graduate from our 4-year 

colleges had their first experiences at our community colleges. We 

also have basic skills programs. Students come for English as a 

second language, high school completion, and adult basic education. 

Also, as you know, and more to what we’re talking about today, 

we have the professional technical programs, and we have many 

throughout the State and throughout our Seattle community colleges, and we have many of the certificate and degree programs for 

students, where they can get livable wage jobs and the same jobs 

that we’re talking about here today. 

Our community colleges—we, kind of, sit in the middle of everything, because we partnership with all of the institutions. Of 

course, the K–12, we’re very interested in how students are performing in the K–12, because they’re coming through us, and too 

many of them would have to take some of our developmental classes, especially in the area of math. It would be helpful if they came 

more ready. But we are working on that with the K–12 districts 

throughout our State. 

We partner with business and industry. With our community colleges, all of our programs, we have advisory boards, and they consist of individuals from the industry, and that way we’re able to 

keep up with the latest state-of-the-art, so that when our students 

graduate from our programs, they will be ready. 

We partner with the Department of Labor. In fact, the school 

that we’re in here today—South Seattle Community College—they 

have one-third of all of the apprenticeship programs in the State 

of Washington among our community and technical colleges. 

Also, we work with many of the community organizations, because we feel that we serve our community, and so, we’re involved 

with a lot of that. 

We partner with the 4-year colleges, as well. The University of 

Washington, as I said, we do transfer students to there. We have 

great partnerships with the Federal Government. I like to give 

credit to Senator Murray of some of the programs that we have. At 

our district level, we have a health institute, and a DOL grant really helped us there. We have a $2.8-million grant, and that, along 

with some of our State moneys, we’ve been able to build a health 

30 

institute, where we’re able to start students at a CNA, certified 

nursing assistant, going to an LPN and an RN. We couple that 

with some moneys that we get from the State in a program called 

I-BEST, I think it’s Integrated Basic Skills and English as a Second Language. But with that money we’re able to hire two instructors. We hire an instructor to teach the content of the class, and 

they also teach the language. That way, the students can get 

through the program sooner than if they took the language classes 

first and then took the vocational program second. That’s an example of how we’ve utilized moneys from the Federal Government, as 

well as the State, and how that has helped us to get the job done. 

I just want to say one thing about—I think it’s been mentioned— 

about the baby-boomers and the retirement. That is so true, because many of these individuals who are working with us, they’re 

saying, ‘‘We cannot find people for the jobs.’’ And it’s going to get 

worse, because we have more people retiring every year, of those 

baby-boomers. I’d just like to say that we have the high school students, and we concentrate on that, but, as well as that, we have, 

in the State of Washington, 1.4 million individuals who are between the age of 25 and 49, and these are people without—they either have a high school degree or less. These are students that, 

somehow have to come into our colleges to get the training, be retained, and graduate in these programs so they can help out the 

industry. That 1.4 million is the equivalent of 10 years of graduating classes for all of the high schools in the State of Washington, and so, with those graduating classes, they will not meet 

the need—those coming through that pipeline. So, we have to find 

a way to educate that other group that’s out there. In addition to 

that, many of these individuals, if they do not get the education, 

we may have to pay in a negative way, in the prisons or in some 

other way. 

I’m just pleased that we’re together today to try to talk about 

these solutions of how we’re going to solve the problems of our 

skilled workers. 

Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Mitchell follows:] 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF DR. CHARLES H. MITCHELL

Good morning. My name is Dr. Charles Mitchell and I am chancellor of the Seattle Community College District. I am pleased to be able to appear before the Subcommittee on Employment and Workforce Safety to present the perspective of the 

Seattle Community Colleges, as well as the community and technical colleges of 

Washington State. 

I would like to first start by providing some background information about Washington’s 34 community and technical colleges and their role in Washington State’s 

economy. To give you a sense of the scope of the role of community and technical 

colleges in Washington’s higher education system, in Fall 2006: 

• More than 250,000 students enrolled in Washington’s community and technical 

colleges (the colleges serve approximately 500,000 students annually, or about 60 

percent of all students enrolled in Washington’s higher education system). 

• Almost 86,000 of these students were enrolled in workforce education courses. 

Workforce education students were older (median age 29) with almost 36,000 students enrolled full time (42 percent). 

• Almost 65,000 students were enrolled in academic transfer programs. Transferbound students were typically young (median age 21) and enrolled full time (about 

60 percent). 

31 

• Approximately 33 percent of transfer students and 14 percent of workforce education students were enrolled in pre-college courses to improve their math, reading, 

writing or study skills. • Approximately 20,000 students were enrolled in basic skills training. 

When we look at our workforce programs, we see the critical role that community 

and technical colleges play in Washington’s economy. In responding to workforce 

needs, community and technical colleges offer a broad array of programs. They 

range from traditional transfer degree programs to highly sophisticated technical 

training programs that prepare students for high-wage jobs, to basic education and 

English as a Second Language (ESL) courses. An increasing number of our students 

are ‘‘reverse transfers’’: people who have completed baccalaureate programs and decide to enroll at a community college to pick up specific occupational skills in order 

to work in new occupational fields. 

At the Seattle Community Colleges, we educate more than 50,000 students annually at our three colleges, a vocational institute and five specialized training centers 

throughout Seattle. With more than 2,400 faculty and staff, we are one of the largest operating organizations in Seattle, providing a significant economic benefit to 

the region. We prepare students to successfully transfer to 4-year institutions, successfully enter the workforce, gain basic skills training, and continue life-long learning. 

We pride ourselves in our focus on diversity and are leaders in addressing the 

educational needs for students of color. Seattle is highly diverse, with residents reporting more than 100 different ancestries and speaking multiple languages. Reflecting this diversity, almost half of the students at the Seattle Community Colleges (49 percent) are students of color and we transfer more students of color and 

international students to the University of Washington than any other higher education institute. 

I would like to turn now to four key issues that I submit to the Subcommittee 

for consideration: 

1. Current and future employer needs for highly skilled workers in Washington 

State; 

2. Pathways that engage students in high school, prepare them for postsecondary 

education and career training, and lead to family-wage jobs with good benefits; 

3. Successful partnerships that help youth gain career-building skills and that develop a supply of highly skilled workers for employers; and 

4. Ways the Federal Government can serve as a catalyst in making connections 

between high school and post-graduation opportunities for students. 

1. CURRENT AND FUTURE EMPLOYER NEEDS FOR HIGHLY SKILLED WORKERS

IN WASHINGTON STATE

Washington is the Nation’s leading State in international trade per capita, with 

one in three jobs tied to international trade. We are truly a globally competitive 

State in that we export three times as much as the average State and our total 

trade is more than two times that of the average State. Washington’s economy is 

a leader on many measures, including our favorable business climate, level of innovation, and attractiveness to new business ventures and start-ups. 

While we enjoy one of the strongest economies in our Nation today, our industries 

and businesses are experiencing severe shortages of skilled workers in key industries, impacting our economic prosperity. Jobs in demand requiring a community 

college level education include computer support specialists, health care professionals, aircraft manufacturers, mechanics and service technicians, and those working in the construction trades. 

As the subcommittee’s research noted, this past spring there were more than 

87,000 open positions and 148,000 unemployed people throughout Washington 

State. This shortage of skilled workers will continue to increase due to demographic 

changes, in particular, retiring baby boomers and an increasingly diverse population 

with greater educational needs. 

In 2005, more than 22,000 Washington employers (11 percent) had trouble finding 

workers with either a professional-technical certificate or 2-year degree. In particular, employers say that skills shortages were hurting their businesses by limiting output or sales, lowering productivity, and reducing product quality. And onethird of businesses report that the skills required to adequately perform even production or support jobs had increased over the last 3 years and that the need for 

workers with postsecondary training will continue to increase. 

Some level of postsecondary education is now necessary for a job that pays a living wage. At a minimum, research by the Washington State Board for Community 

and Technical Colleges has shown that 1 year of postsecondary education and a cerVerDate Nov 24 2008 15:05 Apr 06, 2009 Jkt 035165 PO 00000 Frm 00035 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 S:\DOCS\39476.TXT DENISE
32 

tificate is necessary. Compared with students who earned fewer than 10 college 

credits, those who took at least 1 year’s worth of college-credit courses and earned 

a credential had significantly higher earnings, up to $8,500 more annually. 

Our community and technical colleges play a critically important role in addressing these issues and ensuring that we have a skilled workforce. We see this in our 

efforts to make sure that every student is ready for college. Within 3 years following 

high school graduation, about half (47 percent) of all high school graduates have enrolled at a community or technical college in Washington. We have more work to 

do, however. Compared with other States, Washington ranks poorly in the percent 

of students enrolling in college directly from high school and in the percentage of 

ninth graders who complete an associate degree or higher. 

We know that we face challenges in filling those jobs that require specialized 

skills unless our colleges and our business industries make major investments. Better preparation for high school students is one part of the solution, yet training 

more high school graduates alone will not meet Washington’s job skills gap. 

Now, our challenge is that in Washington we have 1.4 million individuals between 

the ages of 25 and 49 with a high school degree or less. This is equivalent to 10 

years of graduating classes from all of our public high schools. Many of the individuals in the cohort of 25–49 years of age are people of color and people with ESL 

instructional needs. These are the students that we are working with and it is imperative that we are successful in bringing these individuals to our colleges and enrolling them in our workforce programs. 

2. PATHWAYS THAT ENGAGE STUDENTS IN HIGH SCHOOL, PREPARE THEM FOR POSTSECONDARY EDUCATION AND CAREER TRAINING, AND LEAD TO FAMILY-WAGE JOBS WITH

GOOD BENEFITS

Washington’s community and technical colleges have undertaken a number of initiatives to improve student pathways, including pre-college courses, the Transition 

Mathematics Project, the Running Start program, the Opportunity Grant program, 

and the Integrated Basic English and Skills Training (I–BEST) program. We have 

comprehensive articulation agreements with our 4-year colleges and institutions and 

are one of several States to offer 4-year applied baccalaureate degrees at our community and technical colleges. The Federal Government also plays an important role 

through the support provided by Department of Education programs and the Department of Labor’s Community-based Job Training Grant. 

Despite increasing demand for skilled workers with postsecondary training or 

education, recent high school graduates are not prepared to take college level 

courses and about half of all high school students entering our colleges require precollege (or developmental) coursework. While the need for pre-college education programs at the postsecondary level is a significant policy issue, pre-college education 

is indispensable, given the overall level of the Nation’s educational system today 

and the demographics of the college population. It is important to remember that 

pre-college programs serve far more than just recent high school graduates, and that 

the need for remediation is not always reflective of the quality of current high school 

education. 

To address the need for better college-level math preparation, the Washington 

State Transition Mathematics Project (TMP) has designed standards with teachers 

and faculty from high schools, community colleges and universities to help students 

meet admission requirements and avoid remediation. 

Washington’s highly successful Running Start program allows high school students to begin their college studies while still enrolled in high school, greatly shortening the time required to earn a postsecondary degree. At the Seattle Community 

Colleges, we are pursuing these and other articulation initiatives with the Seattle 

Public Schools to successfully enroll high school graduates in our vocational and 

academic transfer programs. 

In the last legislative session, the Washington Legislature provided enhanced 

funding for two highly effective programs that get students into the workplace: the 

Opportunity Grant program and the I–BEST program. Based on Georgia’s successful Hope Grant Program, Opportunity Grants provide educational access and support for low-income adults to progress further and faster along demand career pathways. Opportunity Grant funding is used to provide eligible students with tuition 

and fee waivers, books, childcare support, and a variety of student wrap-around support services. 

The I–BEST program is an effective instructional approach that pairs ESL/adult 

basic education instructors and professional-technical instructors in the classroom 

to concurrently provide students with literacy education and workforce skills. For 

instance, North Seattle Community College’s I–BEST Accounting Paraprofessional 

33 

program provides practical training to prepare ESL students for work as bookkeeping, accounting or office clerks. Students will receive support from ESL faculty 

while they complete four quarters (62 credits) of accounting and business courses. 

Similarly, South Seattle Community College has a large immigrant student population seeking job skills training. To address the needs of these students, the college 

has developed innovative health care job training courses that infuse ESL instruction into the curriculum. 

Comprehensive articulation agreements also support students successfully transferring from our community and technical colleges to 4-year institutions. Almost 500 

Seattle District students transferred to the University of Washington Seattle campus in 2005–2006 and about 12,000 students transferred statewide to 4-year institutions. This is a significant pipeline for first-generation college students, low-income 

students, and students of color. Statewide, students are transferring from community and technical colleges into high demand fields: 39 percent of math, science, engineering, engineering tech and computer science baccalaureates, and 55 percent of 

math and science teacher baccalaureates are 2-year college transfer students. 

In addition to hosting 4-year university degree programs at our campuses, another important initiative at our community and technical colleges is applied baccalaureate degrees. South Seattle Community College is one of four community and 

technical colleges statewide authorized to offer an applied baccalaureate degree in 

Washington State. This initiative will further enhance pathways for students to 

gain the higher education skills needed to succeed in high-demand occupational 

fields. Other innovative programs include Seattle Central Community College’s participation in the Lumina Foundation’s Achieving the Dream program, and development of a new Employment Resource Center at North Seattle Community College 

that will co-locate several State agencies to support better integration of employment, educational and social service providers. 

Federal programs are critical to community college initiatives to improve student 

success. The Department of Education’s TRIO program is an important resource 

that provides early intervention and support services to encourage disadvantaged 

youth to complete high school and enter college. All of our colleges have benefited 

from the TRIO program. Seattle Central Community College has participated in the 

TRIO Student Services Support program since its inception and the colleges also 

participate in the Upward Bound and Talent Search programs. For instance, each 

year the TRIO Talent Search program provides educational opportunities to more 

than 600 6th–12th grade school students from seven schools in the Puget Sound region. More than 3,500 students have benefited from the Talent Search program in 

its 7-year history at South Seattle Community College. We have also received Federal title III funding to increase the number of ESL students transitioning into college-level coursework. Title III funding has been critical for non-native English 

speakers to succeed: 85 percent of the nursing students at South Seattle Community 

College were enrolled in the ESL program. In addition, many community colleges 

are also deeply involved with their local school systems through the Department of 

Education’s GEAR UP program. Finally, the Seattle Community Colleges receive 

significant financial resources under the Perkins Act to support career and technical 

education that prepares students both for further education and for the workforce. 

Another Federal program, the Department of Labor’s Community-Based Job 

Training Grant, has provided $2.8 million to the Seattle Community Colleges to 

train more than 700 students in high-demand health care occupations. The capacitybuilding program will have long-term positive effects for our health care programs. 

As you can see, Federal support is a critical component of our workforce development strategy. 

3. SUCCESSFUL PARTNERSHIPS THAT HELP YOUTH GAIN CAREER-BUILDING SKILLS AND

THAT DEVELOP A SUPPLY OF HIGHLY SKILLED WORKERS FOR EMPLOYERS

As I have discussed, we have extensive partnerships with our public schools, universities, workforce development agencies, Federal agencies, and business, labor and 

industry partners. In particular, community and technical colleges in Washington 

State have close relationships with business, labor and industry through our program Technical Advisory Committees, through close coordination with our workforce 

investment system, and through professional organizations, associations and State 

economic development agencies. 

Recognizing the need to fill high-skill, high-demand occupations with qualified 

workers, the Washington State Legislature allocated significant high demand funding to community and technical colleges statewide in the right areas—science, technology, engineering, math, health care, and manufacturing. This included funding 

for an additional 700 FTES statewide and 55 FTES for the Seattle District. At the 

34 

1The report, Workforce Education Financial Aid and Student Access and Retention, may be 

retrieved online at: http://www.wtb.wa.gov/Documents/Tab5-WorkforceEducationFinancial 

Aid.doc. 

Seattle Community Colleges, we are using high-demand funding to respond to critical shortages of skilled staff in health care through our Health Care Education Institute and building successful career pathways for our students in a variety of highdemand fields. 

4. WAYS THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT CAN SERVE AS A CATALYST IN MAKING CONNECTIONS BETWEEN HIGH SCHOOL AND POST-GRADUATION OPPORTUNITIES FOR STUDENTS

Several trends affect how we deliver training and instruction: 

• Globalization and increasing international competition—nations with strong 

educational systems are going to be the ultimate economic leaders; 

• Rising skill requirements across the economy, ranging from manufacturing to 

professional services—jobs that pay a living wage increasingly require postsecondary education; 

• Rapidly increasing costs of education—rising costs of tuition, textbooks and living costs are far outpacing income growth in a period when advanced skills training 

and education requirements are increasing; and 

• Increasing diversity in our population—Washington State will become increasingly diverse, with the highest growth rates among first generation students and 

students of color. 

In response, community and technical colleges are: 

• Restructuring instructional programs and classrooms to keep pace with global 

trends and new learning modes; 

• Launching new teacher-training partnerships with 4-year colleges and universities to support student success; 

• Searching for new funding streams to ensure our students have the resources 

they need to successfully meet these challenges, especially first-generation and lowincome students; and 

• Developing innovative instructional programs that focus on first-generation and 

non-English speaking students with effective ESL instruction. The Seattle Community Colleges are leaders in offering health care training using this method of instruction. 

I would commend to the committee the need to more closely examine these trends, 

examine how Washington’s community and technical colleges are responding innovatively to these issues, and consider Federal support for our efforts. 

Congress plays a critical role in identifying and supporting programs that have 

been proven to increase the success of community and technical college students. 

The Federal TRIO programs, created within Title IV of the Higher Education Act 

of 1965, are educational opportunity outreach programs designed to motivate and 

support students from disadvantaged backgrounds. Their intent is to provide equal 

educational opportunity for all Americans regardless of race, ethnic background, or 

economic circumstance. As I noted previously, we have several TRIO programs underway at the Seattle Community Colleges; unfortunately, the programs have not 

received sufficient funding to keep pace with inflation and rapidly increasing higher 

education costs. This has resulted in drastic program cuts in staff development, student support services, and other program costs, with a likely reduction in program 

enrollment rates. Increased support is essential to maintain the quality of this highly effective program. 

In addition, funding provided through the Department of Labor Community-Based 

Job Training Grant has allowed the Seattle Community Colleges to substantially increase our capacity to serve students in high-demand health care training programs. 

Designed to build long-term capacity, these Federal resources are a critical catalyst 

in addressing long-term workforce development needs and we hope the program continues. And continued support under the Perkins Act is vital to the long-term success of our career and technical education initiatives with our K–12 partners. 

Finally, I would like to point out that the singular importance of Federal financial 

aid and the need to make it more accessible for workforce-bound students. A recent 

study conducted by the Washington State Workforce Training and Education Coordinating Board found that the financial costs of tuition, fees and living expenses, 

coupled with lack of information about training opportunities and financial aid, 

were the greatest barriers to student success.1 I would recommend that Congress 

35 

consider ways to further consolidate and simplify the delivery of workforce education financial aid. 

In closing, at the Seattle Community Colleges we are ‘‘democratizing education’’ 

by promoting diversity and excellence for all our students . . . whether it’s an immigrant learning a new field while undertaking English instruction, a transfer student 

intent on earning a baccalaureate degree, a dislocated worker seeking job retraining, 

or a retiree preparing for a second career. 

Thank you for your invitation to speak to the commission on behalf of Washington’s community and technical colleges. I am happy to answer any questions that 

you may have at this time. 

Senator MURRAY. Thank you very much. 

Well, thank you, to all of our panelists. We have some tremendous institutional knowledge here from many different aspects, as 

we’ve all heard, from education, from business owners, from labor, 

from workers, from young people themselves. I think it’s really 

clear why this hearing is so important and what we hope to learn 

from it. 

We cannot afford for a third of our young people today to not 

graduate, and not have the skills they need to enter the workforce. 

We need every single one of them, for our businesses to expand, to 

grow, and continue the needed economic stability in our region. 

Businesses need to work with us to make sure students have the 

right skills and that we are educating young people in those identified skills. 

For me, the most important thing is showing every young person 

out there that there is a pathway to success. We don’t just have 

the 50-year-ago model that said you went through school, graduated, went on to college, or not, then got a job. We have to find 

a way for every student, as Meisha pointed out, to find the right 

career path for them. It’s a tremendous challenge for us. 

I’m holding this hearing as a way to begin to understand what 

some of these challenges are. I will continue to hold hearings 

around the State and will be using what I learn from here to work 

at the national level and make sure that our national policies and 

resources are being used to meet these needs. 

I hope to throw out some questions to our panelists here and for 

those of you who think you can contribute, please feel free to answer. 

Let me start by asking all of you, from your individual experience, whether it’s an employer or a student, whether it’s a worker, 

yourself, or whether it’s clients that you work with or programs 

that you work with, what are the barriers that you have encountered finding skills training for yourself, for an employee, or for 

your clients, or whoever you work with? What are the barriers 

there to getting the proper skills training for jobs we know are out 

there? 

Let’s start with you, Kris. 

Ms. STADELMAN. Well, I want to say, first, that I think we know 

what works. I think, on the demand side, we have learned that it 

really is about the connection of the employer with the industry 

and with the company with education that makes a difference. But, 

on the other hand, the barrier is that it’s generally one school at 

a time, one company at a time, one industry at a time, personalitybased, based on the person who really drives that connection. Bob 

Markholt, from PACT, is a perfect example of a program that is 

highly integrated with industry, and that’s why all of his students 

36 

wind up in apprenticeships and with good jobs. But, without him, 

I’m not sure it would be the same. I think we lack a systemic approach of involving employers with education. 

On the supply side, I think we know what works in helping 

young people, especially those at risk for homelessness, for dropping out of school, being in trouble with the law. What works is 

interaction with a single caring adult and also experience on the 

job or knowledge of what a job might be, seeing themselves in a 

job someday, whether it’s an internship or work experience or 

whatever. We know that that works. But the resources keep getting smaller to deliver that case management, that person who’s 

going to help them with structure, find the tutor, give them encouragement. I think we, at the WDC, do a really good job of that, but 

last year, Senator, we only served 870 young people, the smallest 

number ever. Now we know, because of the Federal budget, that 

number is going to get smaller again next year. Resources to deliver what we know works is our barrier. 

Senator MURRAY. Others? 

Bob. 

Mr. DREWEL. Well, just following up on Kris’s comments, it’s an 

access problem, either to community colleges, to apprenticeship 

programs. I would suspect there is not a person here, an employer, 

our friends from organized labor, educators, or students who 

wouldn’t agree with the comment, if you had greater points of access, if you had resources that could be deployed in a fashion, perhaps, with less strings attached to them, because there are a lot 

of constraints that come with these dollars, that we would do away 

with the problems of not having enough nurses, but we know that 

community of medical colleges have many more applicants for 

nursing programs than they can possibly meet. I think the situation just grows in community colleges, in engineering programs. 

They’re programs that cost something. Well, the future ought to 

cost us something if we’re going to be successful. I think Kris’s 

theme—and I’d be pleased to hear from our friends from labor here 

on the apprentice programs or—how many applications do you 

have, and how many opportunities do you have to respond to them? 

Senator MURRAY. Yes, Mr. Veliz. 

Mr. VELIZ. An invitation to the table on inclusion, Mr. Drewel is 

talking about. It’s—in the aerospace industry—and that’s what’s 

worrying, as far as mechanical engineering and being around for 

10 years in this industry. I started my career 27 years ago, at 

Atari. Most of you guys don’t know that, but older folks—us—we 

know what Atari is. 

[Laughter.] 

So, a lot of years working in the high-tech industry. Of course, 

someone who brought me here was mentors who basically grabbed 

me by the shoulder and neck and said, ‘‘Stay in school and finish 

and move on.’’ 

But, the biggest challenge—as I have said, it’s an invitation to 

the table on inclusion. Here’s some of the things that I wrote down 

about what that means. 

We need to find a way to strategize with our youth today in our 

school system, the same way we strategize in the business industry. Yes, we have a need for a more inclusive workforce, and we 

37 

need corporations—we need small businesses that are going to actually reach out to these mentoring and intern programs. But, 

what’s the vehicle? The vehicle is the pipeline, the pipeline that 

comes from the larger corporations. It is not the government’s responsibility, it is not the corporation’s responsibility. It’s the strategic plan of all us having to put this plan together and say, ‘‘OK, 

you know, if ’’—I’m just going to put a name out there, just because 

it’s there—‘‘the Boeing company.’’ Here, we have this incredible industry. It’s a company called the Boeing company, who, globally, is 

our wow factor for Washington State. OK? So, they go and sell 

planes all over the world, they open plants all over the world, because they have to—that’s their core competency, selling planes. 

They have to. Well, we also need to make sure that we have the 

backfill of that pipeline for the small corporations in Washington 

State which feed our school system, which feed you guys out there. 

That’s the pipeline. 

Here’s an example. Snohomish High School, where J.D. came 

from—what’s the program? 

Mr. OSBORN. It’s the precision machining and CAD. 

Mr. VELIZ. OK. Several million dollars of high-tech—they can run 

their own company from Snohomish High School. They can build 

their own airplanes from Snohomish High School. That’s how powerful this high school is. But they’re producing individuals that are 

coming out of the high school system into the college system that 

are much more advanced. True? 

Mr. OSBORN. True. 

Mr. VELIZ. Here’s this—— 

[Laughter.] 

Mr. VELIZ [continuing]. This path—here’s this vehicle that we 

have in our access today that—are we plugging into it? No. Are we 

creating models that match that around the State? No. 

Tulalip Tribes. Did you know that the Tulalip Tribe today has 

the bandwidth to compete or surpass Comcast? Are we plugging 

into them? No. It’s a different topic. But there are struggles there. 

OK? We can talk—we can discuss that. 

Mr. HARRISON. I want to build on it. I think that’s absolutely 

right. The vehicle, then, for making sure what you’re arguing 

should happen happens is much richer, vital partnerships between 

individual companies, groups of companies, and school systems. I 

was just going to add a little painful part of that. Navigation Oneon-One is the new instrument that the school systems are supposed 

to use to help get a kid on a path. Right now—so far, at least— 

that’s working; it could be wonderful, but it works better, I think, 

in terms of which college do you want to go to than it does with 

which other career or technical opportunity you might want to advance. We have got to figure out a way to get the companies of 

Washington into the school systems of Washington in huge new 

ways. For a kid—‘‘kid’’—for a young person, there’s got to be some 

kind of new light that goes off. There are 100 different ways to 

meet the needs of that kid. 

Mr. VELIZ. No, I disagree with that. 

Mr. HARRISON. Pardon. 

38 

Mr. VELIZ. Excuse me. I disagree with that. When our youth 

come to our schools every single day, there needs to be a door that 

is inviting—— 

Mr. HARRISON. You’re agreeing with me. I’m not—— 

Mr. VELIZ. Well, I want to—there’s something that you mentioned there that I don’t agree with that—— 

Mr. HARRISON. OK. 

Mr. VELIZ [continuing]. It has to be inviting, in a sense where the 

students are engaging with the administration that either are bilingual, that can actually relate to our students that are walking 

in the door. Again, it’s that invitation to the table, and it’s inclusion, right? What we have today in a lot of our areas, in our 

schools, which is going to continue unless we change something, 

and it’s going to hurt all of us as we move forward, whether we 

like this or not—what’s happening is that we’re lopsided. We have 

the—whether it’s the African-American or the Hispanic community 

or the Asian, these islanders, or the tribes around the State, 

they’re wanting to come into the system, they’re wanting to be a 

part of the table. But we’re on the back end for our administrators, 

we’re not bringing enough of the matching and kind of—— 

Senator MURRAY. So, we’re not—— 

Mr. VELIZ [continuing]. Bringing that flow. 

Senator MURRAY [continuing]. Inviting everyone to the table. 

Mr. VELIZ. Exactly. And we need to do that, because—— 

Senator MURRAY. You’re talking about students themselves? 

Mr. VELIZ. Well, we need to have for example, an administrator—if I’m in the class, and I can mention—there’s a couple of 

high schools in Snohomish County that I think we have like, 70 

percent of minority students, and less than 5 percent of the administration is minority. 

Mr. HARRISON. Let me add one thing to that. I agree with that 

100 percent. While we’re setting—it’s another missing dimension, 

and that is, when you’re 14 or 15, you’re developing an idea of 

what you want. What you’re saying is, have people there that can 

help you do that. I think we have work to do there. We’re also 

sending the signal that career and technical pathways are not— 

we’re not sending the signal that they could be pursued effortlessly 

and beneficially. Right now we have a big tension over grade 11 

and year 12. Director Stadelman said it perfectly, it’s ‘‘both/and’’— 

we want rigor, we want relevance, we want academic preparation, 

and we want relevance for career and technical skills. Right now 

in our WASL focus, our understandable WASL focus, we have the 

danger that we kneecap career and technical education on a regular basis, and we’ve got to stop that. 

[Applause.] 

And we can stop that. 

Senator MURRAY. Rick Bender. 

Mr. BENDER. Yes. Senator, I want to follow up with what David 

said. The reality right now, we’re not doing a very good job in our 

K–12 system with our counselors, advising what the opportunities 

are for young people, besides just going on to college. Not every 

student wants to go on to college when they get out of high school. 

But we’ve got to provide them the information that they need to 

make good choices in terms of pathways, where they can make a 

39 

good living with benefits and retirement security. We also need to 

take a look at our approaches. We can’t just teach the WASL. For 

example, Retinville Tech has produced a text that is construction 

math. How often do we hear from young people that, ‘‘I’m never 

going to need that math once I graduate from high school? ’’ 

[Laughter.] 

Well, what this does, it translates what you need to know in 

mathematics to be a skilled carpenter or a skilled plumber/pipefitter, or a skilled sheet-metal workers. We need to take a different 

approach, in terms of embodiment of a different pathway so that 

these students can get involved and engaged in a career that they 

want, and understand what the requirements are going to be—— 

Senator MURRAY. So, you’re saying that the curriculum itself in 

schools is a barrier to students seeing those other career opportunities. 

[Applause.] 

Mr. BENDER. Yes. It’s directed toward going to college. That’s 

great, and I support that very strongly. But the reality is, that’s 

probably not the best way to teach a lot of young people, where 

math is not really a prime interest of theirs, but they need to understand that math does play a role in various occupations and careers that they might want to go into, and then teach it from that 

approach. 

The other problem that we have, too, I think, in the K–12—or 

whole system—it really isn’t a seamless system. We want it, but 

it isn’t. I had a chance to go to Germany and take a look at their 

apprenticeship programs, and I had a chance to visit Siemens Corporation, which is a multinational corporation, very big. They train 

10,000 electrical apprentices every year, but they have a system, 

where, if they so desire, they get 50 percent of the—those who complete their apprenticeship program get an opportunity to go on to 

get an electrical engineering degree. We don’t have that. We have 

to start all over again, once you go through your apprenticeship 

and you become a journey craft level, if you want to become an engineer, you have to start from ground zero, and that’s a barrier. We 

need to take a look at a system that’s more seamless. 

Senator MURRAY. Mr. Allen. 

Mr. ALLEN. Yes, for a more holistic view, I think that a real barrier that speaks to all of this is—and I see it in my kids’ schools— 

is that we need to have a societal paradigm shift in how we’re saying what a career is to kids. We don’t have any employees at 

McKinstry that we don’t view as having a career path, from the 

building trades—we have building trades people—‘‘I’ve done that 

for 4 years, I’d like to get more into the building operation and the 

computer side of it. How do I do that?’’ We don’t have any strata 

on who’s better than anybody else at the company. If what you say 

about passion drives a successful career, I think a view of what’s 

out there would stimulate the passion, which would then work toward a career. I think we’re trying to get into the middle schools 

with the plumbers and pipefitters trade—to get the families at the 

table so that we tell—and there is a certain amount of illusion— 

I have to be careful with this, because we hire 4-year college graduates a lot—there’s a certain amount of illusion that a 4-year degree can get you to a higher wage—family wage—faster than not 

40 

doing that. I’m telling you right now, well, I’ll go on the record, I 

guess—the building trades people that work for us make between 

$75,000 and $120,000 a year. A 5-year apprenticeship, if you went 

in at 18, you’d be 23, you’re making journeyman wage. I’m telling 

you, you could take some time off and settle for $90,000. 

[Laughter.] 

I’m not advocating you tell your kid, ‘‘Don’t go to Harvard, because you could be a plumber.’’ What I’m saying is, there’s a lot of 

cool things about building trades, about manufacturing, where 

they’re having trouble with getting people into manufacturing, because all of us adults have told kids that manufacturing is an assembly line on the Ford Motor Company in 1930, and it’s dirty and 

you get hurt, which is not true anymore. I just want to have some 

truth spoken in middle school and high school about—— 

Senator MURRAY. Well, let me ask the students. Is there a pressure feeling, beginning early on, middle school, that if you don’t 

have a 4-year Harvard degree, then you’re not a success in our society? 

Mr. OSBORN. To an extent, yes. Ever since I’ve been young, people have told me that you need to have that piece of paper, that’s 

what gets you to the job and secures you when layoffs come and 

everything else. For me college has been holding me back, so far, 

at Everett Community College. I’d like to take a class in green 

technology or sustainability or anything like that, but, instead, I’m 

having to take courses like this quarter, where I’m taking a CAD 

class, where I’m learning a software that I’ve been using for 4 

years already—— 

[Laughter.] 

Mr. OSBORN [continuing]. In industry and in high school. 

[Applause.] 

And it’s holding me back, and it’s making me pay for classes that 

I don’t feel are useful to me. 

Mr. VELIZ. May I, please? Just to be clear, we hire degreed engineers. I mean, we have some of the best engineers that come 

from—— 

Senator MURRAY. So—— 

Mr. VELIZ [continuing]. The automotive industry—— 

Senator MURRAY [continuing]. We need that. 

Mr. VELIZ [continuing]. Aerospace, scientists. We have some of 

the best. Of course, our young J.D., here, he seems to be the ‘‘Wonder Boy.’’ 

Mr. OSBORN. They call me ‘‘Wonder Boy’’ at work. 

Mr. VELIZ. That’s right. 

[Laughter.] 

Senator MURRAY. Let me hear from this side over here. Yes. 

Mr. GULLIOT. I’d like to make a comment of what we were talking about earlier, the apprenticeship programs. I had mentioned, 

earlier in my introduction, that I represent the utility workers, but 

I’m also a secretary-treasurer for the Washington State Electrical 

Association, which we have 21,000 electrical workers. Now, just 

take this room here, and imagine this is our workforce. In 10 years, 

take 60 percent out of it. That’s our problem. We’re trying to get 

apprentices. The building trades did a great job in getting that apprenticeship issue. The problem that we have in the utility side is 

41 

that the employers aren’t hiring, because they have—it goes back 

to the 1990s, when deregulation came down. The first thing the 

utilities did to survive was to cut training, cut all the fat out of the 

system. We have been going along, and generation has gone up 30 

percent, our infrastructure is in a mess, to be honest with you— 

and it’s gone up 30 percent, but the workforce has gone down 27 

percent. Now, that sounds like you’re getting a lot of stuff done 

with a few people, and that is correct. These few people are working tremendous amounts of hours to keep your system on. Believe 

me, right now, electricity is a drug, because as soon as it goes out, 

you guys start calling us. 

[Laughter.] 

No question about it. And it’s the linemen, it’s the electricians, 

the people that install our solar panels. I mean, there’s all sorts of 

work for us. Not everybody in this room needs to go to college, especially in our industry. It’s nice. But if you get into K–12 and 

teach these students, yes, there’s a certain level of math in our industry, but primarily it’s on-the-job training, but you have to have 

that certain math. If you don’t have that math, there’s nothing we 

can do for you. But, as mentioned earlier, if you get into this program, in 4 years you’re pulling down 65,000 bucks, that’s pretty 

good. 

Mr. HARRISON. Senator, one of the exciting things about this is 

all these things are true, that is, we need more and better high 

school graduates who stop right there. We need more and better 

people with 1 and 2 years of technical training. It’s a big gap. And 

more and better college graduates. If you could get that done by a 

couple of weeks from now—— 

[Laughter.] 

Senator MURRAY. Tomorrow. 

[Laughter.] 

Bob, earlier, you were talking about 10,000 more slots needed at 

our universities. That’s really expensive. Our State legislature just 

cannot implement that tomorrow, because you have to hire all the 

instructors, arrange the classroom space, all those things. Some of 

what I’m hearing is, there are a lot of pathways to success that we 

could coordinate. Maybe you don’t necessarily need to get a diploma 

today if you’re getting some career training, or if these career skills 

can translate into some of those needed college credits. Are we 

working on that at all? 

Mr. DREWEL. Yes. The issue of seamlessness has come up, the 

issue of how it is we get students to talk about these opportunities. 

I think, just to sum up this part of the conversation, and I’m going 

to give you plenty of time—you’ve been so patient here—we talked 

about access points. We’re just talking about lining up these access 

points and making sure that the resources that we now have, individually, are shared in a collective fashion. 

Second, the whole issue, if you will, of the 10,000 new degrees, 

the State did step forward in this legislature—and the Governor— 

and, at the expense of $93 million, funded these baccalaureate degrees. But the community colleges, per capita, got more of that investment, indeed, than did the 4-year institutions. The reason is, 

it is a point of access. Dr. Mitchell commented that if—40 percent 

of the transfer students go on the 4-year schools. You can’t develop 

42 

the types of industries I chatted about earlier if you don’t have laboratory technicians, if you don’t have the individuals who really understand how this works. 

I hope that gets to the point, but what I’m hearing here—and, 

unfortunately, crisis has become an overworked term, certainly at 

this stage of this country’s maturation—but, at the end of the day, 

when you hear figures of not having individuals to keep the lights 

on, keep the water running, and conversations of that nature, I 

think what you’ve launched here today is this discussion about, 

How do we give the citizens of this country an opportunity to maintain the country, to advance their own careers, and provide for a 

stable society? There isn’t a person at this table who wouldn’t 

argue that education is the answer to that, and we just simply 

have to meld these access points together, and we have to be 

smarter about how we do it. 

For the students in the room, we need to get out of the ‘‘telling 

you how to do it’’ business and getting into options so you can experience what it is that you might be able to do in the future. 

Senator MURRAY. Mr. Seaman. 

Mr. SEAMAN. Thank you. First of all, I want to comment on 

Rick’s comment about the WASL. It’s really true, I think, that if 

you could do one thing that would improve test scores in the 

WASL, it is to show students that the material being tested is relevant to their lives. That would solve almost the whole problem 

with the WASL, in my view. 

On the issue of barriers, I run a small company—and Kris can 

probably tell you, I’m not very good at theory, but I am good at reality and—— 

[Laughter.] 

Mr. SEAMAN [continuing]. Reality, for me, is the Seattle area, because that’s where our business is and where I’ve been doing it for 

32 years out of 101 years of the company’s existence. What I see 

as the barrier in Seattle for young people—the biggest barrier is, 

frankly, the K–12 system here. That’s not to say that there aren’t 

great teachers and administrators in the Seattle school district, 

and that they aren’t doing terrific things. But, as a whole, I just 

don’t see that system serving a lot of these kids well. I mean, first 

of all, there’s a very high dropout rate. But even some of the kids 

that don’t drop out don’t find themselves in—it’s one of the reasons 

why the average age in a place like this is 30 instead of 19 or 20, 

is that we’re not serving them well in the K–12 system. 

One of the big specific barriers I see there in Seattle—and I 

know this isn’t always true elsewhere, there’s been examples of 

where it’s not true, here today—is that we really need a full-size 

rigorous—for old-fashioned term, ‘‘vocational high school’’—skills 

center, if you want to call it that now, whatever you want to call 

it. But we need a really committed one, where both the academic 

and the vocational skills are held in high regard and taught well, 

because a lot of kids will learn better in that system—in that kind 

of situation. I think that if we had such a school, first of all, it 

would probably serve as a model for one or two more that we could 

use in this area, and it would probably further serve as a model 

for how some of that curriculum could be better adapted into the 

other high school curriculums. Another example where it’s not 

43 

working well is, as Dr. Mitchell says, the community colleges, 

which by and large are doing a pretty doggone good job with the 

kids, are spending a lot of time doing remedial work, because that’s 

what they’ve got to work with. They’re doing a pretty good job of 

it, but they shouldn’t have to be spending their resources on it. 

I would advocate, in this specific area anyway, that a barrier is 

the lack of that kind of vocational training in the K–12 level. 

Mr. MITCHELL. I would agree that we need, especially in the Seattle area, some type of skills center. They do have them in some 

of the other colleges. 

The other problem with that, and I don’t blame the WASL for everything, but—— 

[Laughter.] 

Mr. MITCHELL [continuing]. But one of the things—and we’ve 

kind of created this monster, where all of the schools are measured 

on how those students perform on the WASL. Sometimes that can 

be a detriment. If you look at the funding of the budgets—and say 

you’re a high school principal, and you get so much money based 

off of—if students have the free lunch, you get more money, and 

so, you have a set amount of money, and you’re measured on how 

your students fare out in the WASL. And so, you have a program— 

say, a vocational program that’s—and they’re more expensive to 

run, because of equipment and so forth. Where are you going to put 

your money? What’s happening—there’s no incentive of putting 

that money into the vocational programs, and that’s the reason 

that we would like an option, if we’re not going to have them within the schools, that we would like to have a skill center. 

Senator MURRAY. Well, without putting words in anybody’s 

mouth, it sounds to me like we have focused our education system 

on specific skills testing, through WASL and other things, when 

what we need is a more diverse education system. 

Mr. MITCHELL. Right. 

Senator MURRAY. Pathway to success that allows people to be 

able to—— 

Mr. MITCHELL. Especially—— 

Senator MURRAY [continuing]. To be successful in many different 

ways. 

Mr. MITCHELL. Yes, especially, you have a school district with 

close to 50—more than 50 percent students of color, low-economic 

households, and so, many of those students, if they’re just measured by how they’re going to fare out as a college transfer student, 

then we’re losing a lot of those students, because they don’t have 

that alternative to go into one of the vocational programs, because 

many of the schools have dropped those programs, just because 

they’re more expensive to run. 

Senator MURRAY. Bob, last comment on this, and then I want to, 

kind of, change topics. 

Mr. DREWEL. Thank you. 

I’ll be very brief. 

Again, we’re returning to this flexibility and access issue. But, in 

the absence of a teacher here on the panel, some of us have been, 

on some occasion—and this idea that what happens in our K–12 

systems gets laid off at the feet of the educators, I think, entirely 

too often. When you began the panel here today, you were looking 

44 

for a broad-based response, and particularly on this question, 

What’s the barrier? Well, I think there is a problem with a decline 

in resources, that has been referenced here, that if we don’t address them through this hearing and other efforts—for a couple of 

decades, this country asked teachers to do everything but teach. 

We sent them children who were just plain hungry, instead of hungry to learn; we got into the business of not-safe environments at 

home; we took that biggest building in the neighborhood—a 

school—and made it not the community center anymore, but just 

the biggest school—just the biggest building in the neighborhood. 

We’ve got to help teachers, we have to help administrators, we 

have to help these young folks have those Formica-kitchen-tabletop 

conversations about the future again. I remember, when I was 

growing up in this neck of the woods, somebody had that conversation with me a number of times, about, ‘‘You know, you might want 

to go to work for the Boeing company, or you might want to do this, 

or you might want to do that.’’ Those were meaningful conversations, because the resources and opportunity were there. What 

you’ve launched today is an opportunity to reassess that inventory, 

not only of financial support, but community support and get this 

business of literacy into the literacy of education so that this region 

can continue to grow. 

Senator MURRAY. Well, thank you. When I spoke, at the very beginning, I talked about the skills gap that we have, the fact that 

we have 87,000 job vacancies, and 164,000 people looking for work. 

If all of you could take a minute and define for me, from your perspective, What are the skills or requirements that we’re missing? 

What are we not getting in our education system that businesses 

actually need? I would broaden it a little bit—all of us need to call 

a plumber or an electrician sometime in our lives, and boy, try 

doing that right now, it’s almost impossible. From some of your different perspectives, what are some of those skills that we are missing today. 

Mr. HARRISON. Senator, the annual survey that the Workforce 

Board does with its partners surveys Washington employers, and 

it focuses, as you might expect, on both harder technical skills, specific technical skills, and their absence. Employers are faced with 

not hiring the job at all, because specific technical skills are not 

present. But there’s a lot of attention in the employer survey on 

what has, I think, unfortunately, been called softer skills, having 

to do with basic computation work readiness and so forth. I know 

you’ve thought about that, as well. On the Workforce Board, we’ve 

worked with some national partners and developed what we’re calling a work readiness credential. There are some other efforts to try 

and certify a job seeker with regard to their work readiness, so that 

employers who might be concerned that work readiness is absent, 

could get more comfort. The issue there is, of course, How do you 

teach and advance work readiness? But the survey does show that 

skill gap is not just specific technical skills, but readiness to work. 

Senator MURRAY. John, Aultman. 

Mr. AULTMAN. I think that when you change the conversation 

from, earlier, what the academic skills that we’re lacking, and 

when you ask the employer, on the other side, it ends up to be the 

soft skills, the ability to show up to work, be on time, ‘‘I’ll train 

45 

them, I’ll go from there,’’ but there’s a blend in between. It’s that 

combination of the technical skill and the academic skill and the 

chance for career and technical ed to demonstrate the academic 

skill and give credit for that academic content through cross-crediting as a method of delivery, other activities around that. But the 

biggest skill, when parents come in, is—my last 7 years as a director of a skill center in Tumwater, at New Market—parents would 

come in, and they would say, ‘‘Johnny’s not doing too well, so we’re 

going to bring him over here and put him into one of these programs.’’ Their parents may have only known about carpenter, 

plumber, cook, or mechanic, and that was their perception of that. 

But the student’s perception was more around the 10 highest growing occupations: the healthcare, the clinical scientific pieces, the 

computer science, the things that engaged him. The skill piece 

there is one piece, but then the knowledge gap is the other piece 

about what’s available for both parents and students, is probably 

the largest gap that, as a educator, we find. 

Senator MURRAY. Mr. Allen, you—— 

Mr. ALLEN. Yes, just real quick, on the soft skills, I’d just like 

to report, I checked with our vice president, who—we were in a hiring frenzy for 3 years, at all levels. There’s clearly a gap, in the 

last 20 years, especially, with communications skills. The point is, 

the people that do well, no matter if you’re a machinist or an engineer or an apprentice or a carpenter, the best—the people that are 

the most—have the best ability to write, to present their position, 

to communicate—and I think that goes back to school’s fundamental fear of teaching a lot of the softer skills, even the vocational 

skills, because the maths and sciences has been such a—with 

Google and Microsoft and Intel and Dell and all these guys, there’s 

this huge illusion on math and science, not that it’s not important, 

but I’m telling you, we’re hiring—this is our vice president—we 

hire best available athletes. She’s—what she means are people that 

are sitting in the interview that are interested and enthusiastic 

and can communicate themselves. I go to my son’s high school, 

Bellevue High School. I asked the principal last year, I said, ‘‘How 

many kids take debate? How many English classes actually have 

group working sessions where everyone has to speak and present 

their position? How much of that stuff ’s going on? ’’ And he said, 

‘‘Not enough.’’ And I think those are the soft skills I’ve seen. 

Senator MURRAY. On this side. 

Mr. DREWEL. There seems to be one new entry into the calculus, 

as well, and that’s—this is the subject of creativity. I’ve just heard 

from a number of employers at all levels—and I think we used to 

call it something like ‘‘Send us people who can think,’’ which sets 

the bar relatively low. But—— 

[Laughter.] 

Mr. DREWEL [continuing]. This idea that you have the ability to 

be creative and that we provide an educational environment as you 

come up through the learning process, that there is some value in 

this creativity, whether you’re hanging a line or whatever the issue 

might be. We’re hearing that more and more. We’re also hearing—— 

Senator MURRAY. Are we losing that in our education system—— 

Mr. DREWEL. Pardon me. 

46 

Senator MURRAY. Are we not teaching that? Are we losing that 

in our—— 

Mr. DREWEL. Again, I don’t know enough about this subject matter. I would defer to the experts. But what we’re hearing is that 

people need to think differently about today’s problems in the 

workforce. To do that, they have to have come from an environment that spawns this sense of creativity, that there are other 

ways to get to the end solution, other than the way we’ve been 

doing it for the last X number of years. I don’t know if there is a 

creativity bend in the K–12 system or not. 

Mr. AULTMAN. I can respond to that. There was—as one of the 

outcomes of Washington Learns last year, creativity was one of the 

goals that was added to that, so that all of your applications, if it’s 

in a healthcare area, you might be solving a world issue, or you 

take that on as a real-life issue, just like was mentioned earlier. 

If it’s in the computer science area, it may be a game design that 

is combined with math, science, and graphic arts. DigiPen Institute 

of Technology just had their first graduate out of a high school program. The student had about 3 months to decide which job he 

wanted as he graduated. It was one of those tough decisions, which 

one best fit his need. So, creativity is coming back in. It’s not just 

the drill and application aspect of it. 

Senator MURRAY. I would tell you that this is a little bit disconcerting to me, being on the committee that is going to reauthorize No Child Left Behind, creativity has not been a word that has 

been put on the table. I appreciate that knowledge. Thank you. 

Other comments? Rick? 

Mr. BENDER. Senator, just one comment. I think there’s been a 

number of studies done, though, that a good teacher in the K–12 

system can tell you by the third grade who your dropouts are going 

to be. That’s why I think that the Governor’s initiative on early 

childhood education, and really concentrating on those early 

grades—because once they start falling behind in those early 

grades, those are the students who are not going to make it 

through the system, and they’re going to have a tough time getting 

a good family wage job with benefits. I applaud those efforts, because I think we really need to start concentrating, focusing on, 

and figuring out ways to get those young children up to standard 

so they can make it through the system. Otherwise, if you just pass 

them on from grade to grade, and they can’t read or write, or don’t 

have the basic math skills, they’re not going to be able to make it 

in any kind of technical or apprenticeship program, let alone go on 

to college. 

Senator MURRAY. Yes, Mr. Seaman. 

Mr. SEAMAN. Thank you. I agree with the folks here that talked 

about the soft skills and the work readiness skills as being necessary, especially for entry-level positions. I think it goes beyond 

that, when I look at this, too. Because I also agree with the folks 

that say we need to do more, in terms of the academic and technical skills. But I would say that those work readiness skills, those 

soft skills that make a person equipped for an entry-level position—say at my plant—are exactly the same skills that the student 

needs to learn the academic skills. If they don’t have the commuVerDate Nov 24 2008 15:05 Apr 06, 2009 Jkt 035165 PO 00000 Frm 00050 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 S:\DOCS\39476.TXT DENISE
47 

nication skills, the teamwork skills, the sense of responsibility, 

you’re not going to be able to teach them the academic skills. 

I think all the young people need these work readiness skills. I 

think it’s the foundation of everything. 

Senator MURRAY. Dr. Mitchell. 

Mr. MITCHELL. Yes, I just want to go back—I know we talked 

about this whole math problem, but I just don’t want us to get off 

of that, because, when I look at many of our students, students 

coming in from high schools and students trying to get out, we 

have so many students, that they might have a B average in 

English and the other skills, but they cannot do the math. Some 

way—and I agree with Rick, it would be better if we had that at 

K–12, where they would grasp the math at an early age. But that’s 

a huge challenge for us. Because there are so many students that 

come in that are taking developmental math and spending a lot of 

time in that. I think that’s something that we really need to concentrate on. 

I agree with Rick, too, that it should be more of applied math, 

but, wherever you go in the industry, you have to know some math. 

We have to find a way to improve the teaching and learning in 

math. 

Mr. HARRISON. Senator, this is playing out right now in the discussion over meaningful high school graduation requirements. It’s 

being voted upon by the State Board of Education, the newly reconstituted board. The discussion is over third-year math and whether 

there is an advanced algebra alternative that is rigorous and relevant and meets curriculum standards, and how those would be reviewed. It’s what the workforce community, education community, 

and corporate community is working on right now. The Perkins 

connection, of course, is, you’ve tightened, in reauthorization, a lot 

of the focus of Perkins and ended up making resources available 

for programs of study and curriculum improvements, and we’re trying to use some of that money here to work on what that third year 

looks like, because it’s so critical in all these discussions. 

Senator MURRAY. Carlos, can I come back and ask you—you were 

saying that some of the students—and J.D.’s a good example—are 

beyond what even the colleges are teaching, or high schools are 

teaching. Can you talk a little bit about some of the skills you see 

that we’re missing, as an employer? 

Mr. VELIZ. I agree with the soft skills, and that’s why I wasn’t 

commenting, because these were good comments on the soft skills. 

The only one that I could have added to that was industry-centric. 

The education they’re receiving on a daily basis, is it industry-centric? Yes, we had, landscapers and plumbers or electricians, but 

again, it was very minimal, or things that weren’t a part of what 

our core competency is. In my opinion, I think those industries like 

that are good in some other State—Idaho or Wyoming or something 

like that—where maybe there’s not a whole lot of industry, like 

Washington State. I think that the fact that the students are kind 

of being held back—or not coming out with soft skills—is an issue, 

but it’s also being fueled by the lack of—and we get back to the 

very beginning here—is lack of inclusion, because, again, there has 

to be some excitement of ‘‘why I’m here today’’ at this institute or 

at the school or what have you. When I have students every year 

48 

that have come through our company—and I think we had, what, 

five last year? About five? I think we probably average four to six 

students a year that come through our—— 

Senator MURRAY. Now, do you go out to the high school to find 

those students or—— 

Mr. VELIZ. Middle school. 

Senator MURRAY. To middle school. 

Mr. VELIZ. Middle school. Every single year, I have two middle 

schools run about a dozen or so students through the summertime, 

and we have two sessions, so we have about 24 to 30 kids come 

through our office, and we sit there and try to understand where 

they’re at, where they’re going, and what their passion is. Then we 

follow them, or we invite them to our Student of Color Conference 

that is being held at the Everett Community College that we started 5 years ago. It’s interesting, because here we created this program called the Student of Color Conference, where we give out 

scholarships and we invite, all these kids from the local high 

schools and middle schools. We have great sponsors. Our hat goes 

off to the Boeing company, Microsoft, and Starbucks. But isn’t it 

amazing, though, that we have to create this Student of Color Conference, that probably should have already been in place by, 

maybe, the career center, reaching out to all these communities? 

But yet, it takes two individuals to reach out to 500 kids in the 

local county to bring them in. 

Again, I think it’s part of that inclusion, of knowing what your 

assets are in the community, and then plugging into them. I just 

don’t think we’re doing that. That kind of goes hand-in-hand with 

these lack of soft skills that they have, coming to us. We spend our 

time trying to go out to the middle schools—we just went, a couple 

of weeks ago, to a high school and spoke, together, by an invite of 

a teacher that’s seen the interest of what we were doing. And they 

said, ‘‘You know, these guys, they’re not a large company, they’re 

a small company, but they’re sure interested in supporting’’—— 

Senator MURRAY. J.D., how did you hear about this? How did you 

get involved in this? 

Mr. OSBORN. Carlos came to my Intro to Engineering class my 

first quarter at Everett Community College, and gave a speech 

about what his company was doing. I personally wanted to be a designer, so I chased him out the door and grabbed his business card, 

sent him an e-mail the next day, got invited in for an interview, 

and then got a job. 

Senator MURRAY. All right. So, you were self-promoting yourself. 

Mr. OSBORN. Yes. 

Senator MURRAY. Let me turn to Meisha. You’ve described to us 

a very rough beginning to your career, and some really difficult 

challenges that you overcame. There’s a lot of young people out 

there exactly like you. A lot of them. You had a little bit of personal 

gumption to get to where you are. How do we reach all those other 

young people who are just like you out there? 

Ms. NASH. I don’t know. I think that a lot of information is really 

just not out there. I had no idea that I could return to school after 

getting my GED. I happened to pick up the newspaper one day— 

and usually I don’t pick up the newspaper, but—— 

[Laughter.] 

49 

Ms. NASH [continuing]. I did, and I saw that article, and it was 

really interesting to me. I don’t think that the information is out 

there. I think a lot of kids don’t know that they can come back 

after they’ve been out for periods of time. 

Senator MURRAY. What would have been a good way to reach you 

if you hadn’t lucked out and read a newspaper one day? 

Ms. NASH. I’m really not quite sure. I don’t watch TV, either. But 

a lot of people do. 

Senator MURRAY. So, we need to do a better job of communicating? 

Ms. NASH. Yes. 

Senator MURRAY. I think Carlos said it—of reaching out and 

finding those kids, and picking them up. That takes—— 

Ms. NASH. Yes. 

Senator MURRAY [continuing]. Individual work, right? 

Ms. NASH. The information really just isn’t out there for random 

people. You have to really be looking for it to know it’s there. 

Senator MURRAY. David, talk to us a little bit about how you 

found your path here. 

Mr. STEINHOFF. Well, it’s exactly like how he said. You go into 

the career office, all you’ll see is college brochures, this, that, and 

your technical and your vocational and your apprenticeship offers 

are kind of shoved in the back, covered in dust, and—— 

[Laughter.] 

Mr. STEINHOFF [continuing]. Two years old. It’s exactly how he 

says, you’ve got to go in and you’ve got to look for it, if that’s what 

you want. 

Senator MURRAY. Is that how you—— 

Mr. STEINHOFF. And that’s—— 

Senator MURRAY [continuing]. Found the program? 

Mr. STEINHOFF. Yes, that’s exactly how. I went into the career 

office looking for a job. I knew I didn’t want to do McDonald’s and 

didn’t want to work at a grocery store, so I wanted something a little bit more. They pulled out these three little brochures that were 

in the back. There was Bonney Lake Power and a Bates program, 

and then the Get Electrified Program. Like I said, that was a year 

old, so it’s really about getting the programs out there. I’ve heard 

that it’s gotten a lot better and that they’re—like, mainly the 

union, the IBEW—is sending a representative to the schools and 

preaching about the apprenticeship programs and the offers that 

they have. 

Senator MURRAY. When do we need to start doing a better job 

of reaching out and finding students and helping them find an alternative path to success? 

Mr. STEINHOFF. I’d have to say probably the middle school. I 

think that that’s the perfect time to, before they start realizing everything and what they want to do. It’s a good time to put the idea 

in their head, because, as I said, it’s all about college, from the 

high school I went to, and even after I was in this program, they 

called me into the office and asked me why I didn’t take my last 

college requirement. And I said, ‘‘I’m not going to college.’’ 

Mr. BENDER. Senator, if I could comment. 

Senator MURRAY. Yes. 

50 

Mr. BENDER. One of the problems that we’re facing in this country is, there’s a stigma that, somehow if you don’t have a 4-year 

degree or higher, you’re a second-class citizen. We’ve got to overcome that. I think we need to get the information out there that 

there are some tremendous opportunities for young people that pay 

a good family wage job with healthcare and with pension, that you 

can live a good life. The other issue, too—what I find is so frustrating—when I’m asked to speak to the K–12 system about opportunities. They’ll send me to an alternative school, and they won’t 

let me speak to the main student body. I’m very happy to talk to 

alternative schools; I want you to know that. 

[Applause.] 

But I would like to be able to talk to the main—I mean, the 

streamline—the mainline students and let them know what opportunities are there out there for young people who may not want to 

go on to a college, but want to have a good career down the road. 

Senator MURRAY. Mr. Allen, I heard that figure of 90,000 that 

you were talking about. Tell me how we do this better. 

Mr. ALLEN. Well, exactly, I was going to say the same thing. It’s 

in the counseling office. Middle school is a good place to start getting kids out to the shops and out to the businesses and see what 

happens in the kitchen of a restaurant. I mean, there’s all these 

great culinary jobs coming out of here, and it’s just—I’m telling 

you, I sat with my son’s counselor, in ninth grade—they gave it by 

alphabet, so you know who you got—and it dawned on me, I’ve got 

1,000 employees without 4-year degrees, and probably 200 of the 

500 office workers don’t either. And I’m sitting here, and they’re 

not saying one word about what you’re talking about or what you 

just talked about. I just can’t believe we can’t institute in this country a dual opportunity counseling option so the counselors do— 

maybe you bring in counselors that specialize in tracking the 

trades and the career paths. 

The last thing I want to say is, it is unfair—the stigma is forever—it is unfair to say that 4-year equals career, because I have 

lots of friends now whose kids are calling me, wanting to come 

down for an interview, that have a 4-year liberal arts degree from 

a small East Coast college. Now they want to figure out what the 

heck they want to do, and I don’t think that that’s wrong, either, 

doing that, if you opened your mind. But I’m saying we need to get 

the counselors and the educators having the mental paradigm shift 

and not—to destigmatize things. 

Senator MURRAY. Mr. Allen, so you know, I’ve introduced legislation, and been working on it for 4 years now, trying to get academic counselors into our middle schools to help students find a career path, because most of our counselors today are focused on the 

social challenges that they have within their schools, as they 

should be. I think we need a completely different person who’s focused on academic counseling. 

Mr. DREWEL. Senator, we have a wonderful opportunity in this 

State—it’s Senate bill 5731. It was a result of the work that Prosperity Partnership did. The quid pro quo for the $93-million investment in the very programs that we’re talking about is that we have 

to come together and develop a program of, How do we get into the 

middle schools, how do we get into the high schools, how do we 

51 

have these opportunities? I’ll certainly talk with your staff about 

that. 

Senator MURRAY. OK. 

Carlos, you had something you wanted to add. 

Mr. VELIZ. Thank you, Senator. 

Again, I just want to add this, just for the record. The equation 

that I believe we should probably look at is that small business is 

the asset to, in my opinion, our educational system. The corporation’s asset is a small business. If we can find a way to improve 

that to the small businesses that are here, and that will be listening or reading—feed our pipelines so we can go do our due diligence in the community, the way we enjoy doing it, because we are 

closest to the community where we live. That big building in the 

community, that Mr. Drewel was talking about, we feed that. We 

have to feed it, because those are our employees, and those are our 

families that we associate with daily. But we also need the support 

of that pipeline from the corporations, and since you’re a part of 

that committee, you know the government contracts that are available out there for small businesses that—and even ourselves that 

are here—we’re too many thousands of miles away from DC. to 

have access to those. That’s obviously a different topic. But, again, 

those are the things that will help us be better stewards to our 

local community. 

Senator MURRAY. David Harrison, you had a comment? 

Mr. HARRISON. Senator, I just wanted to note that we sometimes 

make it sound like these pathways are distant from each other. Ms. 

Stadelman’s ‘‘both/and’’ comes to mind again. That is, the career 

and technical pathway and the B.A. pathway are near each other 

and have to be caused to intersect when it is the preference of the 

learner, going forward. We have to do a better job of creating the 

consistency of curriculum to make that possible over—that’s what, 

of course, the applied baccalaureate seeks to do, and we have to 

make it possible—for someone who’s selected a technical training 

path to circle back, if they wish, to the baccalaureate, and you need 

to expect more from us in that regard, too. 

Senator MURRAY. I’m going to go to Don and then to Dr. Mitchell. 

Mr. GULLIOT. First of all, I’d like to congratulate the young gentleman down there that joined our ranks with IBEW. I also admire 

his courage for taking the position that, ‘‘I’m not going to go to college. There’s something else I want to do.’’ There is a valuable need 

for apprentices in our program. I can certainly assure you of this; 

a bachelor’s degree, associate degree, that does not make you a 

journeyman in our trade. You’re going to have to go through an apprenticeship program, simply because of the hazards of our trade 

and the on-the-job training that we have to do—and you have to 

be standing next to a journeyman to do that. I have a real fear in 

our industry, the electrical industry, because of the manpower 

shortage, that the employers are going to start pushing to shorten 

the training program. That bothers me a lot, because they have 

failed to train. 

But, once again, not everybody wants to go to college, and some 

of them can’t afford to go to college. There is a family wage job out 

there, if you get into an apprenticeship program. 

52 

Senator MURRAY. You’ve identified a concern of mine, as we 

reach this crisis where we need skilled employees in a lot of different places—air traffic controllers, for example, who are retiring 

dramatically, and we still haven’t trained replacements. We don’t 

want to get to a point where we’re rushing education and skills and 

creating unqualified employees. 

Mr. GULLIOT. Right. 

Senator MURRAY. Putting all of us at risk in many different ways 

for a lot of different reasons. We have to be very careful of that. 

Mr. GULLIOT. Nationwide, Senator, we’re probably—in our journeymen classification for the utilities, we’re 90,000 people short, 

and we need them today. We can’t fill the jobs today. 

Senator MURRAY. And we don’t want somebody untrained doing 

that. 

Mr. GULLIOT. That’s true, absolutely. 

Senator MURRAY. Dr. Mitchell. 

Mr. MITCHELL. Well, David was trying to say something, so I 

wanted him—you’ll have your comment, and then—— 

Mr. STEINHOFF. I was just—— 

Mr. MITCHELL [continuing]. I’d like to go after David. 

Mr. STEINHOFF. I was just going to say that the IBEW program 

that I went through also offers the option to go to Pierce College 

and pick up your A.A. degree, as far as your electrical training 

counts as all your core classes, and then you just go back and take 

a couple of math and English classes and you can get your A.A. degree through the union. 

Senator MURRAY. So, it’s not an either/or—— 

Mr. STEINHOFF. Yes. 

Senator MURRAY. Right. 

Dr. Mitchell. 

Mr. MITCHELL. Yes. I had a comment. Earlier, when we opened 

the comments, we were talking about some of those students that 

are performing the lowest, and many of these are African-American 

students, Hispanic students. It goes back—when we talk about this 

negative stigma attached to vocational or professional occupation 

programs, that still dwells within the African-American community, as well. An example of that—even the church that I attend— 

and we give scholarships out each year, and I sit back—and so, if 

a student got a scholarship and they’re going to Seattle Central or 

South or North, get a little applause, and then if they’re going to 

the University of Washington or Harvard, they get a loud applause. 

A lot of that, frankly, is because—I know when I was in the Seattle 

school district and I wanted to go to the University of Washington, 

and the counselors were pointing me to a vocational school—many 

of the parents from that age, or some of the kids, react negatively 

to vocational programs and don’t realize the wealth that’s in it, the 

salaries that you can make. And so, we have a job to do, not only 

stigma within the schools, but within our community and the parents. The parents make a big decision as to the direction of where 

those students are going. That’s one of the things that I’ve tried to 

do personally, as well as our schools, is get that word out there 

that these are great professions to go into. 

Senator MURRAY. Right. 

53 

Well, we are at the close of the time that we’ve been allotted 

here, and I have to say this has been a very fascinating and dynamic discussion. I’m excited by the fact that a lot is going on in 

our State. I think we are really beginning to focus in a very positive way on bringing together our businesses, labor, students, and 

our education system to address future opportunities. 

My goal, at the end of the day, is for all the young people out 

there to know that we want each one of them to be a success and 

that there is a way for them to be a success in a career that is important to them. We all have a lot of work ahead of us. We’ve identified a lot of the challenges ahead of us. We have identified a lot 

of the paths that we need to start looking at. I certainly will be 

using this hearing, back in Washington, DC., to look at ways that 

the Federal Government can better support what is happening 

here, be a better partner, and move us in a better direction. 

This is just the first of several hearings that I intend to have on 

this issue as chair of the Employment and Workplace Safety Subcommittee. I hope that the excitement I feel today from all of our 

participants is something that will help motivate our entire country 

to really make this a priority. I intend to use my position to help 

with that. 

I want to thank all of our panelists again today for your participation. 

[Applause.] 

I want to remind everyone who’s here that the record will remain 

open on this committee. We appreciate anybody’s willingness to 

write a comment. Again, my staff is outside, ready and willing to 

take those comments. 

I especially want to thank Bill Kamela, who’s back here behind 

us, my staff from Washington, DC., who’s helped organize this. Bill 

and his staff have done a tremendous job in putting this hearing 

together, and will continue to work on this issue. Bill, thank you, 

to you and all of your staff. 

With that, this official hearing is adjourned. Again, I want to remind all of you, your participation is important. Please don’t hesitate to comment. 

Thank you. 

[Additional material follows.] 

54 

ADDITIONAL MATERIAL 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF DAVE JOHNSON, EXECUTIVE SECRETARY, WASHINGTON

STATE BUILDING & CONSTRUCTION TRADES COUNCIL, AFL–CIO 

Honorable Chairwoman Senator Murray and members of the committee, for over 

50 years the Washington State Building and Construction Trades Council has represented the interests of building and construction trades affiliates in Olympia and 

within local communities. Our affiliate unions have worked together to build communities and educate highly skilled craftsmen and tradeswomen for over a century 

throughout Washington. This effort exists within each State across the Nation as 

well. Throughout history and in classrooms and on the job today, expert professionals in their craft continue to educate youth through apprenticeship in construction. 

Unfortunately, over the past two decades apprenticeship and careers in construction have suffered an unfair negative image, and at the least, been forgotten as a 

career path for college-level attainment that provides stability and value for individuals and families within our communities. 

Quality constructors, both as skilled crafts and contractors, are local economic infrastructures that must be maintained to actually construct local public and private 

development and improvements. In-sourcing workers and management to perform 

these vital functions simply weakens a State or communities ability to thrive. Any 

financial gains recognized would be short sighted lacking economic strategy; now obvious in our difficulty to supply quality contractors or sufficient numbers of skilled 

labor to meet workforce and infrastructure demands before us today and in the future. In 2005, the National Bureau of Labor Statistics released a report projecting 

that nationwide 185,000 new apprentices would be needed per year for the next 10 

years to meet demands of our industry. Washington’s future needs for skilled constructors are expected to be greater than the national average. 

Successful education partnerships have been in place between management and 

labor in the construction industry through Joint Apprenticeship and Training Committees (JATCs) working together to educate the next generation with the latest 

techniques and technologies in our construction professions. Affiliates of the Building Trades and signatory Contractors have worked diligently to reconnect with K– 

12 and our community college systems and universities to return construction and 

the trades through apprenticeship to the minds of educators, parents and especially 

students. We support our Career and Technical Education community and their efforts to help us rebuild the bridge for students to transition into rewarding careers 

within our industry. 

Washington State is the first in the Nation to systematically build into law apprenticeship utilization statutes that require the use of apprentices on public works 

construction. The attached chart indicates a direct correlation between the enactment of these State laws and the increased number of apprentices entered into 

State-approved apprenticeship programs. In fact, most of our JATCs are now working at capacity year round filling educational facilities with the newest generation 

of quality constructors. The efforts of the JATCs are primarily private schools, funded by labor and employers, affording our facilities, educators, equipment, tools and 

curriculum. Support from government funding is appreciated, but most programs 

feel greater support from our State and Federal Governments, as partners in community and economic development, should be increased for qualified apprenticeship 

programs. Apprenticeship is a proven educational and workforce investment worth 

increased support. 

Federal WIRED Grants are one example to bring best practices together to support economic development within regions. We wisely utilize the support from our 

Federal and State Governments, but we’d welcome increased partnerships to support our JATCs. Apprentices young and older have transitional needs to succeed in 

the trades; and addressing the retention demands of apprentices on JATCs is an 

issue that could be further explored with increased support for students of all income levels. Raising a family within the demands of our industry is not easy. Understanding that wages are good as long as our members are working and the need 

to keep projects in the works to maintain quality constructors within local communities must remain in view to provide solutions. In closing, supporting the awareness and value of our industry’s successes for individuals, contractors and community and economic development to K–12 and higher education communities also 

needs support from government to inform the unaware and to change the negative 

perspective that currently exists in some districts. 

I invite you to visit our Web site at www.WaBuildingTrades.org to make contact 

with our local JATCs, to view the DVD message marketed to increase student 

55 

awareness of apprenticeship and to take a copy of our ‘‘Apprenticeship: The Original 

Four Year Degree’’ packet to your high school to help reach potential quality constructors within your community. 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF PAT MARTINEZ JOHNSON, KING COUNTY

WORK TRAINING PROGRAM

I am a youth educator and employment professional with 30 years of experience 

working with at-risk youth. I work for King County and have been a program designer and manager and a partnership builder for 20 of those 30 years. I currently 

coordinate a learning center—Learning Center North. Learning Center North is a 

collaboration of Shoreline Community College, King County Work Training, SeattleKing County Workforce Development Council, and the Shoreline School District. 

The center effectively reengages 16–21-year-old high school dropouts and helps them 

move on to advanced training and/or employment. 

EFFECTIVE DROPOUT REENGAGEMENT

1. Approximately 30 percent of the youth who start high school do not graduate. 

The options open to these dropouts are limited. If these youth are not reengaged 

in education, our potential and needed workforce is severely depleted. We lose skill, 

productivity, and potential at an enormous economic and social cost. This situation 

is exacerbated by the astronomical costs of the services that high school dropouts 

often end up needing in terms of public assistance, mental health services, or incarceration. 

2. Many high school dropouts will not return or cannot return to high school. This 

can be true for many reasons: Their skills are too low; their behavior records too 

severe; their lack of success too personally overwhelming; and/or their personal barriers too great. Bottom line, at some point, they are too old with too few credits to 

go back to seek a high school diploma. Again, remember the 30 percent number. 

3. Effective programs exist that offer GED Plus. These are programs that usually 

involve a community-based organization, school district, or college as well as employers. Individualized instruction, case management or mentoring, a focus on basic 

skills remediation, GED preparation, and assistance in transitioning to college and/ 

or work are provided. These programs offer the only hope for a significant number 

of dropouts who are not going to return to high school and are not ready for college. 

4. Workforce Investment Act (WIA), grant, and local funding are key funding elements for these centers but State Basic Education funding has to be the foundation. 

The major obstacle preventing the establishment and continued existence of GED 

Plus programs is ‘‘No Child Left Behind.’’ 


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56 

1From High Skills, High Wages 2006, Washington Training and Education Coordinating 

Board. The full report is at www.wtb.wa.gov/documents/hshw06lfullreport.pdf. 2Thirty-three percent of the high school class of 2001 did not graduate in Washington State. 

Washington State High School Graduation Rates, Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, 

2002, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. http://www.manhattan-institute.org/ 

html/crl27.htm. 

5. ‘‘No Child Left Behind’’ (NCLB) says a GED is a negative outcome. Students 

who are reengaged in education, attain their GED and go on to short- or long-term 

training and employment are considered failures by the Federal standards of ‘‘No 

Child Left Behind.’’ School districts and States do not want these negative statistics. 

6. ‘‘No Child Left Behind’’ needs to be changed so that GED is either a positive 

outcome—as it is in federally funded WIA programs or, at a minimum, students who 

attain their GED’s need to be taken out of the denominator for NCLB when dropout 

rates are calculated for schools, school districts, and States. 

7. A GED alone should not be used to measure student success. GED Plus programs should also be measured by the extent to which students make measurable 

gains in key basic skills areas and the extent to which youth transition on to apprenticeship, professional technical advanced certificate or degree programs, or to 

traditional college or employment. 

8. States and school districts need to be encouraged and sanctioned to build, support, and fund networks of GED Plus centers with public education dollars as the 

foundation and other leveraged funding and partnerships as key components. These 

should not replace all the critical efforts to prevent youth from becoming academically at risk and all the efforts in place to keep our youth in school through graduation and beyond. But the white elephant in the room needs to be recognized—not 

all students do or will get their diploma and we cannot afford to lose these youth 

either. 

WORKFORCE INVESTMENT ACT FUNDING

1. The Workforce Investment Act (WIA) youth program funds have been steadily 

deteriorating—year by year—for decades. These funds, and the programs that operate with these funds, are critical to supporting and helping low-income, at risk 

youth achieve key benchmarks in basic education, work readiness, skills training, 

higher education, and employment. 

2. WIA funding for youth needs to be maintained or, ideally, restored to the levels 

that existed under the Comprehensive Employment Training Act (CETA) or the Job 

Training Partnership Act (JTPA). 

3. Programs funded through WIA build and rely on partnerships with business, 

labor, school districts and higher education. These programs provide needed intensive support to youth with multiple barriers. They provide long-term follow up and 

transition services. Programs funded through WIA have to meet tough, specific performance measures related to employment and education and retention if they are 

going to continue to receive funding. 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF BOB MARKHOLT, PROGRAM DIRECTOR, SEATTLE

VOCATIONAL INSTITUTE PRE-APPRENTICESHIP CONSTRUCTION TRAINING (SVI PACT) 

INTRODUCTION

Need for a Skilled Construction Workforce in the Puget Sound Area 

The Puget Sound region is in a construction boom. Private and public construction 

projects are creating a huge demand for new workers. Projections from Washington 

State Employment Security Division suggest there will be about 10,427 annual job 

openings in Washington’s construction industry over the next few years to 2014. According to the Workforce Board’s recent survey, employers are having difficulty filling current openings. Among firms attempting to hire construction workers, 71 percent had difficulty finding qualified job applicants—the highest reported percentage 

of any sector.1

Need for High-Wage Career Training in the Puget Sound Area 

An increasing number of people are left out of the economic vitality of our region. 

This is part of a national trend (the growing income gap between the very rich and 

the rest of us) but it is also due to regional factors such as the high cost of housing 

and other living expenses, and a large high school drop out rate.2 Additionally, 

much of society and the educational system are laboring under the false assumption 

that everyone will go to college. This has never been true in the history of the 

United States. Traditional forms of training, such as apprenticeship, are not touted 

57 

3Statistics from 2004 through the end of 2006. In 2004 the program was reconfigured to its 

present length and curriculum. 

as viable career paths in our schools, and most students do not know about the 

high-wage, high-demand career opportunities they provide. 

SVI PACT Construction Career Pathway 

Pre-Apprenticeship Construction Training (PACT) began in 1998 to prepare its 

graduates to enter construction trade apprenticeships. Over 150 graduates have become carpenters, electricians, laborers, painters, sheet metal workers, iron workers, 

cement masons, and plumbers. 

Before they enrolled in the PACT program, nearly all were very poor and unemployed or marginally employed. Now, they are working at leading construction companies such as Mowat Construction, Hoffman Construction, Lease Crutcher Lewis, 

Merlino Construction, and Absher Construction. These companies will attest that 

PACT provides well-trained, dedicated and reliable employees. There are countless 

stories of PACT graduates whose lives have literally been turned around by this 

program. They are now paying taxes and building our city. 

PACT has achieved these results by addressing our students’ barriers to entry 

into construction trade apprenticeships and by forging strong partnerships with the 

apprenticeships, unions, construction companies and the community. 

Since the majority of PACT’s students are minorities, opening doors within the 

construction industry for people of color has been critical. Great strides have been 

made in this regard due to strong leadership in the building trades and a strong 

job market. Another key factor has been EEO and apprentice utilization requirements on publicly funded projects such as Sound Transit, Federal Highway Administration projects, and King County’s Brightwater Sewage Treatment Project. 

PACT FACTS

Program Background 

• 90 percent of students graduate. Ninety percent of graduates enter a construction apprenticeship program.3

• Program training is focused solely on preparation for construction trade apprenticeships. 

• Program is comprehensive: recruitment, training, support services, and placement are all done within the program. 

• Program works with students to remove barriers to employment such as lack 

of a driver’s license, poor math skills, poor job skills. 

• Program expanded in January 2007 increasing capacity by 50 percent. 

• The retention rate of PACT graduates in the building trade apprenticeships is 

10 percent higher than the average. 

Students 

• 100 percent low-income 

• 10 percent female, 90 percent male 

• 26 percent immigrants 

• 43 percent have been incarcerated 

• Asian/Pacific Islander: 7 percent 

Black: 72 percent 

Hispanic: 7 percent 

Native: 4 percent 

White: 7 percent 

Other: 1 percent 

Advisory Board/Partners 

• PACT Advisory Board is made up of representatives from construction companies, labor, and the public and non-profit sectors. 

• Articulation agreements are in place with most apprenticeship programs. 

• Community and support service partners: Therapeutic Health Services, Unity 

House re-entry housing, TRAC Associates, DADS Program, Urban League, Apprenticeship Opportunities Project. 

• PACT graduates are the largest source of recruitment. 

Challenges 

• One-third of program’s cost is provided by community college district. The program must raise the remaining 2⁄3 of program costs. 

• Keeping pace with construction industry demand for new workers. 

58 

FEDERAL SUPPORT FOR THE CONSTRUCTION TRADES CAREER PATHWAY

The Federal Government can provide support for low-income people moving into 

high-skill and high-wage careers through a variety of policy and funding measures: 

• Funding for training, including pre-apprenticeship training, 

• EEO & apprenticeship requirements on federally funded construction projects, 

and 

• Confronting the prevailing myth that everyone is going to college and providing 

leadership on post-secondary training, such as apprenticeship, that leads to strong 

skills and good paying jobs. 

ATTACHMENT.—JOHN COLLINS, JOURNEYMAN LABORER


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1See University of Minnesota, St. Paul, National Research Center for Career and Technical 

Education. (2001). Career and Technical Education in the Balance: An Analysis of High School 

Persistence, Academic Achievement and Postsecondary Destinations. Retrieved August 19, 2005, 

from the National Dissemination Center for Career and Technical Education Web site: http: 

//www.nccte.org/publications/infosynthesis/r&dreport/CTElinlBlncelPlank/CTE%20in%20 

BlncelPlank.html. 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF SHEPHERD SIEGEL, SEATTLE PUBLIC SCHOOLS

Career & Technical Education is 21st century education. It will increase the number of youths who live meaningful lives, and it will rescue and strengthen our economy. Thus, all educators must bring fresh eyes to our calling, and to this pedagogy 

that serves virtually all learning styles. Career & Technical Education is about our 

young people’s quest to continue building the world. It is about ethical business that 

serves our great society; human services that nurture the caring relations we all depend upon; media that increases communication and decreases distance in the global village; and the science, engineering & industry that will preserve our environment, feed our poor, house and transport us for all generations. 

Who are the advocates for Career & Technical Education? They are citizens and 

parents, educators and employers, colleagues and mentors who want the best secondary education and the best and most meaningful lives for high school graduates. 

Not a self-serving special interest group but servants of community, who work for 

social justice that does not come without a foundation of economic justice. Not advocates of an obsolete or archaic system, but those ready to rip the shroud of an obsolete and archaic stereotype that gives way to a substance and style of education, retooled and reborn, ready to play a major role in 21st century secondary public education. 

Two arguments dominate the landscape: CTE as alternative learning and dropout 

prevention, and CTE as the key to economic revival. Both arguments have merit, 

and together the poignancy that the kids in our school systems are pushing out are 

the ones who will save our economy and redeem our democracy. 

While State after State moves into an educational landscape of standards based 

on the needs of humanities-based baccalaureate institutions (and subsequently come 

to doubt these high-stakes one-size-fits-all approaches), the emerging realization is 

of the need to offer students varied modes of learning, without relapsing into a 

tracked environment. The most reliable tradition of secondary alternative learning— 

one that with continuous improvement can provide all students with the context and 

hands-on approach that will lead them to academic and adult life success—is Career 

& Technical Education. The stories of students who finally mastered math, learned 

to write and speak clearly and with purpose, found a reason to stay in school, put 

history in a meaningful economic context, discovered passion, pride in product, and 

their career pathway . . . are endless. Leading models of small schools like The Met 

in Providence, New Jersey, synthesize the best of the independent study model of 

alternative schooling and the context and engagement of Career & Technical Education. It’s a powerful combination with implications for every high school. And just 

under the surface of these academic successes is the true dynamic of the ‘‘holding 

power’’ of CTE.1 That dynamic is fueled by the replication of our local community 

on the high school campus. That is, our students arrive in exceedingly diverse packages, and our teaching corps must reflect that diversity, not only as men and 

women, not only as being racially and culturally diverse, but our teachers must also 

represent the diversity of learning styles, and of the intellectual, visceral, kinesthetic, and streetwise wisdom that CTE teachers, schooled less so by universities 

and more by industries, bring to our high school students. 

The second argument, equally valid, is that our country needs to increase the 

amount of and access to Career & Technical Education in order to reclaim jobs that 

are currently going offshore; to regain primacy in innovation and engineering; and 

to provide employers in all industries with workers who know how to craft, repair 

and build things, to care for and educate our young, to care for the environment 

and feed the hungry, to practice ethical and competitive businesses, to make our national economy strong and replete with meaningful and well-paying jobs. This ‘‘vocational’’ argument is often rejected out-of-hand, based not on data and research, but 

upon the folk belief that CTE represents a form of tracking, that it is racist in its 

19th and 20th century roots (i.e., following the Industrial Revolution). 

It is a life-and-death issue for our economy in particular and American society in 

general that this misunderstanding be resolved, that we learn, as other industrialized nations have learned, that dignity, gainful employment, intellectual challenge, and social justice are all to be found in the pursuit of non-baccalaureate educational paths that lead to anything from a career in automotive technology to childcare, from small business to teaching, from information or engineering technology 

60 

2These pathways are frequently referred to as ‘‘sub-baccalaureate’’, a more than unfortunate 

term. So long as the sub-baccalaureate career path carries the cultural stigma of a ‘‘less than’’ 

career course, we will continue to have a ‘‘sub-Asian’’ and ‘‘sub-European’’ economy. 3Plank, S. (2001). Career and technical education in the balance: An analysis of high school 

persistence, academic achievement, and postsecondary destinations. Maryland: Johns Hopkins. 

to farming or sign language interpreting.2 There is nothing racist in that. Quite the 

reverse. When vocational education makes a promise to oppressed minorities and 

then does not deliver on that promise . . . that is racist, and that was indeed the 

case in the early to mid-20th century. That is no longer true, and it is the responsibility of every CTE educator to ensure that it is never true again. Today, it is Career & Technical Education, CTE, that can and will deliver diversity and equity, 

and narrow the educational, skills, and citizenship gaps between the races, men and 

women, rich and poor, those with and those without disabilities. 

A strong and sustainable economy will require millions of educated technical 

workers, child-care providers, schoolteachers, entrepreneurs, agricultural scientists, 

nurses, engineers, information technology professionals and the like. The myth that 

any kind of technical training focus at the secondary level repudiates educating citizens for active participation in a democracy, or that it ‘‘dumbs-down’’ literacy and 

numeracy skills has been disproved for decades by the success of European economies and nations who provide serious technical training to a populace more politically aware, more historically conscious, and more democratically active than Americans. Data consistently show that Career & Technical Education programs increase 

college enrollment and reduce dropouts, and do not negatively impact test scores.3

In other words, our responsibility is to do more than deliver on the career-related 

skills and standards found in our curriculum. We must also ensure that graduates 

of our programs are finding adult success. That is the only real accountability measure that matters. State exams pale in comparison to the truly high stakes of our 

commitment to prepare students for an adult life well-lived and prosperous, with 

not a single life wasted. 

The way to accomplish this is through a rebuilding of our CTE programs in a 

manner that is fully integrated with the mainstream life of the comprehensive secondary school, or of each and every small middle or high school. Urban school systems have a unique opportunity to create varied, comprehensive, and robust CTE 

offerings that provide opportunities for all students, opportunities directly related 

to their adult lives as citizens, workers, scholars and lifelong learners. Unlike small 

rural or suburban systems, or a stand-alone small school, a large school system can 

create a full menu of CTE offerings, using economy of scale and making the most 

of the diverse interests and talents of an urban population. Unlike a vocational-technical center, technical high school, or regional CTE school, CTE in a large school 

system can be integrated with the academic life and educational pursuits of a heterogeneous population of students, reflecting the purpose and inhabiting the very 

highest ground of what a democracy can be: full mobility for student interest, full 

access to all aspects of an industry, full respect and dignity for all pathways that 

lead to a gainful and meaningful adult life. 

There is a vital conversation about why large school districts have not always 

taken full advantage of this opportunity, but my purpose here is more to present 

a plan for how, given the will of our community—teachers, administrators, leaders, 

families, employers—our public secondary schools can become just such a place of 

comprehensive opportunity for all students. To build robust CTE programming that 

serves all students, every CTE course must be closely associated with career pathways. Every CTE class must have the necessary relevance, rigor, relationships and 

results. 

When a critical mass of American educators are convinced that building such a 

CTE system is essential, we will need to find new and better ways to define Career 

& Technical Education, to put it into a language that leads to constructive dialogue 

and viable proposals that create the interdisciplinary teaching teams, the fun and 

valuable project- and community-based learning opportunities, and the 21st century 

high school that leaves no child without an exciting and meaningful future. There 

is a vital place for CTE in every high school. To that end, I am proposing a fourapproach model of Career & Technical Education. These approaches are anything 

but discrete: they overlap and commingle in a rich swirl of purposeful and focused 

education that leads students to their passions, their minds, and their purpose. And 

all of these approaches can be found in the five broad categories, or pathways, which 

CTE uses to deliver its content and as a taxonomy to help young people get a grasp 

on the adult world they will soon enter: 

1. Science, Engineering & Industry 

2. Health & Human Services 

61 

4See http://casn.berkeley.edu/clearinghouse.html for links to recent published research. 

3. Business, Marketing & Information Technology 

4. Arts, Communications & Media 

5. Agriculture and Environmental Science 

APPROACH ONE: INDUSTRY CERTIFICATION

This is a critical approach to Career & Technical Education. As our Nation’s workforce and economy create new and more technical/professional careers, high schools 

that invest in Career & Technical Education programs that grant marketable industry certifications will offer their students great benefits. This approach is the equivalent of what we in Washington State call preparatory CTE course sequences. This 

type of CTE provides context and specific outcome. These require the scheduling, 

counseling, equipment and facilities to sustain student enrollment over a 2- or 3- 

year period. In most cases, this provides students with advanced placement in community colleges. Research bears out that students in this pathway, contrary to popular belief, attend college at a high rate, and fare well in their careers and income 

levels. In 2005, Washington’s State legislature began consideration of legislation 

whereby students could opt for certain industry-certification course sequences in 

lieu of taking the State’s 10th grade exam. Demonstration pilots are planned. Examples of CTE Industry Certification routes include Cisco Networking; tech prep and 

other higher education articulations; pre-teaching/child care; pre-engineering 

(Project Lead the Way); and Automotive Youth Educational Systems. 

APPROACH TWO: COLLEGE AND UNIVERSITY PREPARATION

These are CTE courses that function as providing a context, but not necessarily 

an industry-specific outcome. In other words, these CTE courses engage and interest 

students through their real world relevance, but the measure of each course’s worth 

is its ability to prepare students for State exams and entrance into baccalaureate 

institutions. Virtually all CTE taught to standards is excellent preparation for college or other postsecondary education or training. These are CTE equivalents of core 

academic courses. Students benefit from the career pathway interest they provide, 

and from the opportunity to exceed academic standards through alternative learning 

modes, and in alternative contexts. These courses will help to close the achievement 

gap, and students of a wider range of abilities will be able to successfully reach for 

a 4-year college education. More importantly, they will develop strong learning and 

thinking skills. This approach to CTE is best exemplified by school system initiatives to cross-credit CTE courses with core academic courses (Applied Math, PreEngineering, Accounting, American Sign Language, Photography, Nutrition and 

Wellness, Graphic Design, Education, and Family Health are all good examples). 

The No Child Left Behind Act’s definition of ‘‘highly qualified teacher,’’ as it is currently written, unfairly limits what CTE can do for our students’ academic achievement. That is, with few exceptions, teachers must hold a baccalaureate degree in 

the subject to be cross-credited to, in order for that cross-credit to count. 

APPROACH THREE: CAREER ACADEMIES

Career academies are perhaps the most exciting and successful high school reform 

effort of the past 50 years. And their success in retaining students and launching 

them into positive post-high school outcomes is extensively documented by the research.4 Career academies are defined as an integrated team of academic and CTE 

teachers. Students form cohorts who take at least half of their scheduled classes together. Classes revolve around a career theme. Students generally participate in job 

shadows, career conferences, mentoring, and student leadership activities in and out 

of the classroom. Paid summer internships help students connect the classroom activities and instruction with real-world experiences. While CTE in these academies 

less often lead directly to industry certification, the students are deeply immersed 

in all aspects of a particular industry, and they graduate able to pursue a variety 

of pathways, which most often includes a college education. In other words, career 

academies are examples of context and approximate outcome. Academies rely on 

strong and consistent support from advisory boards, and need the support of counselors and principals at their school in order to schedule and group students to provide a deep experience of the chosen career theme. Academies work so well because 

teachers come together with an emphasis of students in common instead of specific 

subject matter, i.e., academies are the original, contemporary small learning community. Academies also have the advantage of accommodating heterogeneous 

groupings of students, and data are now being collected on student outcomes. SeVerDate Nov 24 2008 15:05 Apr 06, 2009 Jkt 035165 PO 00000 Frm 00065 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 S:\DOCS\39476.TXT DENISE
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5 At one high school, wall-to-wall small learning communities manifest as three career academies, and another is headed in a similar direction. 

attle Public Schools has 14 career academies in six high schools.5 They are in Architecture, Construction & Engineering; Biotechnology; Environmental Science; Finance; Global Studies; Hospitality & Tourism; Health & Environment; Information 

Technology; Maritime Studies; and Public Service. 

APPROACH FOUR: THE ART OF CRAFT

This type of CTE, most frequently found in the Science, Engineering & Industry 

pathway, is the one that has taken the most serious beatings in high school reform 

debates. It is not organized around formal industry certification, nor the most common academic standards, and is unfortunately taught apart from the mainstream 

of the high school. It has less specific context, and less specific outcomes, which is 

what makes it, like art, so vulnerable in a standards-based educational environment. Yet there is a significant minority of students and graduates who will tell you 

that their experiences in just such ‘‘hobby’’ courses were the most important ones 

in their high school experience. That these classes gave them a reason to stay in 

school and not drop out. That their minds were opened to thinking and learning 

through the hand or the heart, in a way that other classes could not reach them. 

That they got started on learning in a way that DID lead to industry certification, 

a gainful career, and/or a college degree. That through the explorations in this 

woodworking, sewing, entrepreneurship, photography, or other CTE ‘‘craft’’ course, 

they went through a process of self-discovery that was essential to them finding 

their true and successful course in life. We may live to regret the rapid elimination 

of courses that take this approach. 

A full and common grasp of these four approaches to Career & Technical Education will equip CTE teachers, administrators, education reformers, facilities planners, school board members, community groups, students and their families to look 

at high school reform in a fresh and grounded way. It will provide us all with the 

tools to continue to redesign our high schools to become centers of our communities 

where students do not drop out, where graduates have the skills, knowledge and 

direction our country needs in order to create a higher quality of living, and a place 

where students find their passions, their direction, and the power to provide value 

to their own community, their own family, their country and the world. 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF LINDA TIEMAN, RN, MN, FACE, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, 

WASHINGTON CENTER FOR NURSING

As the population in Washington State ages, the caregiving population is aging 

too. The ‘‘Nursing Supply and Demand through 2025’’ study completed by the University of Washington Center for Health Workforce Studies under contract from the 

Washington Center for Nursing, indicates that must increase the numbers of RN 

graduates by 400/year, every year, from 2010–2025 to mitigate the shortage. The 

average RN in WA is 48.5 years of age, older than the national average age. The 

WA State Department of Labor continues to identify Registered Nurse as one of the 

top 10 professions with significant vacancies and continued growth of jobs; currently, they report ∼5,000 vacancies. Supply and demand are the two sides of this 

equation. 

SUPPLY

Our schools of nursing are able to accept ∼51 percent of the qualified applications 

(actual applicants with duplicate applications removed from the count) into their 

programs. This number is approximately 700 individuals who, if accepted, would 

most likely complete the RN program and join our workforce. The limiting factor 

in the supply side of this equation is the lack of qualified faculty to teach nursing. 

Salary is the issue in this limiting factor; community college nursing faculty experience up to a 50 percent salary reduction if they leave the professional practice world 

and accept a teaching position. Even with adjustments for 9-, 10-, or 12-month contracts, this fact is accurate. Most report that their new graduates earn 40 percent 

more than they do when they begin working. The workload of faculty has been poorly documented but when one adds this to the low salary, it’s not surprising that 

Master’s- and Ph.D.-prepared nurses are not attracted to the educational world. In 

many cases, a nurse with the education to teach must wait until he/she retires from 

another role to begin teaching. While this individual brings important experience to 

their teaching, their ‘‘life’’ as an educator is much shorter than if he/she had begun 

63 

teaching earlier in the career. To attract younger, appropriately-educated teachers, 

the compensation must be competitive. 

We know through a recent survey of our nursing programs that 83 full-time faculty will be retiring by 2010. Forty percent of the Deans and Directors of our programs are retiring in the next 2 years. Who will replace these educators and educational administrators? This salary issue is a serious barrier to our ability to meet 

the promise to Washingtonians that they will receive healthcare when and where 

they need it. 

Our State has not addressed this severe salary differential between education and 

practice, and must do so. A number of States have implemented salary adjustments 

for both public and private nursing program faculty. The prolonged wait to be accepted into a nursing program discourages talented individuals and drives them to 

other professions. In addition, the inability to be accepted discourages incumbent 

workers and second-careerists. Thus we lose nurses from three potential recruitment areas. We have not yet seen the retirement coming in the direct care, leadership and educational sectors of nursing, but we know that 2010 is the year that the 

first significant wave of ‘‘baby boomers’’ will reach 65 and potentially retire. Our 

timeline is short. If we do not address this issue we will begin to see frightening 

gaps in our ability to provide care, to mentor new graduate nurses as they make 

the transition into the profession, and to retain nurses. 

A number of interventions are already in place to address the supply issues: 

• Our nursing schools have increased capacity and graduates by 80 percent since 

2001. 

• Partnerships with industry have supported working RN’s to participate as clinical faculty. 

• The State’s loan repayment program recently amended its policy to include educational programs to become nursing faculty as eligible for these dollars. 

• Partnerships between Associate Degree and upper division RN programs can be 

found across the State, expediting the educational journey for students. 

• Our State is a leader in its distance learning capabilities (on-line and TV learning) and we can do more. 

• Coordination of clinical placement sites, which can prevent nursing programs 

from accomplishing their goals, is expanding statewide, based on success in the 

Pierce county-southwest WA Clinical Placement consortium. 

• Expansion and coordination of High Fidelity Simulation to enhance education 

is occurring across the State. The sooner we ensure that every program and caresite has access to well-managed simulation the better. 

• A Master Plan for Nursing Education has been under development since 2006, 

and will be delivered to the Department of Health in December 2007. Required by 

a grant to WCN, its goal is to assure the health of Washington’s residents by having 

a sufficient supply of appropriately educated nurses to care for them; additionally, 

it seeks to be student-friendly, effective, efficient, educationally sound, and collaborative with industry. The plan speaks to the faculty issues as well. (I am happy to 

supply either the latest draft or the final version when completed). 

• Because nursing, like all clinical programs, is more expensive for a college or 

university, the methodology for how the State allocates funds must be altered. 

Funding a History student FTE at the same level as a nursing FTE makes no sense; 

the latter requires more resources in terms of people, equipment, and time, than the 

former. This old methodology is a barrier to nursing programs. 

• A program to bring nursing education to the rural areas of the State is in process; this is a collaborative effort of the AHEC’s, WCN, Lower Columbia College, 

WSHA, the State Board of Community and Technical Colleges and several rural organizations. This innovative program addresses the dilemmas of place bound individuals who want to become RN’s but cannot leave their home areas, and the desire 

of rural organizations to have a well-educated workforce that remains in their communities. 

• Several programs are looking at specific underrepresented populations’ needs 

for assistance in becoming nurses. 

• A plan is under way in Pierce County to create a program for internationally 

(formerly ‘‘foreign’’) educated RN’s who are not practicing as RN’s to prepare themselves to take the NCLEX and become licensed in WA. Once funded and implemented, it can be replicated in other areas of the State. 

• The Governor’s Healthcare Disparities Council is interested in exploring the application of its’ goals and principles to expanding a diverse healthcare workforce. 

• There is a desire to work with DOD to create pathways that are effective and 

educationally sound so that military personnel can transition into a civilian educational program to advance their education. Work in this area was completed last 

64 

year by the Nursing Care Quality Assurance Commission and interest in this area 

is high. 

• WA has been a leader in expanding the role of the Advanced Practice Nurses, 

so that patients can be served by them as their primary providers. We have 6.7 percent more ARNP’s in WA today than we did last year, and our schools are preparing 

more each year. 

DEMAND

On the opposite side of the scale is the demand for nurses. Again, DOL tells us 

that employers report an increasing need for Registered Nurses in most venues for 

care, and a need for more Licensed Practical Nurses (LPN’s) in Long Term Care and 

Home Care. Over 50 percent of our nurses work in the 109 Acute Care Hospitals 

across the State. As ‘‘acute’’ care continues to move into Long Term Care and the 

Home, the need for nurses grows in those areas; concurrently, the patients who are 

in the acute hospitals are extremely ill or have complex surgeries that cannot be 

done in the outpatient setting, and thus require intense care. Older patients consume more healthcare resources, often have fewer support systems in terms of family, and have the limitations that normal aging brings. As our State’s population 

continues to expand, our hospitals are seeing increasing numbers of patients even 

as acute care moves to other settings. 

Stabilization of the workforce through improvement of what is called the workplace environment is critical, and is in the hands of leadership in an organization. 

Data show us that salary & benefits continue not to be the most important issue 

for nurses but involvement in the workplace decisions, a focus on patients first, 

flexibility in scheduling, attention to the needs of aging nurses, access to educational 

advancement, positive MD–RN relationships, support systems so that a nurse can 

do nursing work, appropriate staffing, a nurse leader who is at the executive level 

of the organization to impact decisions that affect patient safety and staff satisfaction, and recognition are all important. Clearly there are work situations where 

compensation may not be competitive or appropriate for the work done; again, it’s 

incumbent on the employer to address those issues. 

Redesigning how care is delivered is an important component of retention; patients, care, and knowledge is different than when the systems we still use were 

designed. We need new and different answers to the questions of how to ensure that 

patients in all settings receive the right care, from the right person, at the right 

price. 

According to the UW Center for Health Workforce Studies, approximately 85 percent of licensed RN’s who are healthy & less than 69 years of age are working. Retaining these nurses is critical to ensuring the health of our citizens. 

One aspect of retention that has just been studied in WA is the transition of new 

graduate RN’s from school into their first professional roles. This is the most vulnerable time for us to retain or lose nurses. Data verify that hospitals in WA that have 

a planned program of transition have a 90 percent retention rate of new graduates 

after 1 year of employment. Because national data report that up to 1⁄3 of new RN 

graduates report that they plan to leave nursing within a few years, we must intervene to retain these nurses. Nursing is unique in its historical thrusting of educated 

but inexperienced nurses into positions of great responsibility with little support or 

transition. Other professions approach this period of transition differently; teachers 

complete a student teaching period, new accountants start at firms ‘‘crunching’’ 

numbers, engineers have at least a year of learning, physicians complete 

residencies. The complexity of patient needs, the expansion of medications, technology, and information demand that we ensure that every new graduate have an 

effective transition from student to novice professional. Recently a nurse told me 

that she cares for ‘‘x’’ patients each shift and adds ‘‘technology’’ as an additional patient needing her time and energy. It’s no surprise that dissatisfaction is high in 

this new graduate workgroup if minimal acknowledgement of what is needed exists 

in an organization. 

Traditionally, Home Care and Public Health have not hired new graduates because those roles require high levels of independence, critical judgments, knowledge 

of community health and population management. Given that the average Public 

Health Nurse is >50, and that our Public Health Department budgets preclude their 

paying salaries that are competitive, there is new thinking about whether a new RN 

graduate could be successful in this area. Corollary to this is the question about how 

to help nurses who have been in the acute hospital make the transition into either 

Home Care or Public Health. My recent meeting with several directors of large 

Home Care agencies revolved around the same issues, though salaries are not so 

much on an issue. Lack of funding to study, design, implement and evaluate transiVerDate Nov 24 2008 15:05 Apr 06, 2009 Jkt 035165 PO 00000 Frm 00068 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 S:\DOCS\39476.TXT DENISE
65 

tion programs into these areas, where more and more patients now receive care, is 

a barrier for them. 

We all know the complexity of these issues and share the worries about whether 

we’re doing enough, well enough, quickly enough. WCN was created to ensure that 

we have enough nurses with the appropriate education to care for WA’s citizens 

both now and in the future. All of the work that has been done since its creation 

is in service to that mission. 

I welcome the opportunity to speak with any/all of you about the information submitted here, and hope that this has been helpful to you. 

MANUFACTURING INDUSTRIAL COUNCIL (MIC), 

SEATTLE, WA, 

November 21, 2007. 

Hon. PATTY MURRAY, 

U.S. Senator, 

Chairman, Subcommittee on Employment and Workplace Safety, 

Russell Senate Office Building, 

Washington, DC. 20510. 

DEAR SENATOR MURRAY: Thank you for the opportunity to participate in the November 27, 2007 field hearing of the HELP subcommittee. 

The Manufacturing Industrial Council is a non-profit advocacy group for industrial businesses in greater Seattle. I am a former co-chair of the MIC. In my professional life, I am the vice president of a 101-year-old steel fabricating firm in Seattle, 

Seidelhuber Ironworks. Over the past decade and a half, I have also served as a 

volunteer member of the King County Workforce Development Council, the King 

County Child and Family Commission, the advisory board for the King County 

Youth Center (a juvenile detention facility) and the advisory board for ‘‘ArtWorks,’’ 

a non-profit program that uses art to help develop stronger self confidence and career directions for disadvantaged young people. 

This letter and my testimony to the committee reflect both the collective view of 

the MIC and my personal views and experiences involving youth programs and the 

industrial business sector. 

In my experience, too many people and agencies in the public sector dismiss ‘‘industry’’ as a relic of the past while they rush to identify and embrace the ‘‘next big 

thing.’’ In fact, companies like mine and others that are represented by the MIC are 

part of a growing, dynamic economic force that continues to provide the economic 

and social bedrock of our Nation and many pillars of the so-called ‘‘new economy.’’ 

At the same time, industry continues to provide good job and career opportunities 

on an extremely large scale. Contrary to common misconceptions, many industrial 

sectors are also suffering from a shortage of skilled workers and professionals that 

appears to be growing more and more severe. 

You and your staff have correctly identified the enormous opportunity that exists 

to better link these career and job opportunities with young people who need to gain 

a toe hold in the workforce and find their place in the global economy. 

Are these career opportunities good opportunities for every one? No. But for young 

people with the right aptitudes and attitudes, these opportunities often prove to be 

literally transformative, empowering them to lead productive, rewarding lives in 

which they are capable of supporting themselves and their loved ones. There’s a 

good reason people call these ‘‘family-wage’’ jobs and I see the proof every day at 

Seidelhuber Ironworks as I watch our employees come to work. 

The extent of the industrial labor shortage is reflected in a survey of job vacancies 

that is conducted on an ongoing basis by the Washington State Department of Employment Security. The survey conducted last spring which showed industrial employers with openings for: 

• 4,362 employees in construction; 

• 6,595 employees in manufacturing; 

• 2,527 employees in wholesale distribution; and 

• 2,135 workers in transportation. 

These numbers added up to 15,619 openings. Among the four business groups 

with the most job openings, the industrial sector placed second to health care 

(17,000), and ahead of retail (10,000) or restaurants and hotels, (8,000). 

In my experience, public sector workforce and education agencies tend to divide 

the industrial sector into its individual components, and seldom look at them in the 

aggregate. This is a huge mistake that blinds people to the full range and size of 

the available industrial career opportunities. 

66 

Industrial career opportunities share many key characteristics that are highly relevant to your focus on career paths, upward mobility and the needs of employers 

and young people. 

All industrial sectors are dominated by activities and working environments that 

tend to appeal to people who share similar aptitudes and attitudes toward physical 

work and challenges. As stated earlier, these environments are not suited to every 

one, but they often work best for people who may struggle to find success in retail 

or service sectors. 

All industrial sectors also provide a large number of entry-level positions that are 

highly accessible to people who may not find comparable wages or benefits in other 

employment sectors. Each also tends to offer career pathways that can lead to excellent pay and other rewards for individuals who are willing and able to obtain higher 

skills and more education. 

Employers in these sectors also tend to be forgiving. At most companies, your 

‘‘record’’ starts with your first day on the job and if you can put in an honest day’s 

work every day, that’s more important than any poor life choices you may have 

made in the past. 

These industrial sectors also tend to be very healthy, contrary to popular misconceptions. For instance, our company is part of a business cluster called the metal 

trades. This cluster includes the metal fabricators and machine manufacturers who 

make the structural parts, gears, engines, pumps, and contraptions that drive modern industry. 

Five years ago, many ‘‘experts’’ considered metal trades doomed to economic obsolescence due to inexorable changes in the global economy. But, instead of going 

away, the metal trades enjoyed a remarkable boom. According to State B&O tax 

records, metal trade companies in Washington enjoyed 96 percent revenue growth 

over the past 5 years, reaching collective revenues of $9.2 billion, and 15 percent 

job growth, to more than 32,000 employees. 

That was significantly faster revenue and job growth than the economy as a whole 

(39 percent for revenue and 12 percent for jobs). As a result, the metal trades cluster is now a bigger sector in Washington than many other, much more visible sectors. For example, companies engaged in real estate generated $8.9 billion in revenues; telecommunications, $8.8 billion; insurance, $6.3 billion, and private sector 

legal services, $4 billion. Metal trades revenues and jobs even grew faster than companies engaged in computer services, which collectively recorded 65 percent revenue 

growth and 8 percent job growth. 

While this success was notable, it was not truly exceptional. Over the past 5 

years, construction revenues were up 56 percent to nearly $42 billion, and jobs grew 

34 percent. Other industrial sectors also grew faster than the overall economy, including boat building, aircraft and aircraft parts manufacturing, wood products and 

furniture making. 

Good economic development policies build on a region’s strengths. Our workforce 

and youth programs should do the same. One of our greatest economic strengths is 

industry. We applaud you for conducting this hearing and urge you to provide the 

leadership that this issue so badly needs. We look forward to supporting your efforts 

in the future. 

Sincerely, 

TERRY SEAMAN, VICE-PRESIDENT, 

Seidelhuber Ironworks. 

[Whereupon, at 11:28 a.m., the hearing was adjourned.] 

Æ