Dive Brief:
- The U.S. Department of Education announced Monday it was reversing two career and technical education policies put in place by the outgoing Biden administration that some say would have added administrative burdens for additional reporting at the state and local levels.
- The policies — finalized just days before President Donald Trump was inaugurated in January — include information collection activities under the Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education Act’s state plan guide and consolidated annual report.
- The additional reporting requirements would have "piled on thousands of hours in additional reporting compliance requirements on states, high schools, and community colleges that can be better spent on equipping the American workforce with the skills necessary to rebuild our economy," the Education Department said.
Dive Insight:
Also known as Perkins V, the law supports CTE learners through secondary and postsecondary school connections. About 85% of high school graduates in 2019 had taken a CTE course, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.
When the Education Department proposed the policy changes last fall, the agency said it wanted to change data specifications to align more with the Perkins V law. At the time, the Education Department also said the changes would reduce the collection of potentially duplicative information, give states more time to report education and employment outcomes, and improve the consistency of performance data reported by states.
But several school administrative groups said the policies would result in unnecessary and burdensome work for schools.
In a statement posted Monday, AASA, The School Superintendents Association, said the information collection policies would have "hindered the ability of districts to track the success of our CTE students over time and create considerable new and inappropriate unfunded mandates on districts leading to thousands of hours of additional reporting requirements for districts."
Advance CTE, a CTE membership organization, and the Association for Career and Technical Education, a CTE advocacy organization, had asked the new Trump administration to rescind the Biden-era policies and revert to the previous versions of the requirements for the state plan guide and related consolidated annual report.
In a Jan. 24 letter the organizations wrote to Acting Education Secretary Denise Carter that the new policy exceeded statutory requirements in Perkins V and would not help state or local programs bring value for learners.
The organizations said feedback from state members showed that the Biden-era policy changes would require them to recode or update existing systems of data collection and reporting. That would require an additional 1,000 hours of staff time to successfully complete per state, they estimated.
In its announcement, the Education Department also said it is celebrating CTE Month in February. CTE courses can include information technology, business, healthcare, agriculture, hospitality, engineering and more.
