From:                              National Alliance for Partnerships in Equity [nape@napequity.org]

Sent:                               Friday, May 24, 2013 1:01 PM

To:                                   Nancy Tuvesson

Subject:                          NAPE Public Policy Update for May 2013

 

National Alliance for Partnerships in Equity

Public Policy Update
May 2013

 


  

Congress

 

Great News on Perkins!  Both the House and Senate have started efforts to support CTE. In the Senate, 21 senators signed onto Sen. Blumenthal's (D-CT) dear colleague letter. In the House, the letter was led by Rep. Thompson (R-PA) and Rep. Langevin (D-RI). An additional 63 House members signed on.  


On May 16, Politico reported that the House Republicans had begun circulating new spending targets for appropriations bills for the coming year, with Labor, Education and Health and Human Services facing a nearly 20 percent reduction on top of the cuts already made in the March 1 sequestration order. "Appropriations Committee Chairman Hal Rogers (R-Ky.) appears to be backloading the larger reductions in order to salvage a few of the 12 annual bills this summer. He is putting a priority on what he sees as security items, including law enforcement and homeland security as well as the military."   

  • Discretionary spending for the departments of Labor, Education and Health and Human Services would be capped at $121.8 billion--or about $28 billion below the best available estimates for post-sequestration appropriations.

On May 14, the Senate Judiciary Committee voted to direct money collected on fees for labor certifications toward STEM education at the U.S. Department of Education and the National Science Foundation, possibly an additional $100 million annually for STEM education in the Department of Education and $100 million to $150 million in additional funding for STEM education in the National Science Foundation. The amendment had bipartisan backing from Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) and two Democrats, Sens. Chris Coons of Delaware and Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota. Learn More 

 

On May 8, Sens. Mazie K. Hirono and Roger Wicker (R-MS), along with Representatives Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) and House Science Committee Chairman Lamar Smith (R-TX), introduced bipartisan companion legislation in the Senate and House of Representatives that promotes science education and celebrates scientific achievement by establishing an official Science Laureate of the United States, who would be a nationally renowned expert in his or her field  and would travel around the country to inspire future scientists. Learn More 

 

On May 7, the House Committee on Education and the Workforce held a hearing titled "Raising the Bar: Exploring State and Local Efforts to Improve Accountability." With the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) on the horizon, the hearing focused on what the proper federal role should be in holding schools accountable for student outcomes. CTE was discussed for its role in making students college and career ready.

 

On April 26, 11 senators, including Jeff Merkley (D-OR)  and Al Franken (D-MN), sent a letter to the Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education Senate Committee on Appropriations to support $265 million for STEM education in the Department of Education, including Math and Science Partnerships and the STEM Master Teacher Corps.

 

On April 25, Senator Merkley introduced The STEM Education for the Global Economy Act to help improve instruction in STEM subjects and amend the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) The legislation aims to: 

  • Improve student engagement in, and increase student access to, courses in STEM subjects;
  • Recruit, train, and support highly-effective teachers in STEM subjects and providing robust tools and supports for students and teachers;
  • Close student achievement gaps, and prepare more students to be on track to college and career readiness.

On April 24, Senators Bennet (D-CO) and Portman (R-OH) reintroduced the Career Through Responsive, Efficient, and Effective Retraining (CAREER) Act, S.804, "to make federal job training programs more responsive to the needs of employers, more efficient with taxpayer dollars, and more effective in connecting the unemployed with highly paid jobs." The key provisions are: 

  • Providing a Job Training Reorganization Plan to Streamline the Federal Workforce System.
  • Steer Federal Retraining Dollars Toward Skills Needed by Industry.
  • Establish Better Incentives for Accountability.
  • Provide New Access to Database to Connect Unemployed to Jobs.

The bill would amend the Workforce Investment Act (WIA). However, WIA has been reauthorized in the House. The Senate is working on their bill. It is not clear how the CAREER Act will fit into this reauthorization process.      

 

Administration

In April the Office for Civil Rights released guidance to remind school districts, postsecondary institutions, and other Federal funding recipients of the legal prohibition against retaliation with regard to civil rights complaints and to describe OCR's methods of enforcement.

On May 3, the U.S. Department of Education announced the opening of the 2013 Investing in Innovation (i3) competition for "scale-up" and "validation" applications. The
i3 grant program is designed to encourage school districts and nonprofits to work in partnership to develop and expand practices that accelerate learning and prepare every student to succeed in college and in their careers. Competition applications are broken into three grant categories: development, validation and scale-up:

  • Development: Projects with promising but untested ideas.
  • Validation: Projects that have been implemented but require further data testing and collection.
  • Scale-up: Projects that have been implemented, include proven data and will be expanded.

Applications for validation and scale-up grants are due by July 2, 2013. The department began accepting "development" category applications in April.

NAPE Partners 

 

The STEM Education Coalition sent a letter to the House and Senate Appropriations Committees regarding President Obama's FY 2014 proposed consolidations of federal STEM programs, both praising the Administration's commitment to STEM and questioning the consolidations and eliminations for programs.

 

The Campaign to Invest in America's Workforce (CIAW) (of which NAPE is a member) sent a letter on May 20 to the House Appropriations Committee stating objections to the proposed fiscal year (FY) 2014 302(b) allocation for the Labor-HHS-Education Appropriations bill. The proposed allocation is 18.6 percent below the final FY 2013 sequester level and 22.2 percent below the FY 13 pre-sequester Continuing Resolution level.

The National Skills Coalition hosted a webinar following the release of the President's 2014 budget. Review the PowerPoint presentation and listen to the webinar.

The American Association of University Women released a report, Women in Community Colleges: Access to Success. The report notes that women make up 57 percent of the students who attend community colleges; many of these women are financially limited and/or academically underprepared, and about 25 percent have children. Recommendations for the success of women in community colleges include: more active recruitment, ensuring that academic advising programs are not reinforcing gender stereotypes and bolstering the gender equity provisions found in the Perkins Act.

Publications

  

Following a 2011 report by the National Research Council (NRC) on successful K-12 STEM education, Congress asked the National Science Foundation to identify methods for tracking progress toward the report's recommendations. In response, the NRC convened the Committee on an Evaluation Framework for Successful K-12 STEM Education to take on this assignment. The committee developed 14 indicators linked to the 2011 report's recommendations. 

  

On May 7, Brookings released a policy brief, "Time for Change: A New Federal Strategy to Prepare Disadvantaged Students for College," with Princeton University. In this brief Brookings Senior Fellow Ron Haskins and Dean of Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School Cecilia Rouse review evaluations of the four main federal programs designed to increase the number of disadvantaged students who graduate from college and decrease economic inequality. They find that the U.S. Department of Education's TRIO programs (Upward Bound, Talent Search, Upward Bound Math-Science, Student Support Services and others), at around $1 billion per year, "show no major effects on college enrollment or completion." They offer a comprehensive five-step plan for reforming these programs. Learn More 

The question of a STEM shortage has been often debated. However, there is a new study from the Economic Policy Institute that does a supply and demand analysis and concludes the United States has more than a sufficient supply of workers available to work in STEM occupations.

In the Huffington Post, Linda Rosen refutes this study, saying "but from our perspective at Change the Equation--a nonprofit working closely with the companies facing the real-world consequences of a shortage--the STEM shortage is very real, and very urgent." She cites Anthony Carnavale's study from the Georgetown Public Policy Institute, which states that the U.S. should be concerned about our ability to produce enough STEM workers to compete successfully in the global economy.

News from the States

New Jersey Governor Christie has signed into law legislation introduced by Assemblyman Patrick Diegnan Jr., a Democrat representing the 18th Legislative District, which includes East Brunswick, Edison, Helmetta, Highland Park, Metuchen, South Plainfield and South River. The legislation will expand opportunities for all students and families to receive information about the educational programs available to them at New Jersey's county vocational-technical schools. The bill requires local school districts to share mailing list information for middle and high school students with county vocational schools, making it easier for them to reach out to students and inform them of the advantages of a vocational and technical education.


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About NAPE

  

The National Alliance for Partnerships in Equity (NAPE) is a national, nonprofit consortium of state and local agencies, corporations, and national organizations that collaborate to create equitable and diverse classrooms and workplaces where there are no barriers to opportunities. Through its Education Foundation, NAPE has been involved in a number of initiatives to increase diversity in America's workforce and to increase opportunities in high-skill, high-wage, high-demand careers. Among these is the National Science Foundation-funded  STEM Equity Pipeline Project, which works with educational systems to increase the participation of underrepresented populations in STEM education.

 

 

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