Acting U.S. Secretary of Education John B. King Jr. will urge Congress to reauthorize the Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education Act (Perkins Act) and announce a new Department-sponsored open innovation challenge at the Digital Harbor Foundation Tech Center on Wednesday, March 9 in Baltimore, Maryland.
The Perkins Act provides more than $1.1 billion for the nation’s career and technical education programs at the 7-12 and higher education levels. The Obama Administration’s priorities for Perkins reauthorization include creating incentives for innovative high-quality Career and Technical Education (CTE) programs; defining CTE program elements, including non-duplicative and credit-bearing secondary and postsecondary courses embedded in a career pathway; and developing uniform definitions and measures of student achievement and outcomes.
During the event, King will also acknowledge the Pathways in Technology Early College High School (P-TECH), which Maryland Governor Larry Hogan and a bipartisan group of state legislators are working to bring to Baltimore, is one exemplary model for the type of high-quality CTE that would be promoted through Perkins reauthorization. P-TECH provides students with a personalized pathway towards mastery of the skills and knowledge that they will need to make the transition from education to industry.
The Tech Center features a showcase community center with tools for students or adults to be creative, search for inspiration and connect with one another.
To continue to build a Nation of makers, in June 2014, the President held the first-ever White House Maker Faire and launched the Nation of Makers initiative, an all-hands-on-deck call to give many more students, entrepreneurs, and citizens access to a new class of technologies – such as 3D printers, laser cutters, and desktop machine tools – that are enabling more Americans to design, build, and manufacture just about anything.