Moving control of federal career, technical, and adult education from the U.S. Department of Education (USDE) to the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) as part of an agreement earlier this year was meant to centralize and streamline government workforce programs. However, critics say issues with accessing federal career and technical education (CTE) funding could foretell bigger problems when the Trump administration starts to outsource more of the USDE’s responsibilities to other agencies.
According to Politico, a combination of technical problems, communication lapses, bureaucratic hurdles and scant preparation related to new grant payment systems snarled the process of distributing money from a $1.4 billion program for CTE initiatives for schools and local governments. The record-breaking government shutdown also contributed to the problems. “The shift is like asking states to fly with no air traffic control,” said Richard Kincaid, an assistant state superintendent for college and career pathways at the Maryland State Department of Education, which is among the states that experienced difficulties with its funding from the Carl D. Perkins CTE program. “When you put these sort of programs into agencies that are not well-equipped with the subject matter expertise to take on a number of these large educational programs, the result is going to be a lot of confusion. We’ve now shifted not only to a new grant system but an entirely new grantmaking agency. And now we’ve injected all this chaos into the system, trying to fix something that wasn’t broken to begin with,” he added.
Many of the issues regarding the Perkins program transition are linked to a decision to abandon a unified USDE system that managed federal grants for schools and local communities in favor of what are now two DOL systems.
“The administration’s decision to transfer these congressionally mandated responsibilities and programs to other agencies that lack the necessary policy expertise may have lasting negative impacts on our young people,” Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) said in a recent social media post. “And simply moving the administration of these programs to other agencies will not return control of education to the states.”
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