Trump's education secretary should look to West Michigan Aviation Academy as a model for advancing career and technical education.
This year's presidential election highlighted the plight of working-class Americans who have seen manufacturing jobs disappear due to the twin forces of globalization and automation. As Betsy DeVos, the education secretary nominee, begins to formulate a policy agenda, one hopes that high on the list will be career and technical education, or CTE, programs that can provide a clear path to prosperity.
One of today's economic paradoxes is that there are hundreds of thousands of well-paying jobs that employers cannot fill because they require "middle-level" skills that are presently in short supply – jobs from computer programming to machinists to construction to medical assisting. These are good jobs that don't necessarily require a four-year bachelor's degree but do require some postsecondary credentials, such as an associate's degree, a license or a certification. Other countries do a much better job preparing young people for these types of careers. In Germany, for example, 65 percent of young people participate in apprenticeship programs.
As the Philanthropy Roundtable recently noted in its "Learning to Be Useful" guidebook, CTE presents a "yawning opportunity" for government and philanthropists. One simple step to expand and replicate successful CTE programs would be for the Senate to pass the "Strengthening Career and Technical Education for the 21st Century Act," which modernizes and reforms the Perkins law that funds CTE programs and passed the House this September by a 405 to 5 vote.
But for CTE to reach its full potential, it will require bolder, more creative thinking. This week, a major policy summit, This Way Up, sponsored by Opportunity America, the American Enterprise Institute, the Manhattan Institute (where I work) and others, explored new ideas to improve economic mobility, including efforts to better integrate academics and workforce development.
One idea I'd submit for consideration is a Race-to-the-Top-like competitive grants program focused on CTE. If the federal government dangled significant money for states to experiment with CTE, it could set off a groundswell of reform. Grants could be awarded to states that take steps to better...
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Charles Sahm is the director of education policy at the Manhattan Institute. Follow him on Twitter here.
This piece originally appeared in U.S. News and World Report