00:00Thank the gentlelady. I recognize now the gentleman from Pennsylvania, Mr. Thompson.
00:06Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Secretary McMahon, for being here today and for your continued public service to our country.
00:14As you likely know, I've co-chaired the Bipartisan Career and Technical Education Caucus for more than a decade,
00:20and I'm proud to be the champion for CTE here on the Hill alongside my good friend, Congresswoman Bonamici.
00:28Madam Secretary, during your confirmation hearing, I was glad to hear about your commitment to providing more alternative pathways to traditional four-year degrees,
00:38leaning on career and technical education to help achieve that goal.
00:43As the author of the Strengthening Career and Technical Education for the 21st Century Act signed into law by President Trump in 2018,
00:50I'm thrilled to see the growth and the success of these programs.
00:54Typically, when I visit these programs today, I see waiting lists.
00:58I see schools actually investing in bricks and mortar to expand their footprint to be able to accommodate more secondary and post-secondary students,
01:08really working to restore rungs and ladder of opportunity for so many.
01:13Today, a record of nearly 12.5 million students nationwide, a number that has continued to grow since 2018,
01:22are served in career and technical education programs.
01:25At the secondary level, students are graduating from CTE pathways at an amazing 96% rate, far higher than the national average.
01:36High school CTE concentrators are also more likely to be employed full-time and have higher earnings eight years post-graduation than their counterparts.
01:47Great pathway to success in life.
01:49Madam Secretary, would you agree that CTE programs help incentivize workforce and skills development?
01:55Yes, they do.
01:56The reason that we obviously know this information and can track the CTE success and made positive reforms in 2018 was because of the data.
02:09Without good data, it's hard to make good decisions as members of Congress.
02:14I've written about this issue to you before, but I'm still concerned about the department's decision to cancel the national evaluation of career and technical education under Perkins.
02:25This five-year evaluation was mandated by law in Perkins 5.
02:30It was set to be completed this year as Congress begins our work to reauthorize Perkins.
02:35It's time to do Perkins 6 here, reauthorization time.
02:39When you reauthorize, you want to refine, you want to improve, you want to maximize opportunities.
02:45We need data to do that.
02:48Better to educate or to legislate based on data, not a motion.
02:53So, Madam Secretary, how does the department plan to ensure there's still a national level evaluation infrastructure in place to support evidence-based policy making and CTE,
03:03while not losing the nearly five years' worth of data that's already been collected?
03:08Well, we're going to continue to collect the data that we need to collect, and we want to make sure that the Perkins program is, I think as Congress, we want to provide to you the best data that is possible.
03:22So, we have made some changes in some of the educational data collecting that we are doing.
03:32I'm not sure, as I sit here at this moment, if that's really pertinent to the Perkins data so much as it was the NAEP scoring and other educational policies.
03:42Yeah.
03:43And I'd like to get back to you after I clarify that.
03:45Yeah, that'd be great, and I look forward to working with you, because it would cause me concern that on year six of collecting that data, we use a different methodology.
03:55I mean, we need consistency, right, in terms of data, consistency is important in the statistical collection of data.
04:04So, quite frankly, I look forward to working with you, because we need to go back and finish the process the way we legislated,
04:10and the way we did the first five years.
04:12I think it will set us up nicely for doing a great Perkins six reauthorization.
04:17Additionally, the administration's FY2026 budget proposes reprioritizing CTE grants so that they only support middle and high school students at the district level.
04:29However, under current law, states are explicitly granted the flexibility to decide how to best split their CTE resources between secondary and post-secondary systems,
04:39as post-secondary CTE programs continue to provide valuable pathways for learners of all ages.
04:45These are incredible programs that I take every opportunity to be able to visit those, to see the fruits of the legislative work that I did with President Trump under Trump 45,
04:57with the modernizing career and technical education for the 21st century.
05:00Can you explain why the administration is seeking to limit CTE funds to K-12, despite Perkins laws explicitly supporting student transitions beyond high school,
05:10including into apprenticeship and other post-secondary pathways?
05:13Yeah, another area that I look forward to working personally with you on.
05:17Thank you. I'd look forward to that as well.
05:19I know the President is certainly, and the budget supports, the directive of the President's executive order,
05:25you know, preparing Americans for high-paying skilled jobs, and that's one of the things that we'd like to focus on as well.
05:31That'd be great. The action by the Department was kind of contrary to that, very familiar with that executive order.
05:37The gentleman's time has expired. I thank the gentleman.
05:43I now recognize the gentleman from Northworth.
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