Perkins Act Reauthorization Deal Reached;
Vote to Approve Approaching...

Great news! Congress has reached a Carl Perkins Act reauthorization deal. Wisconsin is even mentioned in the attached article as rationale for the compromise. A vote to approve the deal may take place as early this week.

Carl Perkins dollars fund MATC’s bilingual, multicultural and special needs offices. Other activities funded through this program include our computer labs, academic support centers, pre-college instruction and English as a Second Language classes.

In 2004, over 20% of MATC students received support services and instruction through these funds. 32.3% of our graduates received services through the Perkins funds alone.

The Bush Administration has proposed eliminating all Perkins funding for the past several years. Many of you may remember the Department of Education’s long departed Carol D’Amico arguing that we were wasting Perkins dollars when she keynoted MATC’s first and only Convocation!

Congress, as a result of constituent pressure, has rejected the Bush administration’s proposals. Reauthorization reinforces that Congress is not likely to accept the current effort to eliminate the funding.

The reauthorization deal is a great victory for our students, MATC and the WTCS.

House and Senate Negotiators Reach Compromise on
Technical-Education Bill
(From the Chronicle of Higher Education)

By ELYSE ASHBURN
Friday, July 21, 2006
Washington

A panel of lawmakers in both chambers of Congress reached an agreement Thursday on legislation to reauthorize a technical-education program that provides millions of dollars to community colleges each year.

The legislation (HR 366, S 250), which would renew the Carl D. Perkins Vocational and Technical Education Act, had been stalled for more than a year. The compromise legislation, negotiated by a House-Senate conference committee, is expected to pass both chambers. The House may vote on it as early as next week.

The law provides federal grants to community colleges and high schools to train students from low-income families for jobs. It was last reauthorized in 1998, and President Bush has repeatedly called on Congress to scrap the grant program, which he views as ineffective.

This year, states received about $1.3-billion from the program, with about 40 percent going to community colleges. Legislation renewing the act provides the framework for the program, but the size of the grant allocation will be decided separately as part of House and Senate appropriations bills.

The text of the compromise legislation was not released, but a House aide said that the bill approved on Thursday eliminates two provisions approved by the House last year that had concerned community-college lobbyists. One provision would have lumped federal support for the Tech-Prep program, which gives students a technical education spread over two years of high school and two years of community college, into large block grants for the states. Another would have lowered the cap on the portion of the grants states can use for administrative expenses.

The lobbyists said a reduction in the amount of money available to run the program would have harmed community colleges, like those in Wisconsin, which serve as the state's primary administrative agency for the program. They also feared that the House proposal would dilute the Tech-Prep program.

The title of the act also will change from "vocational and technical" to "career and technical," according to the House aide.