Career and technical education should be embedded in K-12 and higher education in a way that prepares today’s students for quality jobs, a senior Obama administration official said Monday.
Among the nation’s approximately 175 million adults, 93 million are considered low-skilled Americans, said Martha Kanter, undersecretary of education. “This is unfortunately what we can’t afford in the next century,” she told the National Policy Seminar of the Association for Career and Technical Education (ACTE) in Arlington, Va.
While the Obama administration has focused on increasing the number of college graduates and those with at least some college, Kanter said it’s equally important to promote career readiness.
“It’s about college and career,” she said. “Some people want to say one or the other. But it’s the ‘and’ that’s important.”
Kanter cited the need to break down silos between education and employment programs and, in some cases, build connections within the education sector. She cited her experience as a community college administrator in trying to update auto mechanic education programs because of concerns that many students lacked math competencies.
“Students weren’t graduating from the programs with strong math skills,” she said. In response, auto mechanic and general education instructors created an engineering and automotive math sequence for students. Kanter said the federal government should do more to provide targeted funding for such innovations.
She also praised the Harlem Children’s Zone, where advocates in education, human services and other sectors have joined together to combat intergenerational poverty. “We need education partnering with business, industry and government,” she said.
