In this week’s Federal Flash we’ll tell you three important things in the new federal career and technical education (CTE) law that is on its way to President Trump’s desk.
We’ll also review the Education Department’s proposed new rules for the charter school program and a proposal from House Democrats to renew the Higher Education Act.
It’s not every week that we have good news to share from Capitol Hill, but we certainly do today.
With time running out before members of Congress head home to campaign for the midterm election in August, a rewrite of the Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education Act had to happen quickly.
Usually the House passes one version of a bill, the Senate passes another, and they meet to work on a compromise of the two versions in a conference committee. Then each chamber passes the compromise bill. That process typically takes a while.
This time, the Senate education committee passed its bill in late June and the full Senate raced to pass a slightly modified version of that bill on Monday. On Wednesday, the House passed the Senate’s bill, allowing them to avoid a conference committee altogether and send the bill to President Trump for his signature.
This is an example where good politics actually pushed good policy.
The Perkins rewrite had been stalled for a while, but the urge to use the rewrite on the campaign trail helped to push Congress to finish the job. And this urge to get something done didn’t just come from Congress. The White House stepped in to move things along, including the personal involvement of Ivanka Trump.
House Democrats are inviting students affected by school shootings to participate in an internship program on Capitol Hill, where they will work on issues related to violence prevention.
House Democratic Caucus Chairman Joe Crowley from New York announced the Gun Safety Internship Program on Thursday.
“My colleagues and I are thrilled to invite these young men and women to intern on Capitol Hill this summer and bring their energy and dedication to Congress,” he tweeted.
The Congressman is working with Vice Chair Linda Sánchez from California, Chair of the House Gun Violence Prevention Task Force Mike Thompson from California and Rep. Ted Deutch from Florida to lead the effort.
washingtonpost.com — Does this sound familiar? Betsy DeVos went to Capitol Hill to testify before U.S. lawmakers. She didn’t answer a lot of direct questions and engaged in some contentious debates with some members.
That happened in January when she went before the Senate education committee for her confirmation hearing, during which she said schools needed guns to protect against grizzly bears. This time, the education secretary didn’t talk about guns, but she did say that states should have the right to decide whether private schools that accept publicly funded voucher students should be allowed to discriminate against students for whatever reason they want.
DeVos testified before the House subcommittee on labor, health and human services, education and related agencies about the Trump administration’s 2018 budget proposal, which would cut $10.6 billion — or more than 13 percent — from education programs and re-invest $1.4 billion of the savings into promoting school choice.
Both DeVos and President Trump have said expanding alternatives to traditional public schools are their top priority, and during tough questioning from some committee members, DeVos doubled down on that as well as on giving states and local communities flexibility to do what they want with their education programs. It is worth noting, however, that she said recently that people who don’t agree with expanding school choice are “flat Earthers,” people who refuse to face the facts.
In this week’s Federal Flash we’ll tell you three important things in the new federal career and technical education (CTE) law that is on its way to President Trump’s desk.
