Dear Colleagues —

We are pleased to share the July 2014 report from the Vice President’s task force on job-driven training, which includes federal and private sector actions to improve our federal workforce development system.  See http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/docs/skills_report.pdf. As a first follow-up to this report, Secretary of Labor Tom Perez, Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, and Secretary of Health and Human Services Sylvia M. Burwell issued a letter to each Governor on July 24 encouraging them to take action to make their education and training programs more demand-driven.

As a next step, on July 30, the Department of Education issued a letter to State CTE directors, detailing how, in collaboration with our partner agencies, we will take several steps to make our programs more job driven.

We look forward to your support in these efforts and ask that you proactively reach out to your State and local agency partners to consider ways to make your training and education programs more demand-driven.

Best —
Sharon Lee Miller
Director, Division of Academic and Technical Education