Acte and NASDCTEc: advocating together.

DeWitt, Stephen

FOR MANY YEARS, THE ASSOCIATION FOR CAREER AND TECHNICAL EDUCATION

(ACTE) and the National Association of State Directors of Career Technical Education Consortium (NASDCTEc) have worked in unison on legislative and regulatory issues affecting the CTE field. We have strategized and advocated together to advance very similar agendas related to federal and national policy. We are now taking that work to the next level.

Due to the similarity of our missions for CTE, leaders from our two organizations met in January to discuss a more formal collaboration beyond our regular ongoing work. That initial meeting has led to an enhanced partnership that will include a specific set of activities contributed by each organization to advance CTE and the field. This year's "'Capitol View" column is an example of one of the specific activities we'll be working on together.

While Capitol View will cowl line to feature insight and broad perspective about federal and national policy, as vell as recommendations on tactics that CTE practitioners can activate to effectively advocate at the national. state and local levels, the column will now be expanded to include authors from both ACTE and NASDCTEc. We will also partner on several of the columns to provide joint commentary.

The united front on Capitol View and the larger CTE agenda come at a critical time for CTE. Understanding and support of our programs are gaining momentum within the halls of Congress and federal agencies. ACTE views its partnership with NASDCTEc as an opportunity to further unify and amplify the collective GTE voice. The work follows other actions our organizations have initiated to better coalesce the CTE community in relation to policy and public awareness. For example:

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* AGTE and NASDCTEc have participated in a variety of activities led by the House and Senate caucuses focused on CTE, including Hill briefings and the development of legislation. These caucuses provide a forum for Members of Congress to discuss and support CTE, and are the foundation for new congeressional champions.

* ACTE and NASDCTEc are working on joint legislative language and are building coalitions to support the reauthorization of the Perkins Act.

* NASDCITEc developed the "GTE: Learning that Works for America[R]" campaign and has invited the entire GTE community to join that campaign to advance awareness about high-quality CTE. ACTE has encouraged the entire held to participate in February's annual CTE Month celebration, which is being used by the U.S. Department of Education, CTSOs and others in the CTE community to ratchet up awareness of and support for CTE.

* Both Organizations have made a commitment to strengthening our connections to state policy activities. Earlier this year, we jointly published state Policies Impacting CTE: 2013 Year in Review, a compilation of state-level policy activity and trends across the country. This is scheduled to become an annual report.

The ACTE-NASDCTEc collaborative effort will help to further define and advance policies and public awareness to support the CTE field. We ti ACTE look forward to taking our relationship with NASDCTEc to the next level, and we are excited about the use or Capitol View as a thrum to exhibit our views and communicate our shared work to you. Tech

Steve DeWitt is the deputy executive director at ACTE. He can be reached at sdewitt@acteonline.org.