The Perkins Act

Requirements for local activities under the Perkins Act place an emphasis on:

  • Meeting performance targets (“how the career and technical education activities will be carried out with respect to meeting State and local adjusted levels of performance established under section 113;”) and
  • Improving Programs (“Each eligible recipient that receives funds under this part shall use such funds to improve career and technical education programs.”)
The 12 local plan elements (Section 134 of the Perkins Act) and the nine required uses of funds (Section 135) should all be focused on the goal of helping improve programs and meet the performance targets established for the programs.

The Colorado Plan

Under the new State plan, CCCS requires each Perkins Local Recipient (community college, technical college, school district or consortium) to complete an annual Local Plan for use of Perkins funds.  During the Transition Year, CCCS staff is redesigning the Local Plan utilizing input from a field council, interviews with Local Recipients and a field survey. The new Local Plan form includes a focus on “projects” for the use of local funds.  In each year’s application for funds, the Local Recipient proposes one or more projects – time-limited activities lasting one to three years – that are aligned with the sub-recipient’s strategic plan, the Colorado CTE Strategic plan, and the requirements of Perkins 2006, particularly continuous improvement of all the Perkins Accountability Indicators.

The local applications must fully address the required contents of the Local Plan as specified in Section 134 (b) of the Act; CCCS will require each Local Recipient to specifically address how it will continuously improve upon each Perkins performance metric (Colorado’s term for the Perkins accountability indicators).  If a Local Recipient is unable to meet or exceed its performance metrics, the sub-recipient will complete a local improvement plan for those performance metrics.
The Local Plan will be web-based to ease submission of the plan.  CCCS plans to provide ongoing training in subsequent years to fully develop the quality of Local Plan applications.  CCCS will coordinate “project planning for strategic results” training within the CCCS technical assistance model.

The planning, development, implementation and evaluation of a CTE program are handled at the local level.  CCCS encourages the active involvement of parents, academic and CTE teachers, administrators, faculty, career guidance and academic counselors, local business (including small business), and labor organizations in the planning, development, and implementation of CTE programs.  The Local Advisory Committee is typically the forum through which the constituencies named above are included in local CTE program planning, development, implementation and evaluation.