Perkins IV : An Interview with Kimberly Green

MS. GREEN: Our organization was founded back in the early 1900s, when the federal government first started investing in career and technical education, as a means to interface with each state’s contact person in [what was then called] vocational education. Over time, our organization has grown, but we’ve always maintained that focus of serving states. Our core membership is the state directors of career-technical education (CTE) who are employed in the agency that gets the Perkins funding. As an organization, we focus our efforts on advocacy and awareness of CTE with a variety of stakeholders: Congress, employer organizations, trade organizations, other federal agencies, and other education groups. Our priorities primarily focus on CTE’s connections to education reform, workforce development, and economic development and making sure that there’s appropriate policy that supports that mission as well as the resources available to support that mission.