The Carl D. Perkins Vocational–Technical Education Act Amendments of 1998 (Public Law 105–332) was signed into law on October 31, 1998. This legislation restructures and reforms programs previously authorized by the Carl D. Perkins Vocational and Applied Technology Education Act, setting out a new vision of vocational and technical education for the 21st century.

Read the law (P.L. 105-332) and a brief summary of the act.

Final Unified Plan Guidance

On January 14, 2000, the Departments of Agriculture, Education, Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development, and Labor published in the Federal Register (Volume 65, Number 10, pp. 2463–2489) final guidance for unified plans submitted under section 501 of the Workforce Investment Act of 1998. The final guidance reflects many of the comments and suggestions that were received about the first draft of the guidance that was published in October 1999. The purpose of the unified plan guidance is to facilitate the development of unified plans by streamlining non–statutory planning requirements for partner programs. The guidance is not a mandatory format for submission of unified plans. The submission date for unified plans is April 7, 2000. The submission date for Adult Education and Perkins III State plans that are not submitted as part of a unified plan continues to be April 1, 2000.

Program Memoranda

Please visit the new location for program memoranda which provides guidance and other information issued by the Department related to the implementation of the Perkins Act.

Workforce Investment Act

Signed into Law on August 7, 1998, the Workforce Investment Act of 1998 (WIA– –P.L. 105–220) reforms Federal employment, adult education, and vocational rehabilitation programs to create an integrated, "one–stop" system of workforce investment and education activities for adults and youth. Entities that carry out post-secondary vocational and technical education activities assisted under the Perkins Vocational and Technical Education Act are mandatory partners in this one–stop delivery system.

Title I of WIA authorizes workforce investment programs and activities that are administered by the Employment and Training Administration of the U.S. Department of Labor. Learn more about the implementation of Title I of WIA.

Resources Available to Support Local One–Stop Delivery Systems

A wide range of Federal programs activities are mandatory and optional partners in the new One–Stop delivery system established by WIA. We've prepared a chart that provides program–by–program estimates of the resources that will be available at the local level to support the implementation of the One–Stop delivery system.

Performance Accountability

Titles I and II of WIA and Perkins III establish State performance accountability systems. A number of the "core indicators" used to measure State and local performance are similar or identical for all three programs. This chart summarizes the core indicators established by Congress for these three programs. (Available in MS Word or PDF format.)

We have also prepared a side–by–side chart that includes all of the statutory performance accountability and reporting requirements for the three programs. (Available in MS Word or PDF format.)

For specific Perkins performance accountability information by state, go to the Peer Collaborative Resource Network.

Nontraditional Training and Employment

Perkins III includes a number of provisions designed to support the preparation of individuals for nontraditional training and employment. Section 3(17) of Perkins III defines "nontraditional training and employment" as "occupations or fields of work, including careers in computer science, technology, and other emerging high skill occupations, for which individuals from one gender comprise less than 25 percent of the individuals employed in each such occupation or field of work." An enormous amount of information is available via the website of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) section on "Occupational Employment Statistics (OES)." Of special interest is the study "Occupational Employment and Wages, 1999," published in September 2001 by the BLS.

More detailed information on this and other legislation is available at the Library of Congress's Thomas web site, where you may select from several databases that provide full bill text, bill summaries, and bill status by sponsor, keyword, and bill number.

This page last modified—November 19, 2003 (jg).