Proposed Priority and Definitions-Secretary's Supplemental Priority and Definitions on Career Pathways and Workforce Readiness

DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION <CFR>34 CFR Part 75</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket ID ED-2025-OS-0679]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Proposed Priority and Definitions—Secretary's Supplemental Priority and Definitions on Career Pathways and Workforce Readiness</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> U.S. Department of Education. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Proposed priority and definitions. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The Secretary proposes one additional priority and related definitions for use in currently authorized discretionary grant programs or programs that may be authorized in the future. The Secretary may choose to use the entire priority for a grant program or a particular competition or use one or more of the priority's component parts. This priority and definitions augment the initial set of three Secretary's Supplemental Priorities on Evidence-Based Literacy, Educational Choice, and Returning Education to the States published as final priorities on September 9, 2025 (90 FR 43514), the Secretary's Supplemental Priority on Artificial Intelligence published as a proposed priority on July 21, 2025 (90 FR 34203), and the Secretary's Supplemental Priority on Promoting Patriotic Education published as a proposed priority on September 17, 2025 (90 FR 44788). In addition, this priority complements the additional Secretary's Supplemental Priority and Definitions on Meaningful Learning Opportunities published as a proposed priority elsewhere in this issue of the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> . </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> We must receive your comments on or before October 27, 2025. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> Comments must be submitted via the Federal eRulemaking Portal at <E T="03">Regulations.gov</E> . See the <E T="02">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION</E> section for more details. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Zachary Rogers, U.S. Department of Education, 400 Maryland Avenue SW, Room 7W213, Washington, DC 20202-6450. Telephone: (202) 260-1144. Email: <E T="03">SSP@ed.gov.</E> If you are deaf, hard of hearing, or have a speech disability and wish to access telecommunications relay services, please dial 7-1-1. </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <E T="03">Invitation to Comment:</E> We invite you to submit comments regarding the proposed priority and definitions. Comments must be submitted via the Federal eRulemaking Portal at <E T="03">Regulations.gov</E> . However, if you require an accommodation or cannot otherwise submit your comments via <E T="03">Regulations.gov</E> , please contact the program contact person listed under <E T="02">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT</E> . The Department will not accept comments by fax or by email, or comments submitted after the comment period closes. To ensure that the Department does not receive duplicate copies, please submit your comments only once. Additionally, please include the Docket ID at the top of your comments. <E T="03">Federal eRulemaking Portal:</E> Go to <E T="03">www.Regulations.gov</E> to submit your comments electronically. Information on using <E T="03">Regulations.gov</E> , including instructions for accessing agency documents, submitting comments, and viewing the docket, is available on the site under “FAQ.” Also included on <E T="03">Regulations.gov</E> is a commenter checklist that addresses how to submit effective comments. In instances where individual submissions appear to be duplicates or near duplicates of comments prepared as part of a writing campaign, the Department may choose to post to <E T="03">Regulations.gov</E> one representative sample comment along with the total comment count for that campaign. The Department will consider these comments along with all other comments received. In instances where individual submissions are bundled together (submitted as a single document or packaged together), the Department will post all of the substantive comments included in the submissions along with the total comment count for that document or package to <E T="03">Regulations.gov</E> . Comments containing personal threats will not be posted to <E T="03">Regulations.gov</E> and may be referred to the appropriate authorities. During and after the comment period, you may inspect public comments about the proposed priority and definitions by accessing <E T="03">Regulations.gov</E> . To inspect comments in person, please contact the person listed under <E T="02">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT</E> . <E T="03">Privacy Note:</E> The Department's policy is to generally make all comments received from members of the public available for public viewing in their entirety on the Federal eRulemaking Portal at <E T="03">Regulations.gov</E> . Therefore, commenters should be careful to include in their comments only information that they wish to make publicly available. <E T="03">Assistance to Individuals with Disabilities in Reviewing the Rulemaking Record:</E> On request, we will provide an appropriate accommodation or auxiliary aid to an individual with a disability who needs assistance to review the comments or other documents in the public rulemaking record for this document. If you want to schedule an appointment for this type of accommodation or auxiliary aid, please contact the person listed under <E T="02">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT</E> . <E T="03">Program Authority:</E> 20 U.S.C. 1221e-3, 3474, and 29 U.S.C. 3101. <E T="03">Proposed Priority:</E> This document contains one proposed priority. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Proposed Priority: Expanding Career Pathways and Workforce Readiness</HD> <E T="03">Background:</E> At the U.S. Department of Education, prioritizing access to demand-driven career pathways and workforce preparedness is essential for equipping students with the knowledge and skills necessary to thrive in a dynamic and evolving economy. Education should ensure learning pathways are designed to enable students to master competencies that are aligned with high-growth, high-wage, and high-demand careers. This goal is most effectively achieved by integrating career exploration, career readiness, technical education, and work-based learning opportunities into the K-12 general and special education setting. A modern education system must realize that its primary customers are students and their families, followed by the employers who will hire them. Moreover, it must prepare students not only for academic success, but also for active participation in sectors of the economy shaped by technological advancement, innovation, and industrial renewal. For decades, the dominant “college for all” narrative has led to a narrow focus that often leaves students with degrees and debt but limited job prospects. With only half of bachelor's degree graduates working in fields that require a bachelor's degree, <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> there is a growing need to elevate competency-based pathways that are rigorous, respected, and responsive to real-world demands. <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  Burning Glass Institute and Strada Institute for the Future of Work, Talent Disrupted: Underemployment, College Graduates, and the Way Forward, 2024 ( <E T="03">https://static1.squarespace.com/static/6197797102be715f55c0e0a1/t/65d62ebce0cf8f07e3d6e006/1708535486302/Talent+Disrupted+02212024.pdf</E> ). </FTNT> Existing federal funding in this area should therefore shift to ensuring that all students have access to a wide range of high-quality education pathways that meet the needs of a rapidly changing economy. By expanding the range of options so that a broader array of education providers can access existing funding in a manner that aligns outcomes with the demands of today's workforce, the government can foster both economic mobility for students and sustained competitiveness for the nation. <E T="03">Proposed Priority:</E> Projects or proposals designed to do one or more of the following: (a) Support workforce development programs that are aligned with State priorities. This may include one or more of the following: (i) Activities aligned to State and local workforce priorities. (ii) Activities that support alignment of workforce activities across State agencies that support workforce development ( <E T="03">e.g.,</E> education, higher education, workforce transformation, job and family services, vocational rehabilitation services including pre-employment transition services and transition services, etc.). (iii) Activities that support States in identifying in-demand and high-value industry-recognized credentials and/or re-evaluating existing lists of credentials. (iv) Providing support for the skilled trades. (v) Developing industry-led sector partnerships. (vi) Promoting the attainment by individuals of an in-demand and high-value industry-recognized postsecondary credential. (vii) Providing work-based learning opportunities ( <E T="03">e.g.,</E> internships, externships, pre-apprenticeships, and registered apprenticeships) for which a student receives wages, academic credit, or both. (viii) Expanding the availability of pre-apprenticeships and registered apprenticeships, including through dual or concurrent enrollment (as defined in 20 U.S.C. 7801(15)), by doing one or more of the following: (1) Supporting apprenticeship intermediaries. (2) Creating pre-apprenticeships. (3) Creating new registered apprenticeships to include apprenticeships for in-school and out-of-school youth. (4) Providing technical assistance for states to create new registered apprenticeships to include apprenticeships for in-school and out-of-school youth. (b) Provide career and/or college exploration and advising opportunities to promote greater awareness of the range of postsecondary educational and career options. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 21k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━