Glenn Thompson: “Today what we are talking about is restoring rungs in the ladder of opportunity. This is about providing better access…”

“Today what we are talking about is restoring rungs in the ladder of opportunity. This is about providing better access to more effective skills-based education for all Americans. A lot of people listening sometimes think about career and technical education, and appropriately, they think about our kids who we are trying to equip and prepare them to be successful in life, to have better lives than what we have had as their parents, and we certainly are here to do that. This legislation does serve those kids. But this legislation serves Americans at any age, at every point in their life, to be able to tap back into a system, to get a little bit more training, a certification, a specialization, to be able to get a promotion, to get a better job. And it really is about upward mobility, Mr. Speaker. I would say on every school day somewhere around this country, there is a student, maybe a young lady, that is not really motivated to get out of bed to go off to school, because she is someone that doesn't learn perhaps as well as others in a conventional education setting where people are lecturing and, you know, just being in the classroom setting. And she is reluctant. When she does go to school, my guess is she is probably in that classroom, and many times you find her with her head down on her desk. But if you put the tools, Mr. Speaker, of career and technical education in her hands, she becomes inspired.…”