In February 2026, the Trump administration quietly canceled 19
Career-Connected High Schools (CCHS) grants — totaling $48.6 million
that award recipients had expected to receive through 2026 — dealing a
significant blow to rural and urban programs that were using the funds
to build career pathways connecting high school, community college, and
employment. The termination, first reported by Education Week and
followed up with additional reporting in March, is part of a broader
pattern in which the second Trump administration revoked more than 700
Education Department grants across dozens of programs. For CTE programs
that had built staff positions, employer partnerships, and curriculum
around multi-year grant timelines, the cancellation arrived
mid-implementation — with no warning and no graceful wind-down.
The CCHS program was launched by the Biden administration in August
2023 as part of its Raise the Bar: Unlocking Career Success initiative.
It awarded $25 million in three-year grants to 19 projects — consortia
of K-12 districts, higher education institutions, and employers —
designed to integrate the last two years of high school with the first
two years of postsecondary education, including paid work-based learning
experiences. Grantees included programs in Essex and Pike counties in
New Jersey, among other sites, where CCHS funds were used to develop or
expand offerings in business, healthcare, and skilled trades.
The cancellation disrupted programs mid-implementation. Some grantees
had leftover funds from the first year that they were required to
return. Others had hired staff, signed employer partnership agreements,
and structured curricula around the multi-year grant timeline. Congress
had already reduced the CCHS allocation for the second year to $6
million — down from the $200 million Biden had proposed — but even those
reduced awards never arrived. Some grantees were expecting additional
rounds of funding in 2027 and 2028 that will now not materialize.
In March 2026, Education Week reported that Congress allocated $12.4
million for Perkins “national activities” — the budget line that
includes CCHS and Perkins Innovation and Modernization grants — in the
FY26 appropriations package. However, the Trump administration has not
launched a new competitive grant competition for either program.
Instead, the Department of Education announced a $15 million “Connecting
Talent to Opportunity Challenge,” a prize-based competition for which
only state governors may apply — a structurally different model that
critics say offers far less accountability than competitive grants
awarded directly to school districts and their consortium partners.
What the
Cancellation Actually Means on the Ground
The $48.6 million figure is large but somewhat misleading as a
measure of impact — not because the money wasn’t real, but because the
cost of a mid-program cancellation exceeds the dollar amount. When a
school district hires a CTE program coordinator on a grant-funded
salary, that position does not exist without the grant. When an employer
signs a partnership agreement to host students for paid work-based
learning, that agreement was made in reliance on the grant-funded
infrastructure that made it possible. When a community college builds a
credit-bearing pathway contingent on the K-12 partner receiving federal
support, the pathway does not survive the grant’s termination.
The CCHS model was specifically designed around the hardest part of
CTE: the coordination layer. CTE programs work when they connect K-12
instruction to postsecondary credentials and employer needs. That
connection requires staff time, relationship management, and sustained
attention — things that district general funds rarely cover. The CCHS
grants were funding exactly those coordination roles. When the grants
disappeared, those roles disappeared with them, regardless of whether
the underlying employer partnerships or student demand were still
there.
Some grantees had spent down first-year funds and were mid-execution
on year two. For them, the cancellation meant returning unspent money,
losing staff, and notifying employer partners that programs were ending
— not because the programs had failed, but because the federal
government had changed its mind about the funding.
Congress had already constrained the program. The $200 million Biden
proposal for CCHS was never enacted; the actual appropriation for the
second year was $6 million. Even that reduced amount was canceled. The
trajectory was clear: CCHS was being defunded at the federal level, and
grantees had no recourse to challenge the termination.
The
Replacement Program: Smaller, Governors-Only, and Structurally
Different
The “Connecting Talent to Opportunity Challenge” — the
administration’s announced replacement for CCHS — shares the CTE framing
but not the CTE architecture. It is a $15 million prize-based
competition (smaller than the $25 million in original CCHS grants
alone), open only to state governors, and structured around prizes for
completing project steps rather than upfront grant awards.
The structural differences matter. Upfront grants allow districts and
their consortium partners to hire staff, sign multi-year agreements, and
make commitments — because the money is committed at the beginning of
the period. Prize-based competitions deliver money after milestones are
met, which means programs must operate on other funding sources while
waiting for prize awards — a structure that disadvantages districts with
less unrestricted operating revenue. Competitive grants typically
include peer-review evaluation, which means program quality and evidence
base are considered in award decisions. Prize competitions award based
on completing defined steps, which measures execution but not program
design quality.
The governor-only application requirement is perhaps the most
consequential structural change. Under the CCHS model, school districts
applied directly — often as part of a consortium with higher education
institutions and employers. The grant relationship was between the
federal government and the entities delivering the program. Under the
Connecting Talent to Opportunity Challenge, the federal government
awards to governors, who then presumably distribute to programs within
their states. Local districts and their employer partners become
dependent on state-level political will — which varies dramatically by
state and party — to access federal support. For states whose governors
are less invested in CTE, that pathway effectively closes.
CTE advocates have noted that this is not merely a funding reduction.
It is a change in the federal government’s relationship with CTE
delivery — from direct support for program quality through competitive
peer-reviewed grants, to a prize-based system that rewards state
political priority for career and technical education. That is a
different thing entirely.
What This Means for
Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania’s CTE ecosystem is a mix of strong state-level
investment and federal dependence for innovation. The Shapiro
Administration has been a consistent CTE advocate — since January 2023,
the Commonwealth has increased CTE and apprenticeship funding by nearly
50%, from $118 million to $183 million. More than 39,000 Pennsylvanians
have participated in apprenticeships during that period. The
Schools-to-Work program, administered jointly through L&I and PDE,
has been expanded — a $4.1 million announcement in March 2026 for 17
projects statewide, with the Governor’s 2026-27 budget proposing to
double that to $7 million.
That state-level investment is meaningful precisely because the
federal picture is unreliable. The CCHS grant cancellations did not
directly hit Pennsylvania programs — the 19 canceled grants were in
states including New Jersey, but Pennsylvania did not appear to have a
CCHS award. However, the broader signal is significant: the federal
government is retreating from competitive grant programs that support
CTE innovation, employer partnerships, and postsecondary linkages. The
Perkins state plan structure — which distributes federal Perkins funds
primarily to K-12 districts — is a more conservative federal role,
focused on maintaining existing programs rather than funding new
models.
For Pennsylvania CTE leaders, the lesson is the lesson that CTE
advocates have been repeating for decades: federal CTE funding is
necessary but not sufficient, and it is unreliable as a primary funding
source. The Shapiro Administration’s state-level investment is the more
durable commitment. The Connecting Talent to Opportunity Challenge, if
Pennsylvania participates, will require an active governor-level
application — which, given the Shapiro Administration’s track record, is
likely. But the $15 million prize competition, spread across potentially
many states, will not replicate the reach or depth of the CCHS grant
program at its original $25 million level.
The good, the bad, what’s
best?
The good: The CCHS program was well-designed. The
consortium model — requiring partnerships between school districts,
higher education, and employers — was deliberately targeted at the
coordination challenge that makes CTE work. Congress’s continued
allocation of $12.4 million for Perkins national activities signals
legislative support for these programs. And state-level investment,
particularly Pennsylvania’s Shapiro Administration, has demonstrated
that CTE funding does not depend entirely on the federal government.
Programs can survive at the state level even when the federal role
contracts.
The bad: The cancellation was mid-program, meaning
real costs beyond the dollar amount — staff losing jobs, employer
partnerships dissolving, student pathways interrupted. The replacement
program is structurally inferior: smaller, prize-based rather than
upfront grant, and governors-only. The shift eliminates peer review,
reduces local control, and creates equity problems for states whose
governors are less committed to CTE. The $15 million Connecting Talent
to Opportunity Challenge, spread nationally, cannot substitute for $25
million in direct grants to 19 specific program consortia that had
already demonstrated capacity to deliver.
What’s best: The federal government’s cancellation
of CCHS grants is a significant setback for the specific programs that
lost funding and for the broader CTE field, which now has one fewer
evidence-based model with federal support. But the state-level CTE
investment narrative — particularly Pennsylvania’s — is more resilient
than it might appear. The Shapiro Administration’s proposed doubling of
Schools-to-Work funding to $7 million is the more meaningful story for
Pennsylvania CTE advocates in 2026. The federal government has
demonstrated it cannot be relied upon for program innovation funding.
State investment can compensate, but only if budget negotiations produce
the intended appropriations.
❌
The Architecture of CTE Support Should Not Depend on Who Is
Governor
The Connecting Talent to Opportunity Challenge is not CTE funding
reform. It is a smaller, less accountable, more politically variable
version of the thing it replaced. The CCHS grants were not perfect — $25
million spread across 19 programs over three years is not transformative
national CTE policy. But they were a deliberate federal investment in
the hardest part of CTE: the coordination layer between K-12,
postsecondary education, and employers. Replacing them with a
governors-only prize competition removes federal accountability from
program quality and replaces it with state-level political
variability.
For CTE programs that had built their planning around CCHS grants,
the cancellation is not a policy debate. It is a program failure forced
on them by a federal government that changed its mind. For the broader
CTE field, the lesson is older than this administration: federal CTE
support is a supplement, not a foundation. The foundation has to be
state investment, employer engagement, and local program quality.
Everything else is fragile.
Source: Education Week
