Giving Compass' Take:

• The Trump Administration has proposed merging the Education and Labor departments to create the Department of Education and the Workforce in order to better connect education to work.

• Is this an effective way to improve the education-labor pipeline? What are potential problems with this proposal?

• Read about balancing workforce development and traditional higher education.

The Trump Administration June 21st offered a long shot proposal to combine the Education and Labor departments into one federal agency.

The plan would combine them into what would be called the Department of Education and the Workforce. It would require congressional approval, which seems unlikely anytime soon, given pushback from Democrats, a sharply divided Senate, and election-year pressures to stay away from hot-button topics.

Under the proposal, major K-12 programs like Title I funding for low-income schools, special education, and English language acquisition would be grouped into one general K-12 agency. The agency could better integrate K-12 programs and “more effectively coordinate with higher education and workforce programs,” the White House said in its report.

Career and technical education and higher education programs would be grouped together with job training programs from the Labor Department into a new broad “American Workforce and Higher Education Administration.” The Office for Civil Rights would be combined with worker protection agencies from the Labor Department into one enforcement office.

Read the full article about merging the Labor and Education departments by Carolyn Phenicie at The 74.