The federal government has a key role to play in helping states coordinate efforts between industry and education to prepare students for a rapidly changing workforce, concludes a new report from the Bipartisan Policy Center.
President Donald Trump’s administration consistently champions plans to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education and “send education back to the states.” But the agency—and the federal government as a whole—must take steps to encourage innovation in states’ K-12 and workforce programs, according to the commission’s recommendations, released this week.
The federal government must better coordinate its workforce strategy, and it must collect data and fund research to help state leaders identify where to take risks, the report said.
States must also improve their academic standards and identify the skills students need to compete for evolving jobs, said the report, which includes recommendations for economic development, government, and K-12 education.
“Our national aspirations are at risk if we don’t have an economy that expands to create opportunity,” said Deval Patrick, the former Democratic governor of Massachusetts and co-chair of the commission, at a release event March 11. “There are lots of reasons to be urgent.”
The recommendations come as artificial intelligence promises to rapidly reshape the workforce, possibly replacing human labor in some sectors of the economy and requiring new skills of workers in other areas. They also come as educational leaders seek to align their programs with local workforce needs and help students explore possible career paths well before graduation.
The pace of change requires bold efforts, said the commission, which was launched in 2025 and included a bipartisan panel of former governors, economic experts, and education leaders. Members also included two former U.S. secretaries of education who advocated for strong federal education oversight: Margaret Spellings, who served under President George W. Bush and now leads the Bipartisan Policy Center; and John B. King, Jr., who served under President Barack Obama and is now chancellor of the State University of New York.
Commission calls for a federal workforce strategy
Commissioners called on the White House to assemble a talent advisory council to form a unified, cross-government strategy for training workers that would operate similarly to existing councils related to economics and national security.
“The talent council’s mandate would explicitly include coordination with governors, state workforce boards, and industry leaders—recognizing that talent development is largely executed at the state and local levels,” the recommendations said.
Under the leadership of a Senate-confirmed director, the council would evaluate skill needs; review and streamline applications for relevant federal funding; and help strengthen states’ longitudinal data systems, which track year-by-year progress of individual students through education and into the workforce.
Advocates for such data systems have called on states to make them more publicly accessible and interactive so that users can identify the skills and courses they need to attain future careers. In June, Trump’s fiscal 2026 budget proposal called for eliminating designated funding for the $28.5 million Statewide Longitudinal Data Systems grant by merging it with five other programs and reducing their total funding. But a budget Congress passed in January maintains the program’s current funding.
“We know that the policy environment has not kept up with the pace of change, so the moment is now,” Spellings said. “We really need to light the fire of urgency around these issues.”
The council should also set research priorities and advocate for funding so that states know where to invest their resources, the commission recommends. That recommendation comes after the Trump administration has slashed research funding across agencies, including the Education Department, and dramatically downsized that agency’s research arm.
K-12 education must adjust changing workforce needs, commission recommends
The report flags worrying education indicators: Lagging performance on assessments, yawning performance gaps between groups of students, and increased need for remedial courses at the college level.
The Education Department should encourage high standards by creating a “K-12 scorecard” that maps the differences between states’ definitions of academic proficiency and proficiency on the National Assessment of Educational Progress and compares states’ performance on NAEP, the commission recommends.
“The department should call on the advocacy community to play a strong and specific role in highlighting the findings of this scorecard, and should seek state action where major gaps exist,” the report says.
Congress should also authorize the National Assessment Governing Board, which sets policy for NAEP, to report scores more quickly and create new data tools to examine results, the report said.
The commission called for a national “beating the ddds” incentive program, which would provide increased Title I funding for states that improve NAEP scores; show accelerated growth for populations like English learners and students with disabilities on state assessments; and make progress on state-created college and career readiness metrics.
“There will never be a substitute for teaching students to read and be numerate at some level,” Spellings said. “Period. With or without AI.”
A call to redesign high school with workforce skills in mind
States and districts need to rethink high school and provide programs that allow students to graduate with credentials and skills sought by future employers, the commission recommends.
The federal government could encourage such innovation by providing more flexibility around competency-based education and by funding competitive grants that allow states and districts to explore new secondary education models, the report said.
Virginia, for example, offers graduates different diploma endorsements for specific competencies. A civics endorsement requires a student to have documented volunteer service or extracurricular activities, a minimum of a B grade in history and government courses, and good attendance and disciplinary records.
Among the commission’s other K-12 recommendations:
- Update federal school report card requirements and require states to complete “consumer testing” to ensure families understand the data they include.
- Use federal school improvement funds to expand capacity at high-performing schools and allow students to attend, regardless of existing attendance boundaries.
- Allow states to use money set aside for low-performing schools to inform parents of school choice options.
- Provide federal incentives to states that adopt innovative teacher-staffing models or provide higher pay for teachers who work in high-needs schools.
Turning the recommendations into policy could prove challenging. Federal laws governing higher education, K-12, and workforce development are all overdue for reauthorization. Deep partisan divisions can also make change difficult, commissioners acknowledged.
And a muscular federal approach to education has fallen out of favor. The Every Student Succeeds Act, the current federal K-12 law passed in 2015, gave states more flexibility in how the measure school success and respond to poor results. And the Trump administration has sought to provide even more flexibility through waivers that loosen the strings attached to federal grants.
But the scale of disruption caused by AI is likely to affect everyone, creating a shared sense of urgency, said Bill Haslam, the former Republican governor of Tennessee and a commission co-chair.
“No matter where you are on the economic spectrum, this discombobulation is going to affect you,” he said. “The strategy should be national, but the tactics should be state and local.”
