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BLADENSBURG, Md. (AP) President Barack Obama on Monday announced more than $100 million in grants for two dozen schools across the country that are helping students gain work experience for what he called the "in-demand jobs of the future."

The money, which comes from fees that companies pay for visas to hire foreign workers for specialized jobs, is the result of an executive order Obama signed last year to better prepare high school students for college or for careers. Students are working on "cooler stuff than when I was in high school," Obama said as he announced the grants before cheering high school students in Washington's Maryland suburbs.

A total of 24 schools are being awarded the money after a nationwide competition, including the Los Angeles Unified School District, the New York City Department of Education and districts in Denver, Indianapolis and Clinton, S.C. Obama explained it will allow schools to "develop and test new curricula and models for success. We want to invest in your future," he said.

Obama announced the grants at Bladensburg High School, one of three high schools in Washington's Maryland suburbs that have created a Youth CareerConnect Program that is the recipient of $7 million under the announcement. Students at Bladensburg work on real-world projects with community partners to get ready for college admission or careers. The grant at the school, where more than 70 percent of students are low-income, will expand the Health & Biosciences Academy to prepare more students for careers in the region's fast-growing healthcare field.

Obama visited a 10th grade microbiology class, where he asked the students in lab goggles huddled over microscopes what careers they are interested in. "You on the CSI thing, forensics huh?" the president said to one student.

In another effort to make education more accessible, Vice President Joe Biden announced that the Education and Labor departments will run a program to facilitate community college students getting academic credit for apprenticeships in business and industry, in line with the federal job-training revamp that Biden has been charged with leading. Colleges will agree to provide credit for apprenticeships that are certified by an independent group, enabling students to finish their degrees quicker.

Obama also planned to take action Tuesday to use the federal government's vast array of contractors to impose rules on wages, pay disparities and hiring on a segment of the private sector that gets taxpayer money and falls under his control. He was scheduled to issue an order prohibiting federal contractors from retaliating against workers who discuss their pay and direct the Labor Department to issue new rules requiring federal contractors to provide compensation data that includes a breakdown by race and gender.

The steps, which Obama plans to take at a White House event, take aim at pay disparities between men and women. The Senate this week is scheduled to take up gender pay equity legislation that would affect all employers, but the White House-backed bill doesn't have enough Republican support to overcome procedural obstacles and will likely fail.

The executive actions are designed to let workers discuss and compare their wages openly if they wish to do so and to provide the government with better data about how federal contractors compensate their workers.

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Obama: Students Need Help To Get 'In-Demand Jobs'

President Obama is asking employers this week to pay men and women equally, while the White House Monday tried to defend Mr. Obamas record of paying female staffers only 88 percent of what men earn.

The president will sign two executive orders Tuesday at the White House promoting gender pay equity among federal contractors. The first order will prohibit contractors from punishing employees who discuss their wages; the second will require contractors to release compensation data along racial and gender lines.

Senior presidential adviser Valerie Jarrett said Mr. Obama on Tuesday also will urge the Senate to pass the Equal Pay Act, which would require all employers to provide data on their pay breakdowns along gender lines.

These protections shouldnt just apply to federal contractors, they should apply to all Americans, Ms. Jarrett said.

While the president is encouraging employers to pay men and women the same, several recent studies have shown that women in the Obama White House earn just 88 cents on average for every dollar earned by a male staffer. White House press secretary Jay Carney, who earns the maximum salary of $172,200, said the presidents record on pay equity is better than the national average.

Nationally, women earn about 77 cents for every dollar earned by a man.

Mr. Carney said women at the White House are paid less overall than men because lower-paid positions might be filled by more women than men. But he said people who hold the same level of jobs are paid the same regardless of gender.

For example, he said, White House Deputy Chiefs of Staff Alyssa Mastromonaco and Rob Nabors each are paid $172,200.

Mr. Carney also took the unusual step of reciting the names of 10 top female staffers at the White House and their positions, including Ms. Jarrett and White House Counsel Kathy Ruemmler.

We have 16 department heads, Mr. Carney said. Over half of them are women, all of whom make the same salary as their male counterparts.

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Obama plans push for gender paycheck equality

President Obama on Monday opened up taxpayers checkbook for education and continued a hallmark of his presidency working around Congress to dole out billions of dollars in grants to individual states and districts, as long as they enact the kinds of changes the administration wants to see.

But some analysts say the White Houses penchant to throw money out there and hope it sticks on something useful often doesnt work, and there are signs that some of the money hasnt fully achieved its purpose.

SEE ALSO: Obama plans push for gender paycheck equality

The administrations latest effort, the $107 million Youth CareerConnect program, is designed to deliver real-world learning opportunities for students and offer specific training in a given field before a student graduates high school.

Mr. Obama touted the initiative at Bladensburg High School in suburban Maryland on Monday morning. The school received $7 million to, among other things, craft new biomedical programs that will let students earn college credits from the University of Maryland.

We asked high schools to develop partnerships with colleges and employers and create classes that focus on real-life applications for the fields of the future, fields like science and technology and engineering and math, the president said. Part of the reason weve got to do this now is because other countries theyve got a little bit of a lead on us in some of these areas.

The CareerConnect program follows Race to the Top, a massive increase in the size of School Improvement Grants and other examples of the administrations strategy of using money and competition as a way to drive change in the classroom.

Thus far, some specialists say, the approach hasnt been an abject failure, but hasnt been a resounding success, either.

I think they have a mixed record, frankly. Race to the Top was a little different because instead of giving everybody a little bit of money, they insisted that individual states tell them what they would do with the money, said Eric Hanushek, a senior fellow at Stanford Universitys Hoover Institution who specializes in the economic analysis of educational issues.

There are other examples where they throw money out there and hope it sticks on something useful, and that almost never works, he continued.

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Obama touts $107M high school career connection program

So heres Rand Paul, in 2009, arguing that Dick Cheney used 9/11 as an excuse to invade Iraq and topple Saddam Hussein so that Halliburton, a contractor he was an executive at prior to his election as vice president, could profit. 9/11 became an excuse for a war they already wanted in Iraq, Paul says, of Cheney and Bush administration officials like Richard Perle.

The video of Pauls remarks comes from a story in Mother Jones by David Corn, suggesting that someone is trying to make Paul look like a kook. While this theory of the Iraq War isnt exactly uncommon on the left, it is not the sort of thing mainstream Republicans believe or say. Paul is still much less hawkish than most Washington Republicans, but he has spent much of his time in the Senate attempting to make himself acceptable to Republican elites, presumably in advance of the presidential campaign. But conservative foreign policy types are never going to embrace someone who was saying this sort of thing just a few years ago. If Rand Paul actually is running for president, he ought to get used to seeing YouTube clips like this one turn up in strange places.

Rand Paul has turned out to be a more talented politician than he seemed in 2009 and 2010, when he was still green enough to do things like unambiguously state his opinion on the Civil Rights Act. Hes polished enough now that hes commonly referred to as a 2016 front-runner. But his background is full of unseemly associations and dumb public statements thats a given for anyone who came up in the world of Ron Paul. Dave Weigels recent piece on the shady direct mail network that funded Pauls political operation is a good example of the sorts of things that will cause headaches for Rand Paul in a campaign with the full attention of the national press. And he hasnt quite put all of this behind him: Even in 2012, Rand was repeating historical theories from fringe-y paleoconservative thinkers.

Even if Rand Paul can escape blame for his fathers controversies like, say, the whole racist newsletter thing theres still plenty of material in his own history. There is, for example, his long history with toxic conspiracy maven Alex Jones. In a 2013 clip that Im sure Rand Pauls staff was thrilled to see, Jones said hes known Rand Paul for 15 years, and that Paul will probably end up being president unless hes defeated by the electronic voting machine fraud. And we havent even gotten to The Southern Avenger.

For the last few years, Paul has enjoyed generally soft press coverage, because the political press loves a renegade Republican. But Republican hawks arent going to let him anywhere near the nomination, and theyll spend the next two years digging up every slightly controversial thing he ever said to stop him.

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How 2009 Rand Paul will sabotage 2016 Rand Paul

When Mother Jones published a video of soon-to-be Sen. Rand Paul claiming that former vice president Dick Cheney pushed the Iraq War because of his ties to Halliburton, it was a good reminder of how much the potential 2016 presidential candidate differs from the rest of his party on foreign policy.

Unless an unpredictable international event in the next two years swallows the United States' attention span like the early years of the wars in the Middle East did, it's unclear his views, a malleable mush of his father's orthodox ban on intervention and a Reaganish devotion to "peace through strength," will matter much. Given the increasingly extracurricular role international affairs play on the list of important issues voters bring out once every four years, foreign policy seems unlikely on the surface to keep Rand Paul from the nomination if his party decides he's the one to beat. On the other hand, potential presidential candidates have been forced to air their views on international affairs quite a bit the past few months, as unforeseen events have crept into American policy discussions.

Let's unpack how foreign policy could affect Rand Paul's future political aspirations.

Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.) shakes hands with a guest as he signs copies of his book "Government Bullies" at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), March 7, 2014. Reuters/Mike Theiler

There are considerable challenges in breaking with the Republican Party on foreign policy, something Rand Paul is well aware of thanks to his family's history.

Ron Paul is one of the most ideologically consistent politicians in the United States, and most of his policy ideas can end with, "because it would shrink government." On foreign policy, Ron Paul thinks the United States spends an inordinate amount. The best way to trim the budget is by stopping interventions and slashing foreign aid. While many of his fellow Republicans also advocate for a smaller government, the savings usually stop at America's shore. Paul Ryan's latest budget plan calls for extensive domestic savings, but a still-robust budget for the Pentagon.

Over his three presidential campaigns, Paul's stubbornly libertarian foreign policy lens defined his campaign -- and his supporters. Although Paul always rounded up a merry band of young libertarians to support his campaigns, the major donors, strategists and pundits in the Republican Party never took him too seriously, although his strengths as a candidate became more notable each time he tried. The rest of the political establishment never took him very seriously either. Here's a graph of news coverage of the 2012 presidential contenders in 2011.

Source: Pew Research Center

Regardless of the perception inside and outside the Republican Party, Ron Paul was doing something that resonated with a lot of people. His 2012 campaign raised more money than any other Republican candidate except for Mitt Romney. The top five employers who supported Ron Paul? The U.S. Army, the U.S. Air Force, the U.S. Navy, Google and the Department of Defense.Not only were Ron Paul's foreign policy views catching, but they were resonating with the same people tasked with carrying out that policy.

Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul seems to have picked up on the pros and cons of his father's foreign policy views. He's non-interventionist enough to appeal to libertarians, winning his dad's approval for being one of two senators to vote against the Ukraine aid package, but he's also willing to see a bit of gray in international affairs. He wrote an op-ed for Time Magazine saying that it is the United States' "role as a global leader to be the strongest nation in opposing Russias latest aggression."

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What role will foreign policy play in the 2016 election? And what does that mean for Rand Paul?