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BEYOND TEST SCORES
Determining the Value of a CTE Program in Mississippi by Ashley Brown
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ssessment is a hot topic in Mississippi. The legislature’s debate over Common Core has even received national attention, with TIME magazine publishing an article about it in their August 25, 2014 issue. Everyone wants to know, “How are we going to be assessed?” For Mississippi’s Career and Technical Education (CTE) programs, that question has already been answered. CTE students are assessed at the end of the second and fourth Carnegie units of each curriculum with one of three options: the Mississippi Career Planning and Assessment System, Edition 2 (MS-CPAS2 for short), which is a multiple-choice test written from course curriculum by Mississippi teachers; a performancebased assessment (PBA), which is a hands-on demonstration of skills learned in the curriculum; or a national-level certification test, which is offered by a national-level industry organization. With the inclusion of a student achievement piece in both the Mississippi Principal Evaluation System and the Mississippi Teacher Evaluation System, scores from the MS-CPAS2,
PBA, and national certification tests are becoming increasingly high-stakes. However, these scores are only one indicator of a program’s performance that concerns the Mississippi Department of Education. Mississippi has chosen to use the Perkins IV Core Indicators to track CTE performance at the state level. MDE Bureau Director Mike Mulvihill says, “We take the eight indicators and drop them down to each individual program,” meaning that these indicators, which are used to report at a national level, are also used to measure individual programs at the district level in the areas of academic and skills attainment, completion and placement, and non-traditional students. (See sidebar on the next page for a list of indicators with descriptions.) Academic and technical skills are measured using statewide assessments. Academic attainment comes from English/Language Arts and Mathematics subject-area test scores for the students enrolled in a CTE program. These students must score proficient or advanced on the subject-area tests in order to count positively toward a program’s academic
attainment. Technical skills attainment is measured using MS-CPAS2, PBA, or national certification exams for the students enrolled in a CTE program, and these students must achieve a passing score in order to count positively toward a program’s technical skills attainment. The Perkins IV Core Indicators for completion and placement measure CTE students’ movement over time. Completion means that a student finished both years of a CTE program, had a passing average on the assessments for that program, and graduated from high school. Students who meet these criteria count positively for the CTE program. Placement evaluates where CTE students go after graduation. Students who are accepted to an institute of higher learning for any major, enlist in any branch of military service, or find employment in a field related to that which they studied in CTE count positively for a program. Participation and completion of non-traditional students, the last two Perkins IV Core Indicators, look specifically at the number of male and female students participating in and completing programs in which