ANSWERING TO PERKINS.

ANSWERING TO PERKINS. Under the new Perkins legislation, states have more flexibility toadminister their career and technical education programs and a greaterpercentage of funds for local programs. In return, Congress wants to seeresults. As states sort out the requirements, They'll be wrestling wrestling,sport in which two unarmed opponents grapple with one another. The object is to secure a fall, i.e., cause the opponent to lose balance and fall to the floor, and ultimately to pin the supine opponent's shoulders to the floor, through the use of body with challenges. Accountability is the hallmark hallmark,mark impressed on silverwork or goldwork to signify official approval of the standard of purity of the metal, also called plate mark. The hallmark was introduced by statute in England in 1300 and enforced by the Goldsmiths' Hall, London. of the 1998 Carl Perkins For other people named Carl Perkins, see Carl Perkins (disambiguation). The introduction of this article is too short. Vocational-Technical Education Act. Probably no other aspect of the newlegislation has more long-term Long-termThree or more years. In the context of accounting, more than 1 year.long-term1. Of or relating to a gain or loss in the value of a security that has been held over a specific length of time. Compare short-term. significance for this field of educationor presents a greater challenge for successful implementation. In returnfor granting states greater flexibility in administering and allocatingfederal funds Federal FundsFunds deposited to regional Federal Reserve Banks by commercial banks, including funds in excess of reserve requirements.Notes:These non-interest bearing deposits are lent out at the Fed funds rate to other banks unable to meet overnight reserve , Congress has said forcefully force��ful?adj.Characterized by or full of force; effective: was persuaded by the forceful speaker to register to vote; enacted forceful measures to reduce drug abuse. that it expects to seeresults. Career and technical education must demonstrate itscontribution to student achievement, program completion, placement inpostsecondary education and the workforce and improved gender equity inprogram offerings. Here's a look at the new rules. New accountability requirements comprise three features: 1. States must develop systems that monitor performance using fourcore indicators--student attainment of challenging state-establishedacademic and technical skill proficiencies; student attainment of a highschool diploma A high school diploma is a diploma awarded for the completion of high school. In the United States and Canada, it is considered the minimum education required for government jobs and higher education. An equivalent is the GED. , equivalent or postsecondary degree or credential credentialverb To determine or verify titles, qualifications, documents, completion of required training, and continuing education, in those persons who function in a professional or official capacity–eg, ER physician, neurosurgeon, etc. Cf Credentials. ;postsecondary education or advanced training placement, retention andcompletion or placement in the military or employment; technical programparticipation and completion leading to nontraditional employment. 2. States must establish and are accountable for the indicators andtheir performance levels (which must be negotiated with the EducationDepartment). If states fail to reach their performance levels, they willundergo state and local program improvement plans, and federal fundingmay be withheld. 3. States will report annual performance to the EducationDepartment, which in turn will report to Congress and the public. Thelaw stipulates that the national report summarize sum��ma��rize?intr. & tr.v. sum��ma��rized, sum��ma��riz��ing, sum��ma��riz��esTo make a summary or make a summary of.sum performance resultsstate by state. Three must-do's Any problems surrounding sur��round?tr.v. sur��round��ed, sur��round��ing, sur��rounds1. To extend on all sides of simultaneously; encircle.2. To enclose or confine on all sides so as to bar escape or outside communication.n. the implementation of Perkinsaccountability requirements may incorrectly paint educators as resistantor unresponsive unresponsiveNeurology adjective Referring to a total lack of response to neurologic stimuli in the eyes of policy-makers. The only way to avoid that(and a potential loss of program support) is to cover these three bases: 1 Define workable indicators and performance levels--The coreindicators specified by Perkins must be translated into operationalmeasures that clearly tell local providers of career and technicaleducation what information to produce. With respect to achievement, precisely what are the academic andtechnical proficiencies students should master? While many states havedeveloped content standards for academic achievement in grades K-12,most do not have similar standards for technical achievement.Additionally, even where academic standards have been established, thereare not yet assessment tools for measuring students' mastery ofthem. Furthermore, while other forms of standardized standardizedpertaining to data that have been submitted to standardization procedures.standardized morbidity ratesee morbidity rate.standardized mortality ratesee mortality rate. achievement testsare commonplace, in many states there is no testing after grade 10. Butthe majority of career and technical education occurs in grades 11 and12. Tenth-grade academic assessment can serve as a baseline The horizontal line to which the bottoms of lowercase characters (without descenders) are aligned. See typeface. baseline - released version , but thereis no subsequent testing that would help determine technicaleducation's contribution to academic achievement. At the postsecondary level there's no standardized achievementtesting. Furthermore, in most states, neither secondary norpostsecondary systems have valid statewide standardized assessments oftechnical proficiencies. In the short run, therefore, many states will have to developproxies for direct measurement of student achievement. Some possiblecandidates include grades and certificates of program completion(particularly for programs that use some form of competency-basedinstruction), but the validity of these proxies will require carefulconsideration. States and localities should not have any difficulty producingcounts of high school graduates and recipients of postsecondary degreesand certificates. The challenge in making the completion indicatoroperational is defining a valid underlying population on which to basethe completion rate. The problems at the secondary level, like highstudent turnover, are even more complicated at the postsecondary levelwhere the forms of completion (and the stage in a person's lifewhen that completion may occur) are much more varied. For purposes ofPerkins accountability, postsecondary institutions may want to limittheir completion indicators to selected major subpopulations--students18 to 24, for example--to make definition and measurement moremanageable. Such a strategy, however, means not reporting on asubstantial part of technical education activity at the postsecondarylevel. Placement is a longstanding measure of accountability in career andtechnical education. But despite years of experience with trying tomeasure placement in the workforce or the military, technical programsrarely have produced reliable information. Response rates to mail andtelephone surveys have typically averaged about 25 percent, too low toproduce much confidence in the estimates. States that have had the mostsuccess in monitoring job placement of technical education participantsare those that have been able to link student records to informationcontained in unemployment insurance records. Designing indicators for reporting on gender equity programs may bethe easiest task under the new requirements. The law is clear--programswith less than 25 percent of one gender or the other are considered outof balance. Consequently, all that's required is good data onprogram enrollment by gender--information that most all secondary andpostsecondary institutions have or can readily obtain. 2 Identify relevant populations--What's needed is a graduation Graduation is the action of receiving or conferring an academic degree or the associated ceremony. The date of event is often called degree day. The event itself is also called commencement, convocation or invocation. rate for the subset A group of commands or functions that do not include all the capabilities of the original specification. Software or hardware components designed for the subset will also work with the original. of students who participate"significantly" in career and technical education. Doing thatwill be troublesome, to say the least. At the secondary level, almost all high school students take atleast one course in the technical curriculum, so mere participation isnot a very useful distinction. And there's a wide range oftechnical education participation at the postsecondary level as well.Presumably pre��sum��a��ble?adj.That can be presumed or taken for granted; reasonable as a supposition: presumable causes of the disaster. , the new Perkins calls for documenting the effects of"significant" levels of participation in career and technicaleducation or some coherent cluster of technical and academic courses.What, then, is the degree of concentration that determines whoseperformance will be monitored? What are the eligible combinations oftechnical and academic coursetaking? If national guidance is offered,will states be willing to follow it when the national definition is atodds with their own? Right now it's a "wait and see"situation. Then there's the issue of special populations. Are statesexpected to monitor each indicator for members of this group? Thelegislation explicitly says states will describe in quantifiable QuantifiableCan be expressed as a number. The results of quantifiable psychological tests can be translated into numerical values, or scores.Mentioned in: Psychological Tests termsthe progress of special populations participating in career andtechnical education and names six groups: * individuals with disabilities; * the economically disadvantaged This article or section may contain original research or unverified claims.Please help Wikipedia by adding references. See the for details.This article has been tagged since September 2007. ; * individuals preparing for nontraditional employment; * single parents, including single pregnant women; * displaced homemakers dis��placed homemakern.A woman who, after managing a household for years, is forced by financial necessity to find a wage-paying job. ; and * those with limited English skills. Does this mean that progress must be monitored for each groupindividually or for special populations as a whole? The primary problem is that many states and localities cannot trackthe individual performance of most special populations. In someinstances the problem lies with definition or identification. At thepostsecondary level, for example, it may be neither legal nor desirableto identify single parents or single pregnant women in student recordsystems. In other instances, the problem lies in the lack of studentrecord systems that would allow individual monitoring. For example, atthe secondary level in two of the nation's largest states(California California(kăl'ĭfôr`nyə), most populous state in the United States, located in the Far West; bordered by Oregon (N), Nevada and, across the Colorado River, Arizona (E), Mexico (S), and the Pacific Ocean (W). and New York New York, state, United StatesNew York,Middle Atlantic state of the United States. It is bordered by Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the Atlantic Ocean (E), New Jersey and Pennsylvania (S), Lakes Erie and Ontario and the Canadian province of ), the smallest organizing unit for the statedata system is the classroom, a feature that prevents producing any kindof student level data. In such cases, states will need to create new strategies fortracking the performance of special populations. In some instances, theymay be able to piggyback piggyback1. A broker trading in his or her personal account after trading in the same security for a customer. The broker may believe the customer has access to privileged information that will cause the transaction to be profitable.2. on data collection and reporting alreadyimplemented to satisfy requirements for other federal and stateinitiatives targeting special education, compensatory education orstudents with limited English proficiency pro��fi��cien��cy?n. pl. pro��fi��cien��ciesThe state or quality of being proficient; competence.Noun 1. proficiency - the quality of having great facility and competence . In other instances, statesmight employ a sampling strategy to collect performance information on asmall but representative number of special populations. The Education Department's Office of Vocational and AdultEducation The Office of Vocational and Adult Education (OVAE) is a subdivision of the United States Department of Education. OVAE falls under the supervision of the Undersecretary, who oversees policies, programs and activities related to vocational and adult education, postsecondary (OVAE) is sponsoring a workshop in Kansas City Kansas City,two adjacent cities of the same name, one (1990 pop. 149,767), seat of Wyandotte co., NE Kansas (inc. 1859), the other (1990 pop. 435,146), Clay, Jackson, and Platte counties, NW Mo. (inc. 1850). , Mo., Feb. 4-5to provide technical assistance to state officials who will developtheir state's accountability plan under the new Perkins. Theworkshop most likely will be the first in a series to help statesestablish priorities and strategies and prepare final accountabilityplans to submit to the Education Department. The National Center for Research in Vocational Education vocational education,training designed to advance individuals' general proficiency, especially in relation to their present or future occupations. The term does not normally include training for the professions. (NCRVE NCRVE National Center on Research in Vocational Education )will join OVAE in providing state-level technical assistance. Workshopupdates will be available on the OVAE Web site. (See "PerkinsSupport Group" on this page.) 3 Develop strategies for local implementation--Perkins requiresstates to develop their own accountability systems. A critical lessonlearned from the 1990 Perkins accountability requirements is thatsuccess depends on understanding, acceptance and effective use at thelocal level. Back then, states devoted considerable effort to developingperformance measures and standards, but these measures and standardsnever became part of local practice in most states. Basic designproblems such as lack of assessment tools or adequate managementinformation systems thwarted thwart?tr.v. thwart��ed, thwart��ing, thwarts1. To prevent the occurrence, realization, or attainment of: They thwarted her plans.2. local adoption. Equally important, moststates lacked strategies for adapting state-designed measures andstandards to local levels. Success with the 1998 accountability requirements will dependcritically on involving local representatives in the design of statesystems and helping local providers of career and technical educationlearn how to use performance measures to promote program improvement andeffective local management. Many educators are accustomed to viewingdata as merely something to report to somebody else, not as somethingthat can help them improve curriculum, instruction and student services.(See "Perkins Support Group" on page 47 for more onNCRVE's resource on data collection for school improvement.) The new Perkins does raise other important issues, includingdeveloping more effective tools for assessing academic and technicalproficiency, integrating technical education's need for informationwith the larger secondary and postsecondary information systems ofstates and localities and establishing credible standards for thequality of information generated by these systems at the local, stateand national levels. For some, the number and complexity of these issues may besufficient justification for questioning the wisdom of the Perkinsaccountability requirements. But career and technical education doeshave a responsibility to demonstrate to students, educators and thepublic what is accomplished through their substantial investment of timeand other resources. Successfully meeting that responsibility depends onunderstanding clearly the difficult problems that lie ahead andcommitting ourselves at all levels--local, state and national--toworking collaboratively to find solutions. RELATED ARTICLE: Perkins Support Group * The Official Guide to the Perkins Act of 1998 published by theAssociation for Career and Technical Education, provides the completetext of the law with an index for searching specific provisions. It alsoincludes a section-by-section summary of the act and a comprehensiveanalysis that shows the differences between the new law and the previousone. The guide is $34.95 ($29.95 for ACTE ACTE Association for Career and Technical Education (formerly American Vocational Association)ACTE Association of Corporate Travel ExecutivesACTE Approvals Committee for Terminal EquipmentACTE Anodal Closure Tetanus members). To order, call (800)826-9972, ext. 317. * NCRVE (National Center for Research in Vocational Education) hasa Web site at http://vocserve.berkeley.edu. This site allows users tosearch all of NCRVE's publications by keyword. At Your Fingertips "Fingertips" is a 1963 number-one hit single recorded live by "Little" Stevie Wonder for Motown's Tamla label. Wonder's first hit single, "Fingertips" was the first live, non-studio recording to reach number-one on the Billboard Pop Singles chart in the United States. :Using Everyday Data to Improve Schools (1998, 250 pages) is astep-by-step guide to collecting, analyzing and presenting data forschool improvement initiatives. This book is available through ACTE for$43.95 ($39.95 for ACTE members). To order, call (800) 826-9972, ext.317. * MPR (MultiProtocol Router) Software from Novell that provides router capabilities for its NetWare servers. It supports IPX, IP, AppleTalk and OSI protocols as well as all the major LANs and WANs. Associates Inc. has a Web site at www.mprassociates.com. MPRalso can be reached 2150 Shattuck Ave., Suite 800, Berkeley, CA 94704;(510) 849-4942; info@mprinc.com. * OVAE (Office of Vocational and Adult Education) in the U.S.Department of Education has a Web site athttp:flinet.ed.govloffices/OVAE. From that home page you can jump tolegislative updates regarding the new Perkins. But to view FY 1999 stateplan requirements directly, go to www.ed.gov/offices/OVAE/VocEd/InfoBoard/vgui1124.html. OVAE also can be reached at 4090 MES (Manufacturing Execution Software) Software that provides real time access to plant activities that include equipment, labor, orders and inventory. An MES integrates the data with enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems so that management has complete control of , 600Independence Ave., S.W., Washington, D.C. 20202; (202) 205-5451;ovae@inet.ed.gov. Questions concerning state plan requirements can befielded by Ron Castaldi. Elliott Medrich contributed to this article. Medrich is director ofMPR Associates Inc.--consulting firm specializing in management,planning and research for elementary, secondary and postsecondaryeducation based in Berkeley, Calif. Gary Hoachlander is president of MPR Associates Inc. and directsthe firm's work as one of the sites of NCRVE. Steven Klein isassociate director of MPR's Program for Policy Analysis andDevelopment.