High-quality CTE: Data and Program Improvement
Click the + sign next to each category below to explore resources that align with the Data and Program Improvement element of the ACTE Quality CTE Program of Study FrameworkTM.
Research and Reports
- Advancing Postsecondary CTE Data Quality Initiative – Advance CTE, August 2022
This series of mini briefs discusses lessons learned and successful strategies from Advance CTE’s Advancing Postsecondary CTE Data Quality Initiative, in which Alabama, Delaware, Florida, Oregon and D.C. in partnership with Advance CTE developed comprehensive action plans to improve the quality and use of postsecondary CTE data.
- Driving Toward a Degree – Tyton Partners, July 2022
This report outlines a new methodology to calculate equity gaps in academic outcomes at postsecondary institutions.
- SLDS Spotlight: State Approaches to Engaging and Sustaining Postsecondary and Workforce Partners – Institute of Education Sciences, March 2022
This spotlight discusses how state longitudinal data systems in Iowa, Minnesota, New Jersey and Connecticut work with postsecondary and workforce agencies to share data, integrate and manage data, and use their collective information to support state education and workforce initiatives.
- Lessons in Collaboration and Innovation: The Impact and Promise of the Comprehensive Local Needs Assessment – Advance CTE & ACTE, January 2022
This report elevates lessons learned from the first round of CLNAs and offers recommendations going forward to ensure that the CLNA meets its promise of improving CTE quality, access and equity.
- 50-State Comparison: Statewide Longitudinal Data Systems – Jamieson, von Zastrow & Perez Jr., Education Commission of the States, December 2021
This comprehensive resource shares SLDS policies and resources in states and the District of Columbia.
- Harnessing State Longitudinal Data Systems to Access Career and Technical Education Outcomes ($) – Pfeiffer & Klein, Career and Technical Education Research, December 2021
This journal article provides information and guidance for using state longitudinal data systems to assess outcomes for CTE students.
- ACTE Quality CTE Program of Study Framework Self-evaluation: A Tool for the Perkins V Comprehensive Local Needs Assessment – ACTE, November 2021
This brief describes how the ACTE Quality CTE Program of Study Framework™ and its companion self-evaluation instrument can help local CTE leaders evaluate their programs and complete key portions of the CLNA.
- The Landscape of Career and Technical Education Faculty Data Use for Decision-Making and Program Improvement in National Science Foundation–Advanced Technical Education Programs in Washington State ($) – Meza et. al, Career and Technical Education Research, September 2021
This study explores the current state of technical education faculty access to and use of student-level data and the constraints CTE faculty face in accessing and using data for data-informed decision making.
- Mitigating Unanticipated Circumstances: Resetting Perkins V State Determined Performance Levels During the COVID-19 Pandemic – Advance CTE & ACTE, February 2021
This resource describes four steps states can take to decide whether and how they might revise their Perkins V performance targets as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.
- Beyond the Numbers: Design Principles for CTE Data Reporting – Advance CTE & ACTE, November 2020
This report, developed with input from national and state experts, provides nine principles for developing effective and accessible CTE data reporting tools. The companion resource Beyond the Numbers: A Toolkit for Communicating CTE Data includes customizable tools for creating communications that help stakeholders better understand and act on CTE data.
- A Roadmap to Better Data: Developing a Census Bureau Partnership to Measure National Postsecondary Earnings Outcomes – Institute for Higher Education Policy, December 2019
This report describes a first-of-its-kind collaboration between the University of Texas System and the U.S. Census Bureau to provide better data on student outcomes.
- Harnessing State Longitudinal Data Systems to Assess Career and Technical Education Outcomes – Pfeiffer & Klein, Education Northwest, November 2019
This paper examines the potential role that SLDS can play in providing a more complete picture of education and workforce development for CTE researchers and stakeholders.
- State Wage Interchange System: Better data for stronger workforce programs – Leventoff, National Skills Coalition, August 2019
This report describes the State Wage Interchange System, a joint data-sharing tool from the Departments of Education and Labor that enables states to exchange anonymized employment and earning data.
- Measuring Secondary CTE Program Quality series – Advance CTE, July 2019
This series explores the pros and cons of each of the three options for the Perkins V secondary program quality indicator – work-based learning participation, postsecondary credit attainment and credential attainment – and examines different ways states are measuring and validating this indicator.
- The State of Career Technical Education: Improving Data Quality and Effectiveness – Advance CTE, April 2019
This report draws on a national survey of state CTE directors to examine how states are collecting and using career readiness data.
- Career Readiness & the Every Student Succeeds Act: Mapping Career Readiness in State ESSA Plans – Advance CTE & Education Strategy Group, December 2017
This report examines Every Student Succeeds Act state plans in all 50 states and the District of Columbia to see how states are taking advantage of key opportunities to support career readiness, including through career readiness metrics.
- Putting Labor Market Information in the Right Hands: A Guide – Advance CTE, November 2017
This publication examines labor market information dissemination challenges and provides real-world examples of how states are effectively communicating and disseminating LMI.
- Certification Data Exchange Project: Connecting Industry-recognized Certification Data to Education and Workforce Outcomes: Measuring the Value Added to Skills, Employment and Wages – ACTE, October 2017
This report discusses findings and lessons learned from ACTE’s Certification Data Exchange Project, which developed and tested data sharing between state education and workforce data systems and industry certifiers. It describes a five-step process for data sharing and offers recommendations for future data-sharing and data-matching efforts.
- Data Dissemination Strategies for Career and Technical Education in Nebraska: Technical Assistance to States Project – RTI International, June 2016
This publication describes an Office of Career, Technical and Adult Education technical assistance project to help Nebraska develop more effective strategies for disaggregating and analyzing CTE data.
- The Use of Workforce Assessment as a Component of Career and Technical Education Program Evaluation ($) – Bartlett, Schleif & Bowen, Career and Technical Education Research, 2011
This research project examined the extent to which CTE programs use workforce needs assessment as a component of their evaluation activities.
- Guide for Conducting Perkins Placement Follow-up Surveys – MPR Associates & Academy for Educational Development, September 2006
Follow-up surveys are an important tool for collecting placement information. This guide describes how to develop, construct and administer a follow-up survey, with strategies for overcoming measurement challenges and a survey template.
Toolkits, Guides and Frameworks
- Equity Framework for Career and Technical Education Research – Career & Technical Education Research Network, October 2022
Developed by the CTE Research Network, this framework provides guidance for conducting CTE research with an equity-focused lens and features a companion checklist that summarizes specific actions that researchers can take to incorporate an equity lens.
- Postsecondary CTE Diagnostic Toolkit – Harvard Strategic Data Project, July 2022
This toolkit provides guidance and examples to postsecondary leaders about analyzing student progress and success in various CTE pathways. The toolkit offers proposed questions, sample data visualizations and summaries of analyses to conduct and is accompanied by a technical guide that provides more detailed information about how to execute the examples featured in the toolkit.
- Building A Youth Apprenticeship Data Ecosystem: A Starter Kit – Advance CTE, March 2022
This starter kit can help state and local intermediaries improve the quality of their youth apprenticeship data capacity. It is the outgrowth of a 2020 report on common challenges and barriers to collecting youth apprenticeship data.
- Work-based Learning Data Collection Toolkit – Waterman, Shields & McMahon, Education Development Center, February 2022
Informed by lessons learned from a multi-year study, this toolkit walks district and school leaders through the process of identifying work-based learning data collection goals, implementing collection processes and using data to improve work-based learning programs.
- Youth Apprenticeship Quality Assessment Tool – Tesfai, New America, February 2022
Guided by quality youth apprenticeship principles established by the Partnership to Advance Youth Apprenticeship, an initiative of New America, this tool helps youth apprenticeship stakeholders reflect on program data to assess strengths and program improvement opportunities related to partnerships, program design and pathway components.
- Youth Apprenticeship Data Framework – Hwang, Partnership to Advance Youth Apprenticeship, September 2021
The Youth Apprenticeship Data Framework is a guide to building data systems that monitor the effectiveness of youth apprenticeship programs and inform continuous improvement activities.
- Career Readiness Metrics Framework: A Continuum of Actionable Measures of Career Development and Readiness – Advance CTE & Education Strategy Group, September 2021
This Career Readiness Metrics Framework presents a comprehensive list of metrics that span middle school through adulthood and provides a standard for practitioners, policymakers and researchers to evaluate whether learners are on track for and progressing through their career pathways.
- Career Readiness Data Quality and Use Policy Benchmark Tool – Advance CTE, February 2021
This tool can assist state leaders in strengthening the quality and use of career readiness data. It provides a roadmap and tools for understanding the six elements of a high-quality career readiness data ecosystem and includes a number of case studies.
- Beyond the Numbers: A Toolkit for Communicating CTE Data – Advance CTE, November 2020
This toolkit contains customizable templates for creating communications that help stakeholders better understand and act on CTE data. A companion report provides nine principles for developing effective and accessible CTE data reporting tools.
- From Tails to Heads: Building Momentum for Postsecondary Success – Education Strategy Group & Level Up Coalition, August 2020
This report describes the Momentum Metrics framework, which is organized around three key phases of a student’s transition from high school to college – preparing, applying and enrolling – and includes a measure of high-quality CTE pathway participation.
- High-quality CTE: Planning for a COVID-19-impacted School Year – ACTE, June 2020
The guide was designed to help CTE leaders make difficult decisions as they offer remote, blended and socially distanced learning during COVID-19. It is organized around the elements of the ACTE Quality CTE Program of Study Framework, including guidance related to CTE data and program improvement.
- Maximizing Performance Data Development Model: Maximizing WIOA and Non-WIOA Performance Data Cohort – Employment and Training Administration; Office of Career, Technical and Adult Education; & Rehabilitation Services Administration, July 2019
The Maximizing Performance Data Development Model is a resource designed for use by any state, whether they have made great strides in their use of performance data to demonstrate programmatic success, are still working to fulfill the statutory vision of WIOA performance or fall somewhere in between. This toolkit includes a self-assessment and facilitation guide.
- Building Credential Currency: Resources to Drive Attainment Across K-12, Higher Education, and Workforce Development – Education Strategy Group, June 2019
This suite of tools provides strategic and technical guidance to states committed to identifying and scaling attainment of non-degree credentials aligned to in-demand, high-skill, high-wage occupations.
- Driving Quality & Equity in CTE: A State Guide to Developing the Perkins V Comprehensive Local Needs Assessment Template – Advance CTE, June 2019
This tool, developed with input from state and national experts, helps states identify the major decision points that impact the design, development and implementation of their CLNA and related local application.
- State Needs Assessment Crosswalk – Advance CTE, June 2019
This crosswalk tool, developed with input from state and national experts, can support the coordination of state- and federally required needs assessments, such as those required under Perkins V, ESSA and WIOA.
- A Guide for Local Leaders: Maximizing Perkins V’s Comprehensive Local Needs Assessment & Local Application to Drive CTE Program Quality and Equity – ACTE, March 2019
This tool provides an overview of the Perkins V comprehensive local needs assessment and helps you translate the language in the law into concrete, actionable steps.
- A Guide for State Leaders: Maximizing Perkins V’s Comprehensive Local Needs Assessment & Local Application to Drive Quality and Equity in CTE – Advance CTE, March 2019
This guide provides a summary, analysis and guidance for each major component of the comprehensive local needs assessment and describes how states can support a robust CLNA process that aligns with the state’s overall vision for CTE.
- Georgia Alignment Toolkit – Georgia Department of Education & Carl Vinson Institute of Government at UGA, 2019
This toolkit supports CTE programs and industry partners to evaluate program alignment with workforce needs. It includes tips on who to bring to the table, suggested sources for labor market information, case studies and templates. While some information is Georgia specific, much of the toolkit can be useful to any local CTE program.
- Auditing a State Career and Technical Education Program for Quality – Mezera & Suffren, ExcelinEd, August 2018
This playbook outlines key design components of a purposeful state CTE program audit, a three-phase process for establishing and conducting such an audit, a customizable framework for CTE program quality indicators, and a rubric for evaluating overall CTE program quality.
- Measuring Non-degree Credential Attainment – Leventoff, National Skills Coalition & Workforce Data Quality Campaign, May 2018
This guide provides states with step-by-step instructions for measuring non-degree credentials using student-level administrative data.
- Measuring Student Success in Postsecondary Competency-Based Education Programs: Toward a Student Outcomes Metrics Framework – Parsons & Rivers, American Institutes of Research & Institute for Competency-Based Education at Texas A&M University, August 2017
The Competency-based Education Student Outcomes Metrics Framework defines a set of measures that support descriptive and evaluative research on competency-based programs.
- A Framework for Evaluating Implementation of Community College Workforce Education Partnerships and Programs – SRI Education, August 2015
The Workforce Education Implementation Evaluation is a framework for evaluating hard-to-measure aspects of the design, development and delivery of workforce education partnerships and programs.
- Conducting Return on Investment Analyses for Secondary and Postsecondary CTE: A Framework – Hollenbeck, National Research Center for CTE, January 2011
This research describes how to estimate the rate of return for secondary and postsecondary CTE by looking at the net impact of CTE on individuals’ labor market experiences and government income supports after encountering programs.
- Program of Study Local Implementation and Self-Assessment Tools – U.S. Department of Education, 2010
The tool from the Office of Career, Technical and Adult Education identifies criteria for evaluating whether a CTE provider has sufficient capacity to implement a comprehensive program of study.
- Voluntary Framework for Accountability – American Association of Community Colleges
The VFA is the principal accountability framework for community colleges with measures defined to encompass the full breadth of the community college mission and the diversity of students’ goals and educational experiences.
Books
- Putting Your Data to Work: Improving Instruction in CTE ($) – Foster, Hodes & Pritz, 2014
This book explores multiple aspects of data-driven improvement in instruction, and specifically targets the importance of gradient disaggregated objective technical skill data and its systematic use to continually improve instruction. The concepts and specific ‘how-to’ examples in this book are valuable for secondary, postsecondary and adult educators.
On-demand Webinars
- Practitioner Training Modules – CTE Research Network, 2021
Designed for CTE practitioners and state agency staff, these modules strengthen state and local CTE professionals’ capacity to access, understand and use CTE data and research as well as conduct research, particularly causal research.
- Strengthening the Career Readiness Data Ecosystem: Framework for Improving Policy & Practice – Advance CTE, March 2021
In this webinar, Advance CTE introduces their Career Readiness Data Quality and Use Policy Benchmark Tool to help state leaders to improve their career readiness data ecosystem.
- Beyond the Numbers: Strategies for Effectively Reporting and Communicating CTE Data – Advance CTE, January 2021
This webinar reviews protocols for CTE data reporting and how state CTE leaders can use data to craft relevant and present insights in an easy-to-understand and actionable manner.
- High-Quality CTE Programs of Study — Data and Program Improvement – ACTE, April 2020
This webinar led by Christina Kerns, Curriculum & Instruction Supervisor at Penta Career Center in Perrysburg, Ohio, discusses the importance of data collection and its use to support student success; investigates ways to provide valid and reliable aggregate data on all students in a program of study; and introduces a formalized data collection model for program improvement and gap closure.
- Perkins Accountability Modules – U.S. Department of Education
These Office of Career, Technical and Adult Education modules address various aspects of Perkins accountability requirements, annual reporting cycles and timelines and feature presentations from OCTAE’s annual Data Quality Institutes.
Online Courses
- Spending and Managing Carl D. Perkins Grant Funds ($) – CTE Learn
This course explains the key factors that determine what Perkins funds can be spent on and the systems needed to manage Perkins funds. This information will help participants to optimize Perkins spending, design effective CTE programs and support compliance with federal requirements.
- Measuring Performance ($) – CTE Learn
The course addresses both standalone measures such as ROI as well as measurement frameworks such as dashboards, quality models and the Balanced Scorecard. It includes a systematic process for tracking performance of initiatives that can generate improvements across the organization.
All involved in employment reporting must continuously identify ways to strengthen their system for tracking, collecting and verifying employment data. This course is designed to encourage participants to critically analyze their own employment reporting practices while sharing ideas and best practices that can help lead to the highest level of data integrity.
Data Tools
- Perkins Data Explorer – U.S. Department of Education
The Perkins Data Explorer lets you create custom reports using Consolidated Annual Report state data for CTE participant enrollment, CTE concentrator enrollment and CTE concentrator performance data, disaggregated for different learner groups and special populations and by Career Clusters. It also lists Final Agreed Upon Performance Levels (FAUPLs) by state.
- CTE Statistics – National Center for Education Statistics
This online hub includes a number of tables on topics related to secondary and postsecondary CTE and career development.
- myOptions-ACTE Data Dashboard – myOptions & ACTE
This dashboard features findings from ACTE’s annual, nationwide survey of CTE high school students and educators, conducted in partnership with myOptionsTM.
- Data Tools – Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce
These tools from the Center on Education and the Workforce include labor market information, employment and earnings, and postsecondary return on investment data.