Improving CTE Data Quality: Practitioners and the Public are Equipped to Understand and Leverage Data

In a high-quality career readiness data ecosystem, states do not report data for data’s sake but rather to foster understanding and to spur users to action. This requires a thoughtful approach to designing and presenting career readiness data and a robust system of professional development, technical assistance and support to ensure practitioners understand how to use the data. Additionally, data elements should be integrated into a state’s communication strategy to tell a career readiness story. 

The Kentucky Department of Education works in partnership with the Kentucky Center for Statistics (KY STATS) to collect career readiness data in the state and make the data available and accessible to the public. Then, the Department of Education’s Office of Career and Technical Education travels the state to deliver professional development and training activities at convenings throughout the year, ensuring practitioners and the public have the knowledge to understand and leverage the data to support high-quality Career Technical Education (CTE).

KY STATS collects and links learner-level data across Kentucky to evaluate education and workforce programs in the state. The agency uses this data to develop reports and data dashboards, to respond to research requests and to provide statistical analysis to help policymakers, practitioners and the general public make data-informed decisions. At these events, Department staff teaches CTE administrators, school counselors and teachers how they can utilize data at the school and classroom levels. As an example, the Office of Career and Technical Education organizes regional data sessions with practitioners on how they can analyze and interpret data, examine the root causes of challenges they may be experiencing, and how they can identify the academic standards that are the most challenging for learners. 

Showing practitioners how to use the data to support learners is only half of the Office of Career and Technical Education’s work. The other half is teaching local leaders and practitioners how to use the data to tell a story. Data can be used to challenge the stigmas associated with CTE and to convince skeptics that CTE programs are valuable. For example, the Office of Career and Technical Education uses data to communicate the value of CTE by comparing the number of CTE concentrators who demonstrate college and career readiness compared to non-CTE concentrators. Kentucky’s data shows that that CTE concentrators outperform nearly every other population on academic benchmarks.

Read the Advance CTE Case Study, Kentucky Center for Statistics and Department of Education Data Partnership, to learn more about how Kentucky ensures practitioners and the public are equipped to understand and leverage data. For additional resources on improving the quality and use of career readiness data, check out the Career Readiness Data Quality microsite.  

This is the third edition in a series of Advance CTE data quality blogs to accompany Advance CTE’s latest releases, Career Readiness Data Quality and Use Policy Benchmark Tool and Data Quality Case Studies. For more resources on data and accountability in CTE, please visit the Learning that Works Resource Center.

Brian Robinson, Policy Associate

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