Dear Colleagues,

We held the spring meeting of the NOCTI Board of Trustees in Alexandria, VA, just outside Washington D.C.  The Board is the policy-making body for the NOCTI organization and the nation’s capital is “Ground Zero” for creating CTE policy.  We were fortunate to be able to meet at ACTE headquarters and visit with Jan Bray, Executive Director.  NOCTI has partnered with ACTE for four years now to sponsor a Pre-Convention Assessment Conference at the ACTE Convention.

The Board had the opportunity to meet with Brenda Dann Messier, Assistant Secretary of the Office of Vocational and Adult Education (OVAE), in an interactive exchange about the direction for career technical education (CTE) in this country and the critical need for technical assessments.  Dr. Dann-Messier described OVAE priorities and these actions related to technical assessments:

• Promoting the adoption of industry-validated and internationally-benchmarked academic and technical standards and related proficiency-based assessments.
• Developing and supporting contextualized learning models that blend academic and technical curriculum.
• Funding the development of tests and performance-based assessments.
• Using diagnostic, interim, and proficiency-based assessments to accelerate progression

Kim Green, Executive Director of the National Association of State Directors of Career Technical Education (NASDCTEc) shared the new vision for CTE that her organization just published

CTE is critical to ensuring that the United States leads in global competitiveness. Strategies to accomplish this include developing a national common core of technical standards built upon the National Career Clusters.  NOCTI is expanding its technical assessments to include career pathway assessments.  The vision also says that

• CTE prepares students to succeed in further education and careers.  Strategies to accomplish this include the development of valid, reliable and rigorous national technical assessments aligned to a national common core of technical assessments—the key competency of the NOCTI organization.

• CTE is a results-driven system that demonstrates a positive return on investment.  Strategies to accomplish this include using data to identify successful CTE practices and programs; supporting federal policies for collection of national comparable data; encouraging longitudinal data systems; promoting alignment of data requirements and accountability measures among federal programs; and developing a national return on investment model to demonstrate CTE’s positive fiscal, societal, and economic impact.  NOCTI data should be central to this task.
  
  
• CTE is delivered through comprehensive programs of study aligned to the National Career Clusters framework.  Strategies that have implications for NOCTI include encouraging dual academic and technical certification of all teachers and faculty, and supporting federal legislation that encourages rigorous programs of study as the delivery model for education.
  
  
• CTE actively partners with employers to design and provide high-quality, dynamic programs.  Strategies include partnering with business and industry organizations to develop programs of study; to ensure that credentials earned are valued by the labor market and are nationally portable, a key goal of NOCTI.

NOCTI should play an important role in helping the CTE community achieve this vision. The Board welcomes your input as we support NOCTI in its role of being a leading provider of technical assessments.

Jo Kister
Chair of the Board of Trustees