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- Oregon Department of Education (ODE) Technical Skill Assessment Resources – information about the approval process and other guidance.
- Locally Developed Technical Skills Assessments for Region 2A (from ODE’s web page)
Perkins funding of Career Technical Education (CTE) programs at PCC depends on their belonging to an identified Program of Study (POS). There are a few key elements required of Programs of Study beyond what is required of state-approved post-secondary CTE programs, including:
- Alignment and/or articulation with one or more secondary CTE programs (requiring collaboration between high school and college faculty).
- Annual reporting of student attainment of technical skills as one of several performance indicators.
The reporting requirements changed in 2012-2013. Student GPA is no longer a sufficient or accepted measure of student skill attainment. Now, such achievement will be measured in terms of Technical Skill Assessment (TSA).
The technical skills assessed will need to be aligned with industry-based standards. The assessments will need to be submitted for each completing student (by ID number) as one score (either “meets” or “does not meet”).
Prior to reporting, the assessments must be approved by the Oregon Department of Education (ODE), and shown to be valid (based on industry standards), reliable (consistent), and criterion referenced. See the link to ODE’s website at the top of this page.
Which programs at PCC need to be concerned with Technical Skill Assessments?
Our CTE programs are “rolling into” Programs of Study as the high school (HS) programs apply for POS status with the state and are required to identify the college programs with which they collaborate. For the college programs, the requirement is active collaboration with HS programs, and conversion of the reporting of technical skill from GPA to the TSAs.
For each program, it is generally only the main AAS degree that will need to report TSAs (for a few CTE programs, more than one AAS is identified as part of a POS, and each will need to report TSAs). The Technical Skill Assessment (TSA) Development Chart reflects the PCC Career Technical Programs of Study that need to conduct TSAs. Programs that do not choose to be involved in Programs of Study are not required to develop TSAs, but also are not eligible for Perkins funding or support.
CTE programs are eligible for Perkins funding ONLY if they are approved Programs of Study. At PCC, Perkins funding supports technical learning skills specialists and student resource specialists employed in various CTE programs, as well as staff in Employment Services, Career Pathways, and Accessible Ed & Disability Resources. Perkins funding also supports professional development activities in CTE.
What is the relationship of TSAs with the Accreditation requirement for assessment?
The main differences between TSAs and assessment of outcomes for our degrees and certificates are:
- TSAs speak specifically to industry-base standards (at least some of your outcomes likely do so as well).
- TSAs are reported as one score, “meets” or “does not meet,” whereas assessment for accreditation should be collected in a way that helps faculty to make focused program improvements.
- TSAs are reported for each student completer (by G#); program assessments must not include any student identifiers and can be aggregated.
Most CTE programs are involved in Perkins in some way, and thus are expected to submit a TSA for one of the AAS degrees in their program (or if no AAS degree, the dominant certificate).
Resources for reporting TSA data and general reporting information.
- This is brief tutorial of how to use the Excel data sheet listed below.
- List of Majors (current despite May 2017 date showing at the top of the document)
This is a list of student majors, or user can look up major at Banner screen STVMAJR. - TSA Codes for Reporting
This document is for Technical Skill Assessment codes (OCCURS). - TSA Test Types
This table depicts the various types of TSAs - Reporting Excel Spreadsheet (please do not alter – must remain an Excel document)
Please use this Excel sheet for recording and submitting your data. Download the spreadsheet. Enter your program’s data using the codes in the forms above. And then save and send this spreadsheet to Jan Volinski.
Submission information
All available TSA data is due to Jan Volinski (jwetzel@pcc.edu), Coordinator, Perkins Title I, no later than July 31, 2021. Earlier submissions are encouraged to allow time for revisions should errors be detected. The responsibility for timely and accurate submissions rests upon the SACs.