Narrative: d. 1. J.

Minnesota has to an online application and reporting system for local recipients of Perkins funding http://www.applyheremn.org/index.do.

In addition to quality review processes that exist in Minnesota regarding program review and approval and the awarding of credentials to career and technical education teachers and faculty, Minnesota conducts periodic monitoring visits/financial audits/site reviews of MN Perkins Consortia. State Perkins CTE staff from MDE and Minnesota State visit each of MN’s 26 consortia over a 4-year rotating schedule and evaluate consortium activities and procedures to assure compliance with the Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education Act of 2006, federal and state financial requirements, the MN State CTE Plan and other state laws, regulations and rules. The state monitoring review team identifies strengths and promising practices within the consortium and opportunities for continued improvement. Consortia are encouraged to share promising practices at the fall CTE conference, administrator meetings, and on the state CTE website, www.cte.minnstate.edu.

As of spring 2018, all of the twenty six consortia have had a 2—day, on—site monitoring visit with the continuing monitoring occurring, based on risk assessment. Staff members follow up with technical assistance where appropriate or requested. The state has, as a result of these site visits that have been completed, developed guidance for local recipients regarding Personnel Activity Reports to ensure that the appropriate documentation is collected. The developed materials can be found at: http://www.cte.minnstate.edu/consortium_resources/index.html.

Minnesota state CTE staff continues to provide technical assistance to all 26 consortia. Six regionally assigned staff at MDE and specialized staff at Minnesota State provide updates, forward pertinent information, deliver on-site presentations, facilitate conference calls and webinars, and travel to centralized/regional locations for face-to-face meetings.

Secondary: Minnesota will continue to utilize the annual performance reporting practices established under Perkins III to gauge the effectiveness of programs. Additionally, Minnesota has established a rubrics-based program approval process under which districts must submit their programs for review and approval at least once each five years. Minnesota aligns data systems with those used under the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, aligns programming in career and technical education for students with disabilities with requirements of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act, and works with the Governor’s Workforce Development Board to align with youth programs under the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act.

Postsecondary: To annually evaluate the effectiveness of CTE in Minnesota, the following practices from Perkins III will continue or be modified:

• Perkins-eligible colleges will be provided access to their own Perkins IV cohort data through a variety of reports and queries in the Perkins Brio database. In addition to access to a variety of aggregated and disaggregated reports that will highlight performance gaps, this database provides student level data. The data provides colleges enormous flexibility in analyzing their performance, including the ability to link to a wealth of other information in the sytsem’s Integrated Student Record System (ISRS).
• Modify the current annual performance report to focus directly on the linkage between program effectiveness, accountability and student success, particularly in the context of the proposed new consortium structure.
• Hold periodic accountability meetings with local eligible recipients to discuss performance effectiveness of CTE programs, as identified in the local application plan.

Between Secondary and Postsecondary: As indicated in the introduction of this section, within both secondary and postsecondary CTE systems, a solid foundation has been established with regard to accountability, evaluation and monitoring. However, the ability to share and use data across the two systems is very limited. Nevertheless, the State has been exploring provisional solutions for following secondary students into the postsecondary system. One method that has been used for the past two years has been the development of postsecondary tech prep enrollment and accountability measures. The method is described in Appendix L. Even while Minnesota has chosen to combine the tech prep and basic programs under Perkins IV, the technique described in Appendix L will definitely find application as Minnesota begins implementing its new consortium structure.