WACTA Red Lion, Olympia WA March 6th, 2017 Kelli Bennett Certification and Program Specialist Professional Certification Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI)

Districts Role for E-Cert & CTE Certification The districts (either the CTE Director or their designee at the district) will need to request in the E-Cert system for a limited CTE teacher for the CTE Conditional or CTE Probationary candidate. The district’s role and as a CTE Director, you have the tools to look up in the E-Cert system to see if the teacher candidate holds the appropriate CTE certificate for the courses they are teaching. If they do not, then your duty will be to check the VCODE chart and match it with a CIP code the teacher will be teaching and place a district request in the system for the applicant/teacher. The applicant/teacher then goes into their account in E-Cert and applies for their district request.

What is the difference between a VCODE and a CIP code? The VCODE is the code used for the specialty endorsement name. There is also an endorsement code which I will show you in a few minutes that you see in E-Cert when requesting a limited CTE certificate (CTE Conditional or CTE Probationary). The VCODE code is associated with the CIP codes by frameworks. The CIP code must be aligned with the VCODE assigned on the certificate(s) and the frameworks must be approved by the CTE programs. The teacher can teach any CIP code related to the VCODE(s) they hold. When an auditor is reviewing your CTE teachers, and they find out that a CTE teacher has been teaching the wrong CIP code(s), the district will be fined a fee for being out of compliance. We need to work together to make sure each CTE teacher has the correct CIP code that matches the VCODES they hold.

How to determine which VCODE to assign… When trying to determine what VCODE(s) to grant an educator, you need to know the CIP code they will be teaching. To make this process easier, the Professional Certification Office has an excel file called VCODE/CIP code chart and it is located on the CTE webpage: http://www.k12.wa.us/certification/CTE/AlreadyCertified.aspx This chart allows the district to find the CIP code and see what VCODE the candidate needs in order to teach the specific CIP code with the frameworks associated with it.

Example: VCODE CIP Codes

The following certification activities are available in E-Cert: Check certificate, permit, and application status for all educators Renew teacher, administrator, and educational staff associate certificates Reissue residency teacher certificates Request duplicate copies of educator certificates Apply for teacher certificate applications (for teacher preparation program candidates and/or adding an endorsement) E-Certification Educator User Guide is located here: http://www.k12.wa.us/Certification/e-Cert/E-CertEducatorUG.pdf

The CTE Probationary The CTE Probationary is initiated by the school district. The applicant must show verification of program enrollment by submitting a signed 4075E-1 for University route PLAN 1 and the 4075G-1 for Business and Industry route PLAN 2. If the program the applicant is needing to enroll in has an open enrollment date and cannot get the verification of program enrollment form, please email me and inform me that the applicant cannot get the verification form until this date, I will issue a temporary six month permit to get them in the classroom. If applicant does not submit their CTE program enrollment by the expiration date of the temporary six month permit, their application for the CTE Probationary will be denied.

Common Questions Can a CTE certified teacher substitute teach in another CTE area? A: Yes. If the teacher holds a CTE Continuing certificate, they can apply for the lifetime substitute certificate and substitute in any CTE area. Or the district can place a district request in the E-Cert system for a CTE conditional in the area they need the substitute teacher. What if we need to add another area to a limited CTE certificate? A: Email me, Kelli Bennett (kelli.bennett@k12.wa.us) and request that I add the VCODE to the limited certificate. Do not add another district request for that area. This will cost the applicant $40.00 to add when it can be done at no charge to the applicant. What if we are audited and found that a teacher has been teaching the wrong CIP code(s)? A: This is the districts responsibility to ensure your teachers hold the correct VCODE that aligns with the CIP code the teacher is teaching. You can always email me to check and see if something didn’t get processed correctly, but it is usually an error of not checking E-Cert to see what VCODES the teacher holds already and matching it with the CIP codes.