Measuring Nontraditional Participation Mimi Lufkin National Alliance for Partnerships in Equity Data Quality Institute February 8-10, 2006

Legislative History Gender equity provisions in Perkins 1976 Amendments Full-time Gender Equity Coordinator- $50,000 1984 Perkins Act Full-time Gender Equity Coordinator- $60,000 Set-asides 3.5% Gender Equity, 8.5% SP/DH 1990 Perkins Act Set-asides 3% Gender Equity, 7% SP/DH, .5% either 1998 Perkins Act Accountability and other provisions

Perkins Accountability Measures “Student participation in and completion of vocational and technical education programs that lead to nontraditional training and employment” 4s1 and 4p1 Participation 4s2 and 4p2 Completion

Nontraditional Training and Employment “Occupations or fields of work, including careers in computer science, technology, and other emerging high skill occupations, for which individuals from one gender comprise less than 25 percent of the individuals employed in each such occupation or field of work.”

Current Participation Measure Numerator: # of students in underrepresented gender groups who participated in a non-traditional program in the reporting year. Denominator: # of students who participated in a non-traditional program in the reporting year.

Defining Participation Currently participation is defined as enrolled in a program that has been identified as nontraditional Reauthorization provides opportunity to redefine participation Enrollment? Concentration?

Enrollment Pros All states define enrollment the same way, almost! A measure of the social and institutional barriers prior to course enrollment in nontraditional programs A measure of exploration opportunities The denominator data in this measure is not reported any other place in the CAR while the numerator data can also be found in the enrollment report. This data is also disaggregated by gender, race and special population It is easier to design and implement improvement strategies at the local level directed at enrolling students. Moving to a concentrator means you are only successful with students taking several courses

Enrollment Cons Students enroll in multiple intro level courses. Where do they get assigned? Many programs may share introductory courses Not a measure of institutional barriers while participating and doesn’t alert the institution for early intervention Measures those “looking” but not necessarily committed Eliminates the ability to evaluate the relationship of program “participation” to completions at a detailed level and introduces a new cohort that may not be comparable to the exiting cohort or have the same event history (i.e., fee changes, social crisis, etc.) Provides unclear participation rates due to data quality issues as well as determining actual student intent

Concentration Pros Measure of those actually committed Reflective of retention and captures institutional barriers while participating All other measures based on concentrators allowing comparison of similar cohorts Enrollment data available in CAR enrollment report but only disaggregated by gender within nontraditional With standardization of the concentrator definition all states will define concentrator the same way

Concentration Cons Provide lower participation rates than enrollment Doesn’t provide information on schools success in motivating underrepresented students to try programs Little difference between concentrator and completer in some states definitions. Barriers may be before concentration threshold Enrollment data of all students in nontraditional programs not reported anywhere in CAR. Cannot recreate enrollment measure from enrollment data Cannot compare to 2s/p1 because denominator is NTO concentrators, not all concentrators in NTO programs Currently concentrator is defined differently from state to state

Overall Issues Only core indicator that measures an entry point (participation) into the CTE system. All other measures are exit measures. The real value of the measure for program improvement is when disaggregated by gender, race/ethnicity, special population status or by program, CIP or cluster. An alternative approach is to define a new threshold value for this indicator such as two courses at the secondary level and declaring a major or program enrollment at the post-secondary level. If we are measuring the effectiveness of schools at getting students to enter (participate) programs non-traditional for their gender where do we place the bar of success – at the enrollment level or at the higher concentrator level?