To accommodate differences in state data reporting capabilities, measures are being designed to provide comparable set of elements across states, but with flexibility to allow states to report data at different levels of specificity. To date, a set of six performance measures and reporting criteria have been drafted and circulated to working members. To expand state participation, in early 1999 vocational administrators from up to 20 states will be invited to attend a conference to explore the potential for unifying performance measures. Representatives of national and state government agencies and professional association will also be invited to attend. This report was written under OERI contract 96107001.
Findings reflect the views of the authors.
The challenge in integrating performance measurement systems lies in specifying consistent data elements that can be used by federal, state, and local policymakers for a variety of purposes, and doing so without imposing unnecessary administrative burdens on participants. A key similarity is that federal legislators have identified broad outcome areas within which funded jurisdictions are mandated to collect measures. In particular, both sets of legislation specify the collection of program-related information, including data on academic achievement, occupational preparation, and measures of partipation among special populations. States are given considerable leeway, however, in defining the specific measures, populations and instrumentation used to collect data. Flexibility built into the legislation allows administrators to select the type of data they collect for each measure, and in some cases, to modify federally defined measures to reflect state conditions.