Currently, relatively few consortia are sufficiently advanced to have already graduated Tech-Prep students and to have these students entering articulated postsecondary programs. In 1993, urban areas accounted for about 7 percent of the reported Tech-Prep students. However, urban consortia enrollments so far report the smallest proportion of their students as participating in Tech-Prep. Reporting on students is a major obstacle for consortia and for state s Data on the number of students participating in Tech-Prep and their educational and employment attainment are important measures of implementation progress and potential program effects. Consortia have a long way to go in reporting on Tech-Prep students.
Several factors can affect consortium capacity to measure participation and outcomes.
Many of these have not begun to develop a definition for identifying Tech-Prep students, much less enrolled students who fit those definitions. Second, some consortia that have formulated a definition for identifying Tech-Prep students may not be able to apply the definition because they lack the resources or leverage to collect the data from consortium members. This approach makes it difficult to define who are Tech-Prep students or to count them. This legislation promotes development of systems of career-oriented, integrated school curricula linked to structured training and other activities at a worksite. However the components were not always widely implemented or considered a core part of the Tech- Prep program model.