The Operational Infrastructure of Secondary-Level CTE: Definition, Validation, and Application.

The profession of career and technical education (CTE) at the secondary level has become increasingly complicated. The need or requirement of CTE agencies (local, state, and university) to measure progress, synthesize responsibilities, and integrate disciplines has never been more prominent, nor emphasized. State and local CTE agencies are required in the form of new legislation, regulations, and procedures to take on this administrative burden with, in many instances, dwindling budgets. This has led to the uncomfortable, but all too common, practice of decreasing or eliminating support for basic operational criteria such as the ones defined and validated in this piece of research. For example, the CTE state-level administration in one of the researcher's state has eliminated certain teacher education grants in order to help fund accountability measures put forth by Perkins IV. These teacher education grants were generally used to help improve and maintain CTE teacher education programs and/or recruit quality CTE teacher candidates. As Dr. Richard Lynch, CTE teacher educator, once stated, "...without good teachers, you cannot have good instruction nor good programs. The studies on the education and re-education of good teachers...indicate that effective teacher education takes time and it takes money" (NCRVE, 1991, p. 23). Yet, as state and local budgets decrease, some programs and/or initiatives must take the brunt of fiscal belt tightening. Of course, these programs and/or initiatives are generally not the ones that new federal and state guidelines or regulations are requiring state and/or local CTE agencies to increase or emphasize. What effect does this have on the general operation of secondary-level CTE? While no new legislation or accountability measure can account for all of the factors, what does such a change do to the objectives, tasks, programs, and/or initiatives not included in the new legislation or measure?