The reauthorized Perkins Act sought (a) to give states more flexibility in how they administered career and technical education (CTE) and (b) to have states strategically connect the outcomes of CTE programs to the “education and skill needs of employers.” One component of Perkins V that speaks to both of these aims has recipient states select a measure of high school CTE program quality from a list of three options, each of which potentially says something about how attuned students are with workforce and college skills before they graduate from high school.

In this report, the Celeste K. Carruthers connects Tennessee’s CTE policy and practice to the Brookings Institution Hamilton Project framework for accountability design, and by way of example, the author discusses how the postsecondary credential program quality indicator (PQI) fares within that framework.