Career and Technical Education Teachers’ Perceptions on The Use of Student Data in Teacher Evaluation: A Comparative Study

The study determined Career and Technical Education teachers’ perceptions on the use of student growth data in teacher evaluation, as aligned with the Personnel Evaluation Standards developed by the Joint Committee on Standards for Educational Evaluation, and as compared to results from a similar nation-wide study of K-12 teachers. Research methods included a web-based survey and semi-structured interviews. Findings revealed teachers believed the use of student growth data in teacher evaluation was useful for identifying student/teacher strengths and weaknesses. Teachers did not believe in the accuracy of student growth data used in their teaching evaluations citing issues with assessment validity and student contextual factors. Nonetheless, teachers agreed that student data should be a component of CTE teacher evaluation, if valid and reliable measures of student academic growth were available. Study findings and author recommendations may be useful to educational leaders from other schools with career and technical education programs.