Dear Students and Parents/Guardians,

The growing emphasis on accountability can be accommodated through competency-based education where skills, competencies, and concepts are integrated in the educational process. Career and technical education courses are designed to meet the challenging needs of academic university path students as well as technical path students.

To assist everyone in knowledge of required competency attainment, all competencies for the class your child is enrolled are located on our website. These profiles are correlated to the current course standards for career and technical education in Tennessee and are used for all students. Each competency profile specifies the number of competencies in the course in the upper righthand box. Competency attainment is recorded by the instructor throughout the course. These competencies serve as a teacher's guide to curriculum and activities pertaining to each class. Teachers are encouraged to use the system's grading scale to determine mastery. All students are expected to reach at least 75% mastery of the competencies in each class. As with all instruction, expectations for special education students in career and technical education should be enunciated in their Individualized Education Plan. Therefore, all involved parties need to participate in the development of the plan, if at all possible, and at the very least know about information in the IEP   pertinent to the instruction of each student. Unless otherwise specified in the IEP, the number of competencies to be taught for special education students would be the same as for other students.

It is exciting to have an opportunity to quantitatively showcase student success and achievement, while at the same time focusing on continuous improvement. We sincerely appreciate the efforts that teachers, students, and parents are making to develop and implement a plan to help everyone meet the challenge imposed by a changing workforce.

Please indicate that you have received this information by completing the form below. This will confirm that you are aware of the competencies taught in each class in which the student is enrolled. All competencies can be found under the cluster titles or by clicking here.

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact the appropriate teacher or myself.

Sincerely,
Lisa Lewis-Evans
CTE   Director