At the risk of sounding cliché, I think we can all agree that there has never been a year quite like what 2020 is shaping up for us as educators and people. Even though the final virtual bell has rung for all Mississippi schools, we in the world of education understand that we have the biggest challenges for next year standing in front of us.
Our team conducted postsecondary testing for community colleges that requested that service. It was a feat conducting it remotely, but we all felt that it was no more of a challenge than what each of you recently faced in your classrooms!
I encourage each of you to continue to work on finding creative instructional delivery methods for your CTE classes, whether you find yourself teaching children in classrooms or online this fall.
ACTE and the
RCU are just two of the many resources out there you can explore to see what may work for you and your classes.
Please take time to review the items below that provide an overview of changes coming in the next school year.
- Perkins V. With the reauthorization of this act, the state of Mississippi has selected national certifications as its measure of program quality for secondary and postsecondary CTE pathways. We are working on the details of what this will mean for each program. Some pathways may wait to transition from current assessment types until a national certification or a state credential is being developed and approved, some pathways will continue their current certification path, and other pathways will seamlessly transition to national certifications in 2020-2021. We hope to have those plans completed and communicated to each of you by the 2020 MS-ACTE virtual conference. To read more about the Mississippi Perkins V plan, please go to the Mississippi Succeeds page.
- Newsletter Change. As we transition to national certifications from MS-CPAS and PBA, we are also moving our assessment communication to the RCU email newsletter. Moving to national certifications will require less communication due to the nature of delivery of those assessments, so we believe less communication but better quality is a good thing! So look for a new Assessment section in the next RCU newsletter. If you are not signed up already, please consider signing up for the RCU Quarterly by clicking the Sign Up Now button located on the RCU homepage.
- Other Important Dates. We have not finalized our training and testing calendar for 2020-2021 at this time. Typically, we conduct events around the same dates each year. We are also working with MDE to add makeup national certification testing dates in the early fall for those that were unable to test in Spring 2020 but wanted to do so.
Please take the time to relax, recharge, and plan for next year! You deserve it!
Sean Owen, PhD
Assessment Manager
