Legislative Requirements

It has been three years since states began to implement the accountability and program improvement provisions of the Carl D. Perkins Vocational and Applied Technology Education Act of 1990 (Perkins II), and policymakers are asking whether these provisions are working. We know, from previous National Center for Research in Vocational Education (NCRVE) research, that states adopted systems of measures and standards as prescribed by federal law (Rahn et al., 1992), but we do not know whether, or how well, these systems were implemented, or whether they are leading to program improvement. These two questions are particularly relevant at present, because it is time for the reauthorization of federal vocational education legislation. Policymakers are looking for information about the success of these locally focused, outcome-based systems of program improvement and about ways to improve the federal rules that govern them.