Career Tech

[gordins]

Hello, 

I'm in California and am the only CTE Specialist for my district. The way PS has this set up does not make sense to how we have CTE in CA. In CA we have sectors and pathways, not clusters, cluster types, programs, program types, etc. Can someone please explain to me what clusters vs. programs vs. the types means? Looking through the PS help pages do no good as there is no explanations at all and there is no one in my district who can explain it to me. 

It seems like this might be a beneficial way to track our CTE students, but also seems like overkill with the many options that have to be there when all I need are sectors > pathways > classes. 

Any assistance would be greatly appreciated!

[StephaniC]

@gordins 

CALPADS currently only requires you to report 'completers' - in the year that they completed their pathway. 

The CTE module is probably overkill for that specific need, but other CA customers tell me that they want to use this module to track student progress in the CTE pathways, and would also use this as a way to identify students who have completed their pathway in the current school year and thus need to be reported to CALPADS.

There is a PowerSchool Insider Video that does a 'deep dive' into this module:  https://help.powerschool.com/t5/Insider-Videos/PowerSchool-Insider-Episode-81-February-28-2020/ta-p/...

This is likely a good place to start!

[gordins]

@StephaniC  When I click on the link I get "hmmmm, looks like you don't have access to this resource"....it's quite frustrating. 

But yes, like the other schools, we'd like to track our students and be able to pull the random data that is asked of us on our students and where there are in our programs, etc. and I'm thinking this area might be a good place to do it? 

Our Superintendent and Board of Education had requested some very specific data reports on our students and nothing exists as far as reports or even tracking the students that I can easily pull to get the information so I have had to literally go student by student to get what they want and it takes days to finish. The CALPADS 3.15 report gives me pieces, but not everything. 

[StephaniC]

Since you can access this forum, I assume that you are a technical contact for your district. That should be enough for you to be granted access to these videos.

Try this:

First, make sure you are logged in to the Community site. Then, go to the PowerSchool Insider Home page: https://help.powerschool.com/t5/Insider-Videos/tkb-p/insider_videos2. If you can access that page, find episode 81 and click the Play button.

If you still can't get to this video, you may need to reach out to your account representative to have them check your access level.

[gordins]

I'm not a technical contact. My district won't let me be. I'm working with someone who is, who's talking with PS about what I'm trying to do....it's all a pain 😞

[StephaniC]

In that case, someone who is a technical contact at your district will need to access this video and somehow share the content with you. 

[gordins]

alright...will do....this is an entirely way to difficult process just to get some help...

[bknesal]

agreed. we are in the same boat. way too much nonsense.

[gordins]

Do you work within CTE in California by chance?

[bknesal]

No, I'm in Ms. We have 3 feeder high schools that come to career tech. We have to go to each school to pull any info we want about our kids. And even then the info is limited. Apparently, the tech person hasn't checked the correct boxes to give us access and/or they don't know which ones we need or how to do it. {facepalm}

[gordins]

Darn - ok. I have 7 high schools, 1 continuation school, and 2 Jr. Highs that offer CTE in my district. But California only uses terms like sector and pathway. Nothing about cluster, cluster type, program, program type, etc. so I'm trying to figure out how I can set things up to function correctly for us...accessing data is already an incredibly painful task for me in the first place...not being able to talk to someone directly makes it all the more frustrating. 

Hopefully you have better luck than I do! (or we find a way to help each other)

[bknesal]

I've searched this topic here and feel like it's not possible to pull in info from other schools into one school. I don't about the nomenclature: pathways, etc.

[gordins]

haha, yea that's my problem - CA uses different terms...so much fun!