DDM External Review Report

Schenectady City Schools

Steinmetz Career and Leadership Academy

Drafting and Design Management Program

External Review Report

2019-2020

General Information- There were 11 people invited to participate. Of those 7 Replied. The replies were from two engineers, one Code enforcement officer, a representative from SPED, the person in charge of the Northeast Regional CISCO support training academy, and another CTE Teacher. The COVID lockdown created an unanticipated obstacle that made contacts and work difficult. I do feel that it was a pretty good cross section of the advisory board.

There were two people that completed the form incorrectly in that they selected the scale wrong. Subsequent contacts revealed that it was in error. Despite them filling out the subsections as not recommended, they recommended the whole program which made it pretty obvious it was an error. The follow up contacts confirmed this mistake. One corrected it by resubmitting, the other corrected it through a text to me.

Curriculum Review- Of the 7 replies, 6 gave the full recommendation for approval. 1 recommended approval with revisions. Specifically the recommendations stated “The CAD/Residential Construction course offers valuable work based learning experience, however other & additional options would help to broaden the students experiences in preparation for career and post-secondary opportunities.” In a further conversation about this the recommendation was that while the CAD/RC class does have a lot of work based learning in it, it needs to be expanded to work with other classes.

For instance, the house that is built in CAD/RC should be designed by the CAD students in the upper level class. This recommendation is something that we do aspire to yearly. In fact two years agos house was designed by CAD students in the upper level classes. The house this year (that was unbuilt because of COVID) was a greenhouse which was designed by CAD students. This issue is that it is not really codified in the CAD class curriculum but is more an enrichment activity for students that are excelling. Part of the reason for that is the curriculum for the CAD class follows the SUNY Schenectady Curriculum. It is still an excellent suggestion that will be followed up on.

Teacher Certification- All 8 replies were for full recommendation for approval.

Assessment Review- All 8 replies were for full recommendation for approval.

Articulation Review- One of the first members noticed that the link for the review was not working, and one of the next people emailed for it as well. It was fixed and subsequently all 8 gave it full recommendation.

Work Based Learning- 6 gave full recommendations. 2 recommended with revisions.

The first recommendation was “Specify time requirement and demonstrate compliance with commissioner's regs” This is an excellent suggestion and we will add it to the tracking form as well as the one we complete with students.

The second recommendation was “A big part of work based learning is the full cycle (from product conception through product delivery) and the experiences presented to the student throughout the cycle. Core experiences in the cycle are often design trade-off analysis, cost benefit analysis, product risk assessments - these experiences are often best found through external engagements. The program lacks sufficient external work based learning opportunities and would benefit from increased ties with external local organizations - one such example would be The City of Schenectady (ex. Signage for recreation department, Town Park Projects, City Engineering Office, Downtown Revitalization projects, etc.)

The formal procedures for how work based learning is identified, coordinated, time allotted and defined, aligned with curriculum, and assessed is unclear and needs to be documented.”

Again more excellent recommendations. We have been expanding our relationships more and more through our Advisory Board and our Schenectady Rotarians. It is always a balancing of trying to complete as much real work as possible without stepping on the toes of local businesses that do the same jobs that are often potential employers for our students. We have done a lot with some organizations and even within our own school. Another balancing is the educational value of some projects. Completing a 100 signs or buttons for a group is educational. Completing a 1000 is tedious and loses its educational value. The second part of this recommendation is related to the other persons and needs to be considered and incorporated.

Employability Profile Review- 7 gave full recommendations. 1 recommended with revisions.

The recommendation was “Consider adding "Ability to clearly comprehend instructions" assessment question.

Description of the Experience question should be more probing to ID critical details. Consider adding more specific and probing questions. (ex. What was delivered? What tools were used? What training was received? What was (the) job goal and was it achieved?”

Again, excellent suggestions. We struggle with the profiles and the way we keep them. We want them to be informative and useful working documents, but have found that they can quickly get away from us and become very cumbersome to complete. Right now they take 45-60 minutes to complete. We also want to make it so that employers could do them, and with the current time it takes we would not be comfortable asking them to complete it. It was hoped that the CDOS counselors could help with this, but it never happened. I do not have good answers for this one.

Program Information Review- All gave full recommendations.

Overall Program Approval was unanimous with all giving their full approval. Comments were “Immediate approval” “Approval without delay or revisions.” “Demonstrates achievement of requirements. Recommendations made for further clarification.” “Excellent program.”