University of Nebraska Kearney

Business Education Assessment Report 2005

Submitted Fall, 2005

Business Education students were assessed during the 2004-2005 school year using one direct assessment measure. 

Direct Measure: Student Teaching Evaluation Assessment

The Business Education program does not offer an undergraduate degree but rather an endorsement in one of two areas—field or subject.  The undergraduate degree is awarded through the College of Education.

The main direct assessment measure, therefore, is the Student Teacher Evaluation form developed by the College of Education (COE).  The Student Teacher Evaluation form is completed by the UNK student teaching supervisor from the College of Education and the cooperating teacher(s) under whom the student is teaching.   This evaluation instrument does not measure how well a student does on a test of subject matter but is an evaluation of the student’s ability to “teach” what she or he has learned in our program.  This evaluation is an assessment of our students’ job performance in real life teaching situations.  Therefore, the main assessment of our students and our program is the degree of success our business education student teachers achieve in their classrooms.

The College of Education utilizes a evaluation rubric that includes 47 criteria with a four-point rating scale–Beginning, Progressing, Proficient, and Advanced.  For purposes of averaging the scores of our six business education student teachers, the following points were assigned to the four-point rating scale:  Beginning - 1 point, Progressing - 2 points, Proficient - 3 points, Advanced - 4 points.

A tabulation of the student teacher evaluations completed by the cooperating teachers in the public school and the COE supervisors can be found in Chart 1 on pages 2-4.  In determining the average rating for each criteria, we have designated an average of  3.0 to 3.5 as “Proficient Plus.”

For our business education student teachers, the average ratings for all 47 criteria ranged from Proficient to Advanced. The breakdown of ratings for the 47 criteria are 25 - Proficient Plus, 16 - Proficient, and 6 - Advanced.

Recommendations for Continuous Improvement

Business Education faculty have been informed of the ratings received by our students on the College of Education Student Teacher Evaluation form.  The 47 criteria evaluated on this form are stressed throughout our business education program. 

Based on the positive evaluations and comments of cooperating teachers and COE supervisors, we will continue our focus on providing our students with a thorough background in subject matter, writing objectives, linking objectives to standards, assessment and evaluation, instructional planning, locating and using materials/resources, instructional delivery, classroom management, collaboration, reflection, and  responsibilities of the teaching profession.

We will strive to continually update the business education curriculum to keep pace with technological advances and changes in business education curriculums in secondary schools throughout the state and nation.

Assessment of the Assessment Plan

An assessment instrument is being developed to test the content knowledge of business education students at the end of the BSED 470 - Vocational Business Methods course.  No other changes to the Assessment Plan will be under