State Policy Briefs

About Our Policy Briefs

Over the next decade, employers will need to fill millions of jobs that require higher-order thinking skills, specialized knowledge, and education or training beyond high school. For that reason, many states are aiming for 65% of residents to hold high-quality postsecondary credentials by 2025. Hitting that goal depends on whether states can close gaps in educational attainment, align what’s taught with labor market needs, increase racial and ethnic diversity, educational attainment, and presence in key industries, and have the best data possible to inform decision-making.

Seven state leadership organizations and five workforce, education, and data advocacy/technical assistance experts have come together to coauthor a series of Policy Briefs that build awareness, understanding, and guidance on how state policy can integrate credential transparency into education and workforce development strategies.

The task at hand for this partnership is to ensure that policy creates systems for these credentials to be easily accessible, understood, comparable, connected to other critical education and workforce data, and communicated so that they serve everyone.  These Policy Briefs stem from the State Roadmap and Action Guide for Transparency, which helps state policymakers take the inefficiencies out of the labor marketplace and provide more efficient and equitable access to actionable information through the prioritization of credential transparency.

Members of the State Policy Partnership include:

• Advance CTE
• Council of Chief State School Officers
• Credential Engine
• Data Quality Campaign
• Education Commission of the States
• Education Quality Outcomes Standards Board
• Education Strategy Group
• National Association of State Workforce Agencies
• National Conference of State Legislatures
• National Governors Association
• National Skills Coalition
• State Higher Education Executive Officers Association