U.S. employers are struggling to find qualified applicants across a range of career sectors. In 12 career areas--including healthcare, computers and mathematics--demand for workers exceeded available supply by a total of 4.4 million job openings in 2016. This gap threatens the economy, undermines the innovation and competitiveness in many of the…

Opportunity America received a grant from Lumina Foundation to conduct a national research study of community colleges' credit and noncredit occupational education programs and their relationships with employers. Opportunity America contracted with Wilder Research to manage data collection and analysis for the study. The purpose of this study was…

The Certification Data Exchange Project (CDEP) was launched in 2012 to provide a model for sharing industry-recognized credential attainment data. Increasingly, employers and education leaders are recognizing the value of industry credentials to verify the knowledge, skills and abilities that students bring to the workforce. As states take steps…

The concept of "teacher quality" has undergone a profound transformation in the last decade. Through the late 1990s, most policymakers assumed that educator effectiveness was immeasurable and that our only hopes to increase it were tied to classroom experience and academic credentials. Yet since 2001, through a series of notable research…

As states develop accountability systems for their high school career and technical education (CTE) programs, the number of students who earn industry-recognized credentials is being considered as a measure of student success and program quality. Using data from a longitudinal study we explored the value of industry-recognized credentials for high…