In 2018, the Lumina Foundation appointed and convened a Quality Credentials Task Force comprising 22 leaders in education, policy, and workforce development. The task force had two charges. First, it was to explore new ways to assure the quality of a college education and other forms of learning beyond high school. Second, it was asked to develop…

The Montana Early Childhood Apprenticeship Program (MECAP) aims to support and increase retention of early childhood education (ECE) providers through on-the-job training, mentorship, and college coursework. Upon completing the program, apprentices are awarded the Child Care Development Specialist Certificate from Montana's Department of Labor and…

Workforce development and career and technical education (CTE) have long provided reliable pathways to middle skill jobs and a gateway to the middle class. Given recent changes in middle skills jobs, the education landscape, and federal policy priorities, the role of CTE in the U.S. educational landscape is evolving more rapidly, encompassing a…

In California, the longstanding insufficiency of special educators has compounded since the 2013-2014 academic year. Districts and state legislators have relied on the issuance of substandard permits (i.e., Provisional Intern Permits, Short-Term Staff Permits, and Intern Credentials) to counteract the shortage. However, the effectiveness of this…

The COVID-19 crisis has given rise to the question, what are the main trends in online learning? What might the future look like? While predicting the future is best left to those who appear to have a crystal ball, the need for big picture helicopter thinking has never been more apparent as online learning remains under the spotlight. This paper…

The California community college system is the largest provider of publicly funded career education in the state. Community colleges are therefore critical for effective and equitable workforce training, even as the system has a governance and financing structure that creates challenges to connecting college programs to careers. Furthermore, there…

We use statewide administrative data from Missouri to document the prevalence of Industry Recognized Credential (IRC) programs in public high schools and understand the characteristics of students who complete IRCs. We show that 9 percent of Missouri students complete an IRC during their senior year of high school. IRC completers have lower…

Little was known about how online Child Development Associate (CDA) credential recipients developed practical expertise in early childhood education (ECE) without the benefit of an apprenticeship. Learning the practice of teaching from a qualified "more knowledgeable other" (MKO) through an apprenticeship is a feature of teacher…

The current climate of career and technical administration requirements in all 50 states was detailed and explored. An increasing number of states are not requiring specific career-technical administration certification/licensure in order to oversee secondary career and technical education (CTE) programs, with more states moving towards a general…

This playbook provides ways in which educators can blur the lines between high school, postsecondary education, and the workforce. Educators play a significant role to Raise the Bar for student success by developing an "education-to-workforce system" that focuses on Unlocking Career Success.

A majority of U.S. states have established a "Seal of Biliteracy" (SoBL) to recognize students' multilingualism. Primarily under the purview of bilingual and world language education, the field of literacy research has remained largely silent on these seals. Yet, the authority these seals grant to state institutions for credentialing…

This report is organized around 10 challenges (and associated solutions) based on data from a survey of 1,609 survey respondents, each of whom was screened to ensure that they had firm plans to enroll in a fully online program in the next year (online course takers in otherwise hybrid or classroom programs were not eligible). They also had to be…

In 2021, California made major new investments to advance its commitment to early childhood education through universal preschool. One important investment was extending state funding for transitional kindergarten (TK), previously just for older 4-year-olds, to all 4-year-olds by 2025-26. To ensure the quality of new preschool investments,…

"Investigating the Impacts of College Closures on Student Outcomes" is the first of three planned novel reports, co-authored by SHEEO and the NSC Research Center, seeking to quantify the impacts of college closures on students' subsequent postsecondary enrollment and completion outcomes and to identify the policy levers states may have…

Increasingly, colleges and universities are being compared and evaluated based on the outcomes that their students experience. While both self-evaluation and accountability are valuable, one should be careful that the right outcomes are measured. Using data from 21 community colleges, we find that traditional measures often ignore key positive…