In April 2017, Connecting Credentials convened five workgroups of diverse leaders in credentialing reform to tackle particularly challenging aspects of achieving the vision of a learner-centered credentialing ecosystem articulated in the 2016 From National Dialogue to Collective Action: Building Learning-Based Credentialing Systems.

This report describes the multi-year Twin Cities Benchmarking Initiative: its design and approach to capacity building, the role of funders in nurturing culture change, and the results achieved. It highlights the examples, lessons—and promise—that findings hold for workforce development nonprofits and their funders in other locales across the nation.

This report, the second of a two part series, is the culmination of a research effort to create a workforce system “map” which would inform a comprehensive and data-driven understanding of Detroit’s workforce development assets, opportunities, and challenges.

This report provides information that will assist funders, policy makers and practitioners in understanding what “good” results are for different types of programs. Similar to the larger workforce field, the data represent a wide variety of populations served, strategies used and
organizational contexts.

This report is the first of a two-part series detailing the findings from research conducted by CSW. It includes information about the complexities of Detroit’s resident labor pool, Detroit’s industry mix, and the mix of jobs and skills needed for the city to prosper.

Chronic disconnection affects a significant population of young people with far-reaching social and economic costs. These disconnected or “opportunity” youth are defined as 16-24 year olds who are not connected to school or work, and who have one or more barriers to entry into both. These young people are in very serious danger of being left behind permanently, often facing long-term unemployment, low or no income, and/or incarceration. The consequences of not helping these young people succeed are immediate, pressing, and will continue to reverberate both socially and economically until critical steps are taken to increase reconnection and sustainable employment.

In response to difficult economic conditions during the 2007-2009 recession, the U.S. Department of Labor funded ARRA grantees focused on training unemployed and dislocated workers in emerging and growing sectors to advance incumbent workers and open entry-level positions for unemployed job seekers. This approach is known as upskill/backfill. This report summarizes key lessons learned and documents benefits. These include job seekers benefiting from an increase in capacity of a company’s operations and ability to hire; employers benefiting from training that reduced costs by increasing worker productivity and reducing staff turnover; and communities benefiting from the preservation of jobs and the increasing income of newly trained workers.

In response to difficult economic conditions during the 2007-2009 recession, the U.S. Department of Labor funded 152 grantees across the country to train nearly 200,000 Americans in emerging and growing sectors such as health care and green jobs. This report examines the 50 top-tier ARRA grantees. Against the backdrop of the 2007–2009 recession, some grantees had difficulty achieving their goals, but many found ways to adapt to the changing economic environment and meet their targets for placing newly trained individuals in jobs.

CSW and the other signatories of the Call for a National Conversation on Creating a Competency-Based Credentialing Ecosystem believe that the time has come for large scale expansion of the use of credentials that recognize an individual’s competencies – regardless of means of acquisition – to improve employer competitiveness, reduce skill shortages, expand career advancement opportunities for workers, reduce time to credential for workers and students, and improve returns of accredited credentialing systems relative to costs…

Corporation for a Skilled Workforce (CSW) has embarked on a multi-year initiative to increase the quality and use of competency-based credentials. To lay a foundation for this work, we gathered information about a cross section of promising credentialing efforts. The case studies that appear in the report provide a glimpse of the variety of approaches being undertaken in different industries—by an array of different stakeholders— both in the U.S. and internationally…