When Los Santos found Spanish WorkKeys^®, during a pilot test in September 2000, he knew it was a match.

“With Spanish WorkKeys we could not only meet the main objective of helping kids to meet the expectations of the workplace, but also define standards for occupations in the state,” he said. “Those standards are now being used as guidelines for curriculum in educational institutions.”

All 29 public technical schools in the state of Nuevo Leon now use the four Spanish WorkKeys tests: Applied Mathematics, Applied Technology, Locating Information, and Reading for Information.

Certificame.com, Los Santos’ company, was in the top 10 for all WorkKeys sales for fiscal year 2003, which ended July 31. In the last month of that fiscal year, it sold more WorkKeys assessments than anyone else, nearly three times as many as its nearest competitor. And it still sees opportunities.

Los Santos says many schools are considering administering the Reading for Information and Locating Information tests in both English and Spanish.

“A lot of corporations have said English skills are required for the students to be employed,” he says. “Most of them are transnational corporations. Employees need to be able to interpret operational manuals for the equipment they are using.”

Los Santos also is lobbying the secretary of education in Mexico to adopt Spanish WorkKeys on a national level. He would like to see the skill tests used as exit exams for all high school seniors there.

North of the border, where Hispanics already are the largest minority group, WorkKeys fills a need as well.

By 2008, Hispanic workers will constitute about 13 percent of the U.S. labor force, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. For many American employers this translates into large numbers of Spanish-speaking applicants who may be qualified, but who cannot demonstrate their skills.

“If you get an applicant who comes in and doesn’t speak your language, you want to find out what skills they have.” said Candace Noble, WorkKeys manager. Knowing how well a person functions in a language that is not their own doesn’t indicate how well they will perform, for example, in mathematics, said Noble. “If you measure their math skills with a test in a language that is not their own, you won’t get very good information about their math skills because of the language interference.”

Spanish WorkKeys allows Spanish-speaking applicants to demonstrate their skills without any language interference.

The tests are direct translations of the original English WorkKeys tests, which have been administered more than six million times since 1992. In its first year, Spanish WorkKeys tested hundreds of people whose English skills may not match their job skills. States with large Hispanic populations, including California and many southern states, are especially interested.

In Texas, at Austin Community College, Spanish WorkKeys levels the playing field for Spanish-speaking students.

“We have a large GED Español program, and now we are able to offer the same tests to Spanish-speaking as to English-speaking students,” said Mary Harris, the executive director for ACC’s adult education program.

ACT next plans to develop a readiness test in Spanish. In pilot tests of Spanish WorkKeys, as many as one-third of those who took the tests scored below the skill levels tested by WorkKeys. A readiness test would reveal whether an examinee is ready to be tested with WorkKeys.

“What it tells us is whether they have the concepts, even in their own language,” Noble said. “So what we need to do is find out where their skills are and provide some information about what they can do about that if they want to improve them.”