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TAKE A STAND

Now more than ever, America needs a strong, skilled workforce to overcome today's challenges. The National Career Readiness Certificate is the work-related skills credential. The Certificate provides fair and objective measurement of workplace skills that can be accepted nationwide. Take a stand. Stand up for a skilled workforce. Stand out from the crowd. The National Career Readiness Certificate—issued by ACT.

The National Career Readiness System Benefits Economic Development Efforts

Establishing strategies that create jobs and raise wage rates is the primary mission of economic development.

Information generated by adopting the National Career Readiness System helps states and regions fulfill this mission by:

• Documenting workforce quality for relocating and expanding businesses.
• Providing local businesses with a better-trained workforce.
• Helping employers plan and address existing and future employment needs.

The availability of skilled labor is becoming a major factor that helps business executives and economic development consultants identify the best locations for expansion and relocation.

Information generated by the National Career Readiness Certificate represents a unique source of objective data describing workforce skills. This makes it a powerful component in strategic planning and marketing activities at the state, regional, or local level.

Additional Benefits

• Address academic and workplace readiness with a coordinated assessment system
• Provide area businesses with a better-trained workforce with portable, recognized credentials
• Be flexible and match skill level requirements with employers' needs
• Meet the demands of workforce legislation and efforts to increase industry-based certifications
• Improve K-12 education with a proficiency certificate for teacher assistants that meets standards of No Child Left Behind
• Measure K-12 school accountability and address higher education reforms

Workforce Development Activities

A growing number of states, communities, and organizations are choosing the WorkKeys^® system as the foundation for career readiness initiatives that energize their economic development and workforce strategies.

Many of these initiatives incorporate the principles of the Certificate by issuing state and local credentials that align with the national system.

Credentials that utilize three WorkKeys assessments—Applied Mathematics, Locating Information, and Reading for Information—share many of the benefits provided by the National Career Readiness System.

State and regional programs that use this framework can achieve even greater outcomes by fully adopting the National Career Readiness Certificate as part of comprehensive workforce and economic development strategies.

Broad use of WorkKeys to power state, regional, and local strategies demonstrates its capability to address a wide range of workforce and economic development objectives.

Ten Steps for Building Your State's National Career Readiness Certificate Program