NASBE Standard Examines How States Can Better Evaluate and Communicate Career-Relevant Skills

Alexandria, VA—As state leaders ramp up efforts to ensure that all students gain career-relevant skills and credentials while still in high school, they also need to assure students and families that employers and postsecondary institutions will value those skills. The latest issue of NASBE’s State Education Standard examines how states can better evaluate skills’ value and more clearly communicate career-ready information to students and families.   

Ensuring that the dizzying number of industry-recognized credentials actually adds value is a growing challenge for states. Scott Cheney of Credential Engine stresses the central role of credential transparency so students and families can make informed decisions about their futures.  

Madison Andrews, Kait Ogden, and Matt Giani of the University of Texas at Austin analyze the impact—and unintended consequences—of policies in Texas aimed at ensuring that more students attain industry-based certifications while in high school.  

NASBE’s Celina Pierrottet and KnowledgeWorks’ Jon Alfuth examine efforts to better signal students’ acquisition of durable skills to employers, colleges, and families, including through competency-based alternatives to the traditional transcript.  

Laura Slover at ETS and the Carnegie Foundation writes about her organizations’ joint effort to pilot assessments of whether students are acquiring the durable skills laid out in state portraits of a graduate, highlighting work in North Carolina and Indiana in particular. 

The ability of generative AI to take on routine tasks that entry- and mid-level workers have been performing, particularly in the service sectors, heightens the urgency of understanding what skills future labor markets will value. Brent Orrell from the American Enterprise Institute projects the impact of AI on young adults about to enter the labor force and the implications for schools that seek to prepare them for it.  

If schools hope to understand how to ready students for college and careers, they first need to know what happened to students who have already graduated. National College Attainment Network’s Bill DeBaun highlights the essential role state boards can play in ensuring that state agencies regularly and securely send districts postsecondary outcomes data.   

Read the January 2026 issue Demonstrating Skills of Value.

NASBE serves as the only membership organization for state boards of education. A nonpartisan, nonprofit organization, NASBE elevates state board members’ voices in national and state policymaking, facilitates the exchange of informed ideas, and supports members in advancing equity and excellence in public education for students of all races, genders, and circumstances. Learn more at www.nasbe.org.

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