Advancing Workforce Mobility

Overview

The Challenge: Today's Fragmented Landscape 
Today’s learn-to-work ecosystem is fragmented and hard to navigate. Millions of workers, especially those who have built skills outside of traditional degree programs, struggle to show what they can do in ways employers trust and understand. 

Education and workforce systems often overlook skills gained through non-degree credentials, short-term training, on-the-job learning, and military and community-based experiences. Data about these experiences and credentials is scattered, incomplete, or locked in systems that don’t talk to each other. As a result: 

(1) Workers’ skills are invisible or undervalued, especially for STARs (workers Skilled Through Alternative Routes) who do not hold a bachelor’s degree, limiting their upward mobility. (2) Employers miss out on qualified candidates because they can’t see or trust the skills possessed or signaled by many candidates.

At the same time, new tools and technologies, including AI, are changing how skills can be assessed, described, and matched to opportunities. There is growing interest in using these tools to support transparency, quality, and skills validation, but open questions remain about how to do so in ethical, responsible, and equitable ways. 

Meeting this challenge requires collective action, and scalable infrastructures, tools, partnerships, and models that: 

• Make credential and skills data more transparent, connected, and machine-readable (easily processed by digital systems and tools) 
• Validate skills developed in real-world settings 
• Demonstrate what “quality” looks like in non-degree credentials, in ways that are inclusive and meaningful to both workers and employers. 
• Use AI to enhance skills assessment, validation, and credential transparency, and ensure these innovations follow responsible, equitable, and privacy-safe practices. 

The Advancing Workforce Mobility initiative exists to help build these proof points and share what works with the field, especially approaches that can be adapted and adopted beyond a single site or cohort. 

Education Design Lab (The Lab) invites you to join us in transforming how workers' skills are recognized, shared, and valued. This $3.5 million fund will support up to 12 innovative projects designed to help workers that are Skilled Through Alternative Routes (STARs: working adults who have developed valuable skills through pathways other than a bachelor’s degree, such as military service, community college, work experience, bootcamps, or self-directed learning) connect their skills to quality jobs, advancing solutions that can contribute to systems-level change over time.

Funding Tiers

Explore – up to $250,000
Example projects might include: 

• Building or deeper testing of a new skills validation tool with one training provider and a small cohort of workers looking to advance into higher-wage roles. 
• Working with a college or state agency to develop and publish an initial set of non-degree credentials to an open registry (for example, using CTDL and the Credential Registry) and demonstrate how this data supports STARs’ understanding of pathways or opportunities.

Demonstrate – up to $400,000 
Example projects might include: 

• Piloting a performance-based assessment in a specific industry (such as logistics or healthcare) and documenting its impact on hiring or promotion decisions. 
• Implementing a credential navigation tool with a small college network and tracking how it impacts workers’ and learners’ approach to choosing programs or pathways.  

Scale – up to $600,000
Example projects might include: 

• Scaling a state or regional learning and employment record (LER) ecosystem to additional employers, training providers, and regions, so that more workers and employers can access and use verified skills and credential data. 
• Expanding a validated skills assessment and credential model across multiple employers or regions, with shared, machine-readable data on outcomes for workers, and agreements to share lessons learned in open, reusable formats.

Target Beneficiaries: All funded projects must primarily benefit workers, particularly STARs (Skilled Through Alternative Routes) who do not hold a bachelor’s degree and have often been excluded or underserved when degrees are used as a primary requirement in hiring and advancement.

Funding Tracks 
The Lab will select and support an anticipated portfolio of 7-12 projects across two interconnected tracks. This fund is designed to drive change by supporting projects that generate scalable/replicable evidence and proof points to inform the field. 

Proposals must align with one or both of the following tracks, which reflect the primary objectives of this initiative: 

Track 1: Advance Credential Quality and Transparency 
Track 1 is organized into two related sub-tracks. Applicants may select Track 1a, Track 1b, or indicate that their project spans both, depending on their primary focus. All Track 1 projects should ultimately help STARs navigate, earn, and use credentials that are more visible, trusted, and portable.

Track 2: Validate Skills Gained via Non-Traditional Learning Pathways 
Objective: To support the development and piloting of performance-based and AI-enabled assessments and other validation methods that reliably validate skills gained outside of formal education, strengthening employer trust and expanding opportunities for workers.

We strongly encourage multi-organization partnerships. 

Awards: The Lab will award a total of $3,500,000 across an anticipated portfolio of 7-12 grant awards. We will use a tiered funding model to support projects at different stages of maturity, from early exploration to scaling proven models, though proposals at all tiers must show a credible pathway to broader adoption/replication and systems-level impact. Applicants should select the single tier that best matches their project’s scope and readiness.

• Explore – up to $250,000 For early-stage discovery, research, and prototyping. These projects are intended to build and test new ideas and solutions, articulating the potential for scale or replication.
• Demonstrate – up to $400,000 For pilots or limited implementations with clear milestones and a plan to generate evidence. These projects are intended to build on existing ideas and validate their effectiveness, informing 
• Scale – up to $600,000 For projects with a strong foundation that are ready for broader (i.e. multi-site/system) implementation and adoption. The focus is on maximizing impact and scaling proven models.