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IOWA CITY, Iowa—ACT, Inc. has signed an agreement with BellCurve Labs, Inc., an international educational technology company with offices in San Francisco and Pune, India, to bring its workforce solutions to India. ACT® WorkKeys® and the ACT® Career Readiness Certificate®, widely used and respected in U.S. locations of international firms and major Fortune 500 companies, are designed to measure and certify foundational job readiness, helping link employers to qualified job seekers.

Under this agreement, BellCurve Labs will offer and administer ACT WorkKeys assessments in India. BellCurve Labs is both a developer and an aggregator of eLearning resources. In August of 2016 they chose India for the initial launch of their online learning suite—the most comprehensive line of eLearning tools on the global market. The inclusion of ACT WorkKeys assessments into BellCurve’s toolbox provides BellCurve Labs with a seamless battery of solutions that support lifelong growth and learning.

ACT WorkKeys assessments measure job-related skills such as applied mathematics, reading for information, and locating information. Individuals who meet benchmark scores on three core WorkKeys exams earn an ACT Career Readiness Certificate, verifying that they possess the skills employers deem essential to workplace success.

“ACT workforce certification will enable employers in India to confidently identify, select, and hire qualified candidates,” said ACT Chief Commercial Officer Suzana Delanghe. “The agreement between ACT and BellCurve Labs aims to help thousands of workers in India take advantage of new opportunities to improve their work lives and careers.”

“ACT workforce certification provides Indian employers with a standard upon which employees can be evaluated—not only domestically, but internationally as well,” said BellCurve Labs CEO Milind Joshi. “For employees, it helps define the path upward within the workplace—one based on merit and valid measurement, not guesswork. For students, the WorkKeys assessments can help identify basic strengths and weaknesses so that they can be best prepared when the time comes to enter the workplace.”

India has the world’s largest workforce, in excess of 500 million people. According to India’s Labour Bureau, 30 million workers are added to the Indian workforce yearly, but only 2 percent of those in the workforce are considered “skilled.”

In a recent feasibility study conducted by ACT among employers in Pune, approximately 90 percent of respondents said that workplace skills need to be assessed, while over 92 percent said that the skills assessed by ACT WorkKeys are important.

More than 2.2 million WorkKeys assessments are administered annually in the U.S., and over 3.6 million ACT Career Readiness Certificates have been issued since the credential was introduced in 2006. Presently, 15,000 US companies recognize WorkKeys Career Readiness certification.

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The release of the President’s budget blueprint for fiscal year 2018 has rightly prompted deep concern within the education and workforce development communities, not least for its cuts to programs that benefit low-income and underserved learners and job seekers. The blueprint cuts the budgets of the U.S. Departments of Labor and Education by 21 and 14 percent, respectively.

The cut in the Labor Department reduces funding for job training programs that benefit seniors and economically disadvantaged youth. The cut in the Education Department reduces federal work-study aid to college students and diverts 37 percent of the surplus in the Pell Grant program, which provides aid to college students in financial need, to other uses.

The blueprint also eliminates the Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grant program; cuts Federal TRIO Programs by more than 10 percent; and cuts GEAR UP—a program long supported by ACT—by nearly one-third. These programs, either directly or through grants to states or organizations, assist economically disadvantaged middle and high school students prepare for, attend, and complete college. For example, in 2013, 75 percent of low-income high school graduates who participated in GEAR UP immediately enrolled in college, nearly ten percentage points higher than all graduates that year, and an astonishing 30 points higher than low-income graduates overall.

As Anthony P. Carnevale and others document in The College Payoff, the higher the level of educational attainment, the higher the payoff: bachelor’s degree holders can expect to earn more than 84 percent more than those with only a high school diploma. In addition, those with higher levels of educational attainment are more likely to pay more in taxes and less likely to rely on social services, which helps to support beneficial programs and services at the local, state, and federal levels. So why are programs that empirically benefit individuals and society being cut? Put simply, this is just not good business sense.

The mission of ACT is to help individuals achieve education and workplace success. Far from not helping, the President’s budget blueprint will actively harm. We add our voice to those of the many Republican and Democratic legislators who have voiced their strong opposition to the blueprint and its effects on the education and career preparation of many of the least fortunate among us. Students and job seekers of many ages rely on such services to fund their postsecondary pursuits, embark on a career, and ultimately find their way to realizing their goals.

I sincerely hope that the Administration rethinks its priorities and puts underserved students and workers first.

IOWA CITY, Iowa—Gunter Maris, a pioneer in statistics and learning theory, has agreed to join ACT as senior director of advanced psychometrics. As part of the ACT research and development group ACTNext, Maris will lead a team of research scientists located in both the Netherlands and the United States.

“Among his peers, Dr. Maris is considered the most significant innovator in the field of educational measurement,” said Alina von Davier, vice president of ACTNext. “His research into learning pathways, adaptive learning, and network psychometrics has the capacity to change not only our profession, but education around the world.”

In addition to advancing the science of psychometrics, Maris is known for upending accepted knowledge. Marten Roorda, ACT chief executive officer, said questioning assumptions may be key to making rapid advances in what is often perceived as the slow pace of educational improvement.

“As a society, we have been ‘stuck’ in our level of academic achievement,” said Roorda. “Through the work of researchers like Dr. Maris, we can now access and analyze student-specific information from virtually every step in the learning process. By personalizing education for each child, we can help millions of young people learn better and faster than ever before, and in doing so change the world.”

Maris currently is a professor of psychological methods at the University of Amsterdam and principal research scientist at Cito, an international assessment organization based in the Netherlands. His research focuses on theories of learning and individual differences, and the statistical methods needed to evaluate those theories.

Maris has published widely in scientific journals including in Science, Psychological Review, and Psychometrika. He holds a PhD in mathematical psychology from the Netherlands’ University of Nijmegen, and a Master’s degree in theoretical psychology from Belgium’s University of Leuven.

He will be joining ACT in June 2017.

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