Success Plus
Governor Ivey tasked the Alabama Attainment Committee, a subcommittee of the Alabama Workforce Council, to develop a statewide goal for postsecondary attainment to ensure that Alabamians have access to in-demand career pathways leading to valuable, portable post-secondary degrees, certificates and credentials.
Based on the recommendations from this subcommittee, Governor Ivey set the statewide post-secondary attainment goal of adding 500,00 highly-skilled Alabamians to the workforce by 2025. Using labor market data to identify the state and regional credentials of value, Governor Ivey is working to align Alabama’s high schools, community college, and adult education programs to career pathways in high-demand fields.
The Success Plus Initiatives Aligned to Strong Start, Strong Finish Benchmarks 4-5
Career Exploration and Discovery
As part of the Success Plus plan, the governor supports the creation of the Alabama College and Career Exploration Tool (ACCET), which is designed to serve as a one-stop digital dashboard that will allow Alabamians to compare all college and career options before choosing a career pathway. The ACCET will become operational on October 1, 2020.
The ACCET will guide students through a digitally-delivered exploration and survey all 79 pathways within the 16 CTE industry clusters, an interest and career profile, and a graduation plan. It will also serve as a digital resume to display industry-recognized credentials and progress against established competency models.
In July 2020, the Alabama Terminal on Linking and Analyzing Statistics (ATLAS) on Career Pathways will be launched as another workforce development tool. It is an integrated workforce and education database that will provide the data needed to identify in-demand career and credentials.
Creating the ATLAS on Career Pathways will help the governor establish a process for regularly adjusting Alabama’s workforce and economic development programs to meet the needs of Alabama’s economy.
Under Governor Ivey’s leadership, Jobs for Alabama’s Graduates (JAG), a program that helps at-risk youth enter training programs or the workforce, is undergoing the most significant expansion process in the program’s history.
The JAG program is state-funded, but it also requires a local match, which puts the program out of reach for the schools with the greatest need. Governor Ivey is implementing a five-phased strategy to expand JAG to every county in Alabama by the end of her first term.
College and Career Readiness
The U.S. Department of Labor allows registered apprenticeships programs to be approved by either the federal Office of Apprenticeship or a federally-recognized state apprenticeship agency.
Alabama currently uses the federal Office of Apprenticeship to certify its registered apprenticeships. However, the Alabama Industry Recognized and Registered Apprenticeship Program Act, signed in 2019, establishes the Alabama Office of Apprenticeship (AOA) as Alabama’s state apprenticeship agency.
The Alabama Committee on Credentialing and Career Pathways (ACCCP) and its series of technical advisory committees composed of business and industry members representing each sector, will be responsible for determining the valuable career pathways in each region and for evaluating credentials and determining if they should be placed on the Alabama Compendium of Valuable Credentials—Alabama’s list of credentials of value.
The ACCCP shall appoint a technical advisory committee for each of the 16 career clusters. Each shall be composed of seven members who shall possess experience in education, workforce, or economic development in the industry segment for which the technical advisory committee is formed.
The governor will submit a new four-year Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act state combined plan in February 2020.
Governor Ivey established the Governor’s Office of Education and Workforce Transformation (GOEWT) to ensure that the attainment and labor force participation goals are met through an equity-based framework.
The GOEWT will work to braid Alabama’s federal Career and Technical Education (CTE) and WIOA funding streams through the combined 2020 state WIOA plan to develop career pathways based on work-based learning and credential attainment.