Free Workforce Pell 70/70 tool
Enter your Pell enrollment counts. See your current 70% completion and 70% Q2 placement rates, your projected year-end rates, and the number of additional participants you need to close any gap before the program year closes. Same math the Capstone Workforce compliance module runs weekly against real enrollment records.
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PY 2026–27. Pull from your state MIS quarterly export or your internal tracking workbook.
Advanced: adjust targets if your state deviates from federal 70/70
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Completion rate
70% within 150% of program length
28%
of 100 enrollments · target 70% · projected year-end 32%
Gap to target: 42 percentage points below
Q2 placement rate
70% employed second quarter after exit
63%
of 40 exited participants · target 70% · projected year-end 71%
Gap to target: 7 percentage points below
To hit target, you need 42 more completions and 3 more Q2 placements before this program year closes.
The Capstone Workforce compliance module surfaces which specific participants can close each gap, ranked by urgency. See the 70/70 module.
Completion rate = completed participants divided by total Pell-eligible enrollments this program year. Completion means the participant earned the credential within 150% of the program's designed length. A 500-clock-hour program has a 750-clock-hour completion window; a participant who earns the credential in month nine of a six-month program counts, month ten does not.
Q2 placement rate = employed at the second full calendar quarter after exit divided by exited participants. Employment is verified through the state Unemployment Insurance wage record system. Self-employment, federal employment, and active-duty military employment do not appear in UI wage records and require supplemental documentation.
Projected year-end applies a modest improvement multiplier proportional to program-year time remaining, capped at 15%. Early in the year the projection allows more room for movement; late in the year the projected number lands close to the current number. Same discipline the Capstone Workforce compliance module uses: keep the projection honest so the program does not walk into a year-end surprise.
Status is on-track when within 2% of target, at-risk between 2% and 5% below, off-track more than 5% below. These bands match the alert thresholds in the compliance module dashboard.
Interventions needed = ceiling of (target rate minus current rate) times the applicable denominator. The count of additional participants who need to complete, or be placed at Q2, for the rate to reach target. Not a magic number; a directional signal for staff-time planning.
The Department of Education final rule phases in the accountability thresholds across three award years. This tool computes against the current rule, but every program should understand which year the number will actually get judged against.
Placement counts if the participant is employed anywhere in the second calendar quarter after exit, verified in state UI wage records. The occupation does not need to match the program's target SOC code. This is the current window.
Placement begins to require a match between the employment SOC code and the program's target occupation. Programs training for healthcare should place participants in healthcare roles, not adjacent industries.
The third threshold: earnings from graduates must exceed a baseline set by ED. Programs whose graduates end up in low-wage roles despite completing training face the third strike.
See the 70/70 thresholds deep dive for the underlying regulatory text.
After the projection
The Capstone Workforce compliance module runs the same math continuously, surfaces which specific participants need intervention this week, and produces funder-format and PIRL-shaped exports on demand. Email sg@capstonetech.co for a 30-minute appointment.
The compliance module that runs this projection continuously against your enrollment records, plus participant-level intervention queues and audit-ready evidence trails.
Free scorecard for programs preparing to submit under Workforce Pell. Five eligibility gates plus six operational-readiness dimensions.
The mechanics of the completion, placement, and value-added earnings thresholds. Plus the two-year lockout for substantially similar programs.
What Workforce Pell is, which programs are eligible, the approval gates, and what to do now.
Where each state stands on Workforce Pell certification, refreshed regularly.
One verified record; both reports. WIOA primary indicators and Pell 70/70 compute from the same enrollment record.
To keep Workforce Pell eligibility, an approved program must show at least 70% completion and at least 70% Q2 placement. Federal eligibility is evaluated against the 12 months preceding the application date under 34 CFR 690.94(a)(1). A program that falls below either 70% threshold loses eligibility for two years, and the two-year lockout extends to substantially similar programs sharing the same CIP or SOC code. The completion threshold measures the share of participants who complete within 150% of program length. The Q2 placement threshold measures the share of exited participants who are employed in the second calendar quarter after exit, verified against state unemployment insurance wage records (with phased-in occupational match starting in AY 2029–30).
Completion rate = completed participants divided by total Pell-eligible enrollments this program year. Placement rate = employed at Q2 after exit divided by exited participants. Projected year-end rate applies a small improvement multiplier proportional to how much of the program year remains (the earlier in the year you check, the more room the projection allows for movement). Status is on-track when you are within 2% of target, at-risk when 2–5% below target, off-track when more than 5% below target. Interventions needed = ceiling of (target rate minus current rate) times denominator; the count of additional participants you would need to close the gap.
A participant completes when they earn the credential awarded by the program within 150% of the program's designed length. A 500-clock-hour program has 750 clock hours of completion window. Participants who exit before completion count in the denominator but not the numerator. Participants who complete after the 150% window also do not count in the numerator. This is the definition state reviewers apply and the one the Capstone Workforce compliance module uses. It is stricter than most programs' internal completion tracking.
Employment in the second full calendar quarter after program exit, verified by wage records the state receives from the Unemployment Insurance system. Employment before Q2 does not count. Self-employment does not appear in UI wage records and must be documented separately. Federal employment and active-duty military employment also do not appear in state UI records and require supplemental documentation. During AY 2026–29 any employment counts; AY 2029–30 begins the phase-in of occupational match against the program's target SOC code; AY 2030–31 adds the value-added earnings test.
Your state MIS quarterly export is the primary source. Pell enrollment count = participants tagged with Pell as the funding stream. Exited participants = participants with an exit date. Completed = exited participants whose exit reason is completion or graduation. Employed at Q2 = participants whose UI wage records show employment in the second full calendar quarter after their exit date. Most programs pull these numbers manually today; the Capstone Workforce compliance module computes them continuously against a live enrollment record.
A program's completion and placement rates are largely determined by the participants already in the pipeline. Early in the program year there is real room for the rate to move because most participants have not exited yet. Later in the program year the rate is close to what it will end at. The 15% cap keeps the projection honest: a program at 55% in July does not get to project 80% by the following June without a plan to actually move the number.
You have runway to intervene before the program year closes and the number becomes final. The projection tool tells you how many additional participants need to complete or place to close the gap. The Capstone Workforce compliance module keeps this number updated weekly and surfaces a participant-by-participant intervention queue: which specific enrolled participants are eligible for MSG, credential attainment, or Q2 placement evidence, ranked by urgency (days remaining in program year times closure difficulty).
This tool runs the same math the compliance module runs, on aggregate numbers you enter manually. The compliance module runs continuously against your real enrollment records, produces the same rates weekly, routes off-track participants back into your existing coaching product with an evidence-linkage so completion of the coaching materializes a Measurable Skill Gain event, and exports funder-format PDFs and PIRL-shaped CSVs on demand. Use this tool to check where you stand today; use the compliance module to keep you there and produce audit-ready evidence continuously.