Free Workforce Pell readiness assessment
A free interactive scorecard for workforce programs preparing to submit under the Workforce Pell 70/70 accountability regime. Six dimensions. Under 10 minutes. Score green, amber, or red on each and see where remediation should focus before certification.
No account required. No results saved server-side. Under 10 minutes.
First: five hard eligibility gates
The scorecard runs these five checks before scoring operational readiness. Programs that fail any of them are not eligible in the current cycle. This is the two-minute pre-flight. The full operational-readiness scoring follows.
Statutory requirement. Programs that first ran after June 30, 2026 are not eligible for Workforce Pell certification in the current cycle. New programs must build a full year of operating history before submitting.
Programs shorter than 150 clock hours are outside the Workforce Pell length window. Programs longer than 599 clock hours fall under the standard Pell rules for longer programs and are not eligible under the Workforce Pell framework.
The federal rule sets 8 to 15 weeks. Indiana caps at 14 weeks for its state-side certification. Check both the federal band and any state-specific ceiling that applies to your program.
Occupation-list requirements vary by state. Colorado has 434 occupations. Texas has 25 mapped to ~363 CIP codes. Pennsylvania has 19 occupations with a $23,475 wage floor. If your target SOC is not on your state's list, the program is not eligible in that state regardless of other factors. See the state implementation tracker for the current list per state.
The federal eligibility lookback is 12 months preceding the application date under 34 CFR 690.94(a)(1); there is no two-program-year federal requirement. The harder bar is the 70/70 rates themselves: because placement is measured in the second quarter after exit, a program needs completer cohorts that have been out long enough to produce an auditable completion-and-placement record. Programs without that history can still apply, but they submit with a low probability of approval. Building the record continuously starting now strengthens a current or future cycle.
The completion-and-placement record is the gate most programs fail. Curriculum-strong programs get denied at state review because they cannot produce a defensible completion and placement record on schedule (the federal lookback is the 12 months preceding application under 34 CFR 690.94(a)(1), and placement is measured in the second quarter after exit). That is a data-infrastructure problem, not a program-quality problem. See outcome verification software for how the record gets produced continuously.
Then: six operational-readiness dimensions
The 70/70 thresholds and the value-added earnings test are the visible standards. The scorecard checks the operational infrastructure behind them: whether your existing measurement, verification, and reporting will hold up under review. See our 70/70 thresholds guide for the underlying rules.
Do your target occupations map cleanly to state high-skill, high-wage, or in-demand lists? Programs that fail here fail approval, not just performance thresholds.
The scorecard checks whether your current cohort-completion accounting matches how Workforce Pell will measure it. Most programs's existing tracking will not translate directly.
70% placement is measured against state UI wage records, not participant surveys. The scorecard maps what state administrative data your program has access to today.
A leading indicator of the placement threshold is participant interview readiness at program exit. The scorecard checks how you measure it and whether the data is auditable.
A single program failure locks out substantially similar programs sharing the same CIP or SOC codes. The scorecard identifies your exposure and where remediation should focus.
Whether your program can produce the required reporting under real staff-time constraints. The scorecard flags where manual work is the bottleneck.
After the scorecard
Email sg@capstonetech.co to schedule a 30-minute appointment with Shawn Gregoire, our founder. Bring your completed scorecard and one target Workforce Pell program. You leave with a plan for closing any amber or red dimensions, and a clear answer on whether Capstone Workforce fits the interview and readiness measurement piece.
Continuous threshold tracking, certification-ready export, cohort warning while there is still time to intervene. The scorecard tells you where you stand today; the compliance module keeps you there.
One dataset, both reports. WIOA primary indicators and Pell 70/70 certification compute from the same verified record because they measure the same thing at the same interval.
What Workforce Pell is, which programs are eligible, the approval gates, and what to do now.
The mechanics of the completion, placement, and value-added earnings thresholds. Plus the two-year lockout for substantially similar programs.
The rules read as an engineering specification. Four data capabilities a program must hold continuously.
Where each state stands on Workforce Pell certification, refreshed regularly.
Two things in sequence. First, five hard eligibility gates: one-year operating history as of June 30, 2026; clock hours between 150 and 599; program length between 8 and 15 weeks; target occupation on the applicable state list; and a completion-and-placement record covering at least the 12-month pre-application window under 34 CFR 690.94(a)(1) and complete enough to document the 70/70 rates. A program that fails any of these is not eligible in the current cycle. Second, for programs that clear the gates, six operational-readiness dimensions: occupational alignment, completion tracking against the 150% window, Q2 placement verification, interview and readiness measurement, substantially similar program lockout exposure, and reporting burden. Each of the six dimensions gets a green / amber / red rating.
The completion-and-placement record. The federal eligibility lookback is 12 months preceding application under 34 CFR 690.94(a)(1) — there is no two-program-year federal requirement — but because placement is measured in the second quarter after exit, programs that have not tracked completion and UI-wage placement on eligible cohorts submit with a low probability of approval. This is a data-infrastructure problem, not a program-quality problem, and it is a key reason Pennsylvania approved only 2 of 40 submitted programs on its first list.
Under 10 minutes. It is designed for a program director to run through in one sitting; the questions are yes/no or short-answer, not narrative.
You get a completed scorecard you can share with your team. The strongest signal is where you scored amber or red on any dimension; those are the areas to address before submitting for Workforce Pell certification. To walk through your results and how Capstone Workforce supports the interview and readiness dimensions specifically, email sg@capstonetech.co to schedule a 30-minute appointment.
Real conversation. A 30-minute appointment covers your scorecard results and where the gaps sit. If Capstone Workforce fits, we walk you through the platform. If it does not, we tell you what would.
No. The scorecard is free. It is provided as a service to the workforce field because programs that fail the 70/70 thresholds lose eligibility for two years, and the failure is preventable with the right measurement infrastructure.