Amends TCA Title 49, Chapter 11; Title 49, Chapter 6 and Title 49, Chapter 7.

This bill requires the department of labor and workforce development, in coordination with the department of education, to develop and administer the Tennessee work ready opportunity program (T-WROP) to assess and certify adult displaced workers' and students' career readiness using nationally recognized assessments. T-WROP must include assessments that: (1) Are a standardized, criterion-referenced measure of broadly relevant foundational workplace skills; (2) Assess and document readiness for a wide range of jobs; (3) Measure skills in a wide range of areas, including applied mathematics, workplace documents, and graphic literacy; (4) Align with research-based skill requirement profiles for specific industries and occupations; (5) Lead to nationally recognized work-readiness certificates or credentials for participants who meet the minimum proficiency requirements on the component assessments; (6) Are available in paper and computer-based formats; (7) Provide data that can be used as a metric for the work-ready community initiative to document the skills of the emerging, transitioning, and incumbent labor market at county level; and (8) Are aligned to a self-paced, modular skills curriculum to allow for skill remediation. Under this bill, T-WROP must be available to adult displaced workers and high school students in accordance with the present law high school graduation requirements. For the purpose of this bill, an adult displaced worker means an eligible claimant of state unemployment insurance in accordance with the rules promulgated by the department of labor and workforce development. This bill requires, subject to appropriation: (1) The commissioner of labor and workforce development to allocate funding to: administer the T-WROP; provide job-profiling training and services to employers; and conduct a virtual training program for communities on participation in the T-WROP; and (2) The department of education to allocate funding for high school students to take assessments through the T-WROP, as authorized in the present law graduation requirements, as amended by this bill. This bill requires the department of labor and workforce development and the department of education to: (1) Track, in collaboration with the state workforce development board, the number of high school students and the number of adult displaced workers who earn a national career readiness certificate through T-WROP; and (2) Submit, by January 1, 2026, a report detailing the impacts of the T-WROP to the education committee of the senate, the education administration committee of the house of representatives, the commerce and labor committee of the senate, and the commerce committee of the house of representatives. The full text of this bill details the requirements for such report. This bill also revises the following present law provisions: (1) Under present law, as a strategy for assessing student readiness for postsecondary education, every public school student must take an examination at grade 11. Present law provides that, subject to available appropriations each year, each student participating in such assessment must have the opportunity to retake the assessment one additional time prior to graduation. This bill revises this provision to instead provide that LEAs and public charter schools must provide a student participating in such assessment with the opportunity to: (A) Subject to appropriations, retake the assessment one additional time prior to graduation and; and (B) Take the ACT WorkKeys National Career Readiness Certificate examinations through the T-WROP as a strategy for providing students more choice in choosing a career pathway; and (2) Under present law, the higher education commission must coordinate with other departments in developing, administering, and implementing a Labor Education Alignment Program (LEAP). The higher education commission must make specific efforts to encourage colleges of applied technology and community colleges in this state to offer a LEAP, in an effort to train students in needed high-skill and high-technology industries in this state. Present law lists several priorities that the higher education commission must coordinate to the extent possible. This bill adds to such list of priorities "developing opportunities for students to participate in T-WROP." Additionally, this bill requires the higher education commission to require each public institution of higher education to develop course credit articulation and academic program admission policies for individuals who successfully earn a national career readiness certificate. Public institutions of higher education must publicize the opportunities to public high schools, adult education programs, and local workforce boards. ON MAY 5, 2021, THE SENATE ADOPTED AMENDMENT #2 AND PASSED SENATE BILL 1135, AS AMENDED. AMENDMENT #2 rewrites this bill to require that, subject to available federal funds, as a strategy for assessing and certifying students' career readiness and providing students with more choices in identifying career pathways, LEAs and public charter schools provide each student the opportunity to take nationally recognized assessments in the 2021-2022 and 2022-2023 school years. This amendment also requires the department of education to submit all contracts for the procurement of any good or service selected or approved by the department to effectuate this amendment to the fiscal review committee of the general assembly for review.