Austin, TX, Oct. 27, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- SchooLinks, the K-12 college and career readiness platform, announced today that it earned 1EdTech certification for the Open Badges 3.0 and the Comprehensive Learner Record (CLR) 2.0 standards. These open data standards help make Learning and Employment Records (LERs) verifiable, portable, and learner-owned.

Every student on SchooLinks now has a digital credential wallet where they can store these digital representations of achievements. Districts, states and employers can also issue badges, credentials, and CLRs directly in the platform. Issuance is integrated into SchooLinks' automation and accountability tracking tools.

"We are proud to be the first College and Career Readiness platform to complete certification," said Katie Fang, Founder and CEO of SchooLinks. "Historically, our category has treated student data as something to hold onto. We believe the opposite. A student's record should follow them across every transition, and the platforms that serve them should compete on the experience they deliver, not on how hard it is to leave."

“As states invest in connecting education and workforce systems, open standards are essential to making those investments work together. 1EdTech’s Open Badges and Comprehensive Learner Record standards provide a trusted, consistent way to recognize and share learning and skills across schools, states, and employers" said Curtiss Barnes, 1EdTech CEO.  “By certifying in those standards, SchooLinks proves it can help learners carry their achievements into new opportunities while giving education and workforce systems the reliable information they need to support their success.” 

Today's students accomplish a lot before they graduate. They enroll in dual credit, earn industry certifications, complete work-based learning, and hold jobs. Too often, the record of that work stays locked inside the system where it was entered, and students lose access to it when they graduate. SchooLinks pushed back on that early on, giving students continued free access to their data after graduation, long before that was expected. Certification extends the commitment: a single place to keep all of these achievements, in a form students own and can share for life. As states make historic investments in Career and Technical Education (CTE) and dual credit, a trusted way to share that evidence matters more than ever.

SchooLinks now supports both traditional transcript network-based document transmission and sharing based on interoperable standards. Students' achievements travel as tamper-proof, machine-readable credentials. Any employer, college, or district can programmatically verify them as official.  "Credential interoperability serves both college-bound and career-bound students, and it brings those paths into closer alignment" said Michael Discenza, Chief Technology Officer of SchooLinks." 

Credential capabilities in SchooLinks focus on delivering:

• Verifiable achievements with operational efficiency. Districts can award Open Badges 3.0 credentials for work-based learning, industry certifications, CTE completion, and Portrait of a Graduate competencies. Credentials are issued directly from the workflows where that learning is already tracked.
• A full learner-owned digital portfolio. Students' coursework, achievements, and work samples already live together on SchooLinks. Now they can be packed into a CLR 2.0 record that is portable, verifiable, and shareable with colleges and employers.
• Open standards throughout. Credentialing sits alongside SchooLinks' existing support for OneRoster and Ed-Fi.

LERs, interoperability, and state talent marketplaces

Federal policy is converging on the same architecture. The U.S. Department of Education's Connecting Talent to Opportunity Challenge asks governors to build statewide talent marketplaces anchored by LERs. Ten states are working on those marketplaces now.

SchooLinks' work in the LER space began with SkillsFWD, a Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors initiative funded by Walmart, the Charles Koch Foundation, and others to advance LERs and skills-based hiring. SkillsFWD funded five demonstration projects across the country. SchooLinks' project with the workforce board Aspyr, building and launching the Central Ohio Talent Network, was the only one focused on K-12. SchooLinks then rolled the technology directly into its platform nationwide.

Since then, SchooLinks has expanded to badging initiatives in many states, in particular those adopting broader competency-based graduation requirements, including Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Indiana. In each, students demonstrate readiness by completing a range of readiness demonstrations. Some are state-defined. Under Ohio's requirements and New York's coming Portrait of a Graduate, districts define their own. Schools in these states and others use SchooLinks to track graduation and readiness requirements and recognize students for meeting them.

Issuing verifiable representations of these achievements helps districts and states capitalize on that investment by modernizing and increasing the value of their diplomas. With Open Badges and CLR, SchooLinks can represent the full picture of a student's achievements and skills, beyond what a traditional transcript can convey. K-12 education represents the country's biggest source of potential high-trust LERs that support these emerging Talent Marketplaces. 

About SchooLinks

SchooLinks is building the infrastructure for every student's future. Millions of students in 42 states use SchooLinks to explore careers, plan their path, gain real-world experience, and earn credentials that follow them for life. Districts and states rely on it to run college and career readiness at scale, from the counselor's office to the statehouse. Built on open standards and designed for a generation that moves, SchooLinks is redefining what it means to graduate ready. Headquartered in Austin, Texas. Learn more at schoolinks.com 

David Wolpert
SchooLinks
5127109922
dwolpert@schoolinks.com