Share This Article
Mountain Home Public Schools expects every junior to sit for the ACT WorkKeys assessment during the 2026-27 school year, district testing coordinator Becca Camp told the school board Aug. 6.
Camp presented three years of district testing data at the meeting, weeks after Baxter County was certified as an ACT Work Ready Community in June. She and Mountain Home Area Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Dani Pugsley accepted the award at ACT’s national summit in Nashville in July.
The numbers behind that certification came largely from the high school. In 2023-24, the district’s first year pushing the test, 51 students took it and 38 earned a National Career Readiness Certificate, a rate of 75%.
Participation more than doubled the next year, with 117 students tested and 98 certified. Last school year, 153 students took the assessment and 141 earned a certificate, a rate of 92%.
The share of top-tier scores climbed too. The district recorded two platinum certificates in 2023-24 and 24 last year.
Camp said the assessment had been available to the district for years before anyone made a push.
“WorkKeys is their assessment that’s been sitting on the back burner for a long time,” she said. “We’ve had it for a long time.”
She traced her own interest to a Chamber leadership class she went through several years ago, where employer after employer raised the same complaint.
“Every business we went to talked about the same things,” Camp said. “We need kids that have soft skills. We need employees that we know know the skills, and we need something that we can measure.”
The first year was a cold sell, she said.
“Danny and I started. Had no idea what WorkKeys really was,” Camp said. “We just sold it to the kids. Hey, anybody want to take it.”
The WorkKeys assessment has three parts and measures applied math, workplace documents and graphic literacy. Scores translate into bronze, silver, gold and platinum certificates.
Camp described the top tier as hard to reach and compared it to a 34 on the ACT, though the two tests use separate scoring systems and ACT does not publish a formal equivalency between them.
One of the two platinum scores that first year went to a student who had struggled academically, she said.
“It was pretty neat to be able to celebrate that with that kiddo, who has not had a lot of success in the past,” Camp said.
Camp tied the growth to state policy. Arkansas recognizes the NCRC as one way for students to demonstrate readiness under the graduation pathways created by the LEARNS Act, and a platinum score can help a student graduate with merit or distinction rather than a standard diploma.
She said that would have appealed to her as a teenager.
“That was me in high school,” Camp said. “I’d be like, I want that. I want something to wear at graduation.”
The other half of the pitch is economic development, which Camp said is Pugsley’s side of the partnership. Pugsley was not at the meeting.
Reaching certified status required the county to hit thresholds for participating employers, adult test takers and high school test takers. Camp said clearing those markers opens the county to grants and gives the Chamber an answer when companies come shopping.
“Businesses will contact the Chamber and say, tell me why I want to build in your area,” she said. “And they ask the question, are you work ready. Because they need workers.”
What the Chamber asks of local employers is narrow. Businesses sign on at no cost and decide for themselves whether the credential is required in hiring or simply counts in an applicant’s favor.
“Put it on your application. Get a kid an interview,” Camp said. “That’s all we’re asking you to do. If a kid comes to you with a WorkKeys certification, please interview them.”
She said that is already happening at a number of local businesses, and pointed to the district’s Draft Day hiring event, where students arrive with certificates in hand. Several were hired last year, she said.
The state contract covers one attempt at all three parts of the assessment. Camp said the district has found money to let seniors retake individual sections, similar to the way ACT superscoring works, so a student only repeats the portion that held the score down.
The district is also planning a boot camp and a self-paced prep curriculum that ACT recently released.
Camp noted that ACT itself changed hands over the summer. Educational Testing Service, the nonprofit behind the GRE, TOEFL and Praxis exams, acquired ACT on July 1, picking up WorkKeys and the NCRC in the deal.
Camp showed the board a national map of participating counties, with certified communities in gold and counties still working toward the mark in blue. Neighboring Missouri is close to full coverage.
The glass award marking Baxter County’s certification is housed at the Chamber.
“We’re super proud to keep this growing and just grow our own,” Camp said. “That is the model.”
