Assessments
Regional Needs Assessments
A Regional Needs Assessment answers a simple question: when a manufacturer hires a recent graduate for an entry-level job, how close does that graduate come to what the employer actually needs?
How it works
We ask employers to set the bar, skill by skill, on a simple three-level scale: aware of it, competent at it, proficient at it. Then we go into the high school shops, talk with the instructors, and look at the equipment to see what students can really do by graduation. The distance between those two answers is the region's gap, measured skill by skill and school by school.
The interviews also go beyond skills. We ask each employer how they want to plug into the local talent pipeline: site tours, donated materials, classroom visits, advisory roles, internships. The assessment ends with partnerships ready to act, not just findings.
The same method runs in every region, so results can be compared honestly across regions and over time.
What a region receives
- A report for every stakeholder: where each program meets employer expectations and where it doesn't, program by program.
- Each gap connected to the stakeholders and potential funding sources able to close it, with concrete recommendations.
- A planning-grade investment list, so the region moves from assessment to investment.
- Employer partnership offers already collected, ready for the coalition to act on.
- A baseline the region can re-measure. Columbia County did: machining alignment moved from 19 percent to a preliminary 55 percent after the investments the first assessment informed.
What the data consistently shows
- CNC machining is the widest gap everywhere. In every region measured, CNC turning and milling run 0 to 20 percent alignment. Students get manual fundamentals; they are not getting CNC.
- Manual welding is close behind. Stick, TIG, flux-core, and air-arc cutting are the recurring weak points.
- The fundamentals are not the problem. Safety, measurement, and shop math are demanded by nearly every employer, and the programs largely deliver them.
- County averages hide the real story. Within one county, programs ranged from 8 percent to 88 percent aligned. What separates them is the individual program: its equipment, its instructor, and the support behind it.
Version 2.0
Machining and welding are only part of manufacturing. The current method starts by profiling a region's manufacturing base subsector by subsector, because every region's mix is different, and measures against employer-validated skills profiles for the entry-level production job in each subsector, from food processing and wood products to metals, machinery, and plastics. NW Oregon piloted it in 2026; Clackamas County is applying it now.
Who buys an assessment
ESDs, STEM partnerships, workforce boards, community colleges, and research centers have funded every assessment to date, usually under a state or federal workforce or CTE grant. [Add a sentence on typical scope and timeline; confirm. Pricing: say nothing, or 'Scope and cost depend on the region's size; ask us for a proposal.' Chris's call.]