Hours on a site, a supervisor’s word, and a certification are proof. None of them fit a seat-time transcript.

What the record holds today, in plain terms

A learner’s record is kept on the learner’s own device (through a family until majority, or by the learner directly), and a program that issues on it adds rows the learner folds in. Two kinds of thing carry evidence today.

An entry, sealed into a work sample. The learner captures a moment as one of nine kinds: a book, a project, a course or unit, volunteer work, a mentor session, a competition, a job, an attempt that did not work out, or a purchase for a scholarship-funded learner. A placement on a job site is a job entry, and the hours go in the note. A periodic check-in with a training coordinator or a site supervisor is a mentor entry. A certification course or an exam prep unit is a course entry, with the credential itself attached as the evidence file once it is issued. Each entry has a title, a date, an optional note, and an optional link to the evidence. Nothing about an entry is public until the learner seals it, and sealing makes it a work sample with a public link. What goes public is the title, the kind, the date, the name of the issuing records office, and whether evidence is on file. The evidence itself stays with the learner, who can share it with a reader who asks.

A course row on the transcript. Each row has a year, a subject, a title, a credit, a grade, an “Evidence of mastery” column the issuer fills in words (hours logged, an exam passed, a supervisor’s sign-off), and one of four signer kinds. A program that issues on the record declares course rows itself, with the title, the term, the grade, and the credit, and each row reads “Declared by” followed by the program’s name on the public page. The program asks the instructor, coordinator, or sponsor who supervised the work to co-sign from an emailed link.

The evidence kinds arriving for the trades

Hours on a job site, a supervisor’s sign-off, and a certification exam result are not yet their own kinds on the record; today they are written into a job, mentor, or course entry as described above, and that works. Trades- specific evidence kinds, built as their own attestation types so a sign-off reads as a sign-off rather than a note on a job entry, are arriving; see the Portrait page. Nothing on this page depends on them, and no date is promised for when they ship.

What a supervisor or sponsor signs

A witness is the adult who was there: the site supervisor, the JATC training coordinator, the program instructor, the employer of record. They get one link, on the page they are asked to sign, and they read exactly what they are being asked to confirm. They type their name, their role, an organization if they want one, and a sentence in their own words about what they saw. For a course row they also say how they know the learner and which grade they are attesting to, and the grade may differ from the one the program declared; where it does, both grades are shown side by side and neither is hidden. There is no account, no password, and nothing to upload. The address a signer types at signing is kept on the public signature only as a one-way hash, so a later signature from the same address matches this one; the invited address stays on the request so the link can be sent, and is never copied to the public record.

Next to each signature the record states, as a fact, how far the signer’s identity was checked: an email address only; a school, government, or organization address the invitation was sent to, or a professional license lookup recorded by staff; an identity document checked by staff, with only the record of the check kept; or a history of earlier signatures on file. A supervisor invited at a company’s own domain reads as an email address only unless that address was looked up against a license or checked by staff. The fact describes the check, not the person, and it never ranks one signer against another. A witness does not grade the learner, compare them with anyone else, or vouch for a program; if they would rather not sign, they close the tab, and nothing happens and nobody is told. The longer version is on the witness page.

What an employer or a program sees at one link

A reader opens the link with no account. For a work sample the page shows the verdict, the receipt id, the kind of entry, the title, the issuing records office, the date it occurred and the date it was sealed, the hash of its contents, and each co-signer’s name, role, organization, sentence, date, and identity mark. For a course row it shows the title, term, credit, and the grade as declared, with “Declared by” and the program’s name where the program declared it, and the same signature detail. Below the detail sit two paragraphs the page always carries: what this verification means (the record was sealed by its issuer at the stated time and the bytes have not changed since) and what it does not mean (the hash proves integrity, not that a third party evaluated the work; the signatures say who put their name on it). Employers and programs verify one link free, forever, with no account required on the receiving side. A reader who would rather not trust our page downloads the proof file and runs the published verifier with no server in the loop; we wrote the reader’s page for exactly this: reading a Witness Transcript™. The sample below is fictional: open the sample transcript to see the whole record as a receiver does.

The federal direction, quoted with its sources

On May 18, 2026 the Department of Education announced a final rule creating the Workforce Pell Grant program, on public inspection that day and published in the Federal Register on May 19, 2026 (document 2026-10013). The rule makes an eligible workforce program one of 150 to 599 clock hours, or the credit-hour equivalent, at least 8 but less than 15 weeks of instructional time, approved by a Governor and the Secretary, and required to meet completion and job placement rate metrics every year it stays approved. A program’s total published tuition and fees may not exceed the “value-added earnings” of its completers, the difference between their adjusted median earnings and 150 percent of the federal poverty guideline for a single individual (the Federal Register rule text). The Department’s own release puts the requirement in plain words: “Governors, in consultation with State workforce boards, will identify high-demand industries and career fields in order to determine which workforce programs are eligible to receive Workforce Pell Grant funds. Eligible programs will then be required to meet certain time and length requirements, completion percentages, and employment metrics, and prove they deliver a real return on investment for students as shown by data.” (the Department’s release, which names July 1, 2026 as the date early implementation begins).

The Department’s release says the new program “advances the vision of America’s Talent Strategy,” a plan the Departments of Labor, Commerce, and Education published in August 2025. That plan sets “a bold target of reaching and surpassing 1 million active apprentices” and says the Departments will align the pathways into apprenticeship with “career and technical education (CTE) programs of study, youth-serving WIOA career pathways, pre-apprenticeships, and Registered Apprenticeships,” giving as an example that “employers could work directly with school systems and community colleges to create dual-enrollment programs that lead to an apprenticeship or job immediately after high school.” On outcomes, the same plan says: “Credentials will be judged based on their real value in the labor market, and ineffective training providers will be removed from public funding lists.” (America’s Talent Strategy, pages 9, 11, and 13.)

None of this is a claim that any agency has reviewed, approved, or endorsed Eformogi, the standard it publishes, or the Witness Transcript. Whether a given program meets Workforce Pell’s requirements is the Governor’s and the Secretary’s decision, made under the rule text above, and a program’s eligibility does not turn on how it keeps its evidence. What the direction states plainly is the kind of data a program now has to produce: completion, placement, and earnings tied to named learners over years, which is exactly the shape of evidence a witnessed, dated, exportable record is built to hold.

What this page does not claim

• It does not say the Department has reviewed or approved anything here. The rule and the strategy paper are quoted for what they say about eligible programs and evidence; neither mentions Eformogi.
• It does not speak for a receiver. Whether a record satisfies an employer, a union hall, or a program is that receiver’s decision. Where it matters we quote the receiver’s own published policy.
• It is not legal advice. Whether a program run by a public agency needs its own agreement, or how a private sponsor structures one, is a question for its lawyer, and ours; a BOCES center or a district CTE program waits for the founder’s district approval and the counsel memo before any agreement is signed.

Frequently asked questions

The supervisor is the witness, and the learner holds the record

A site supervisor, a training coordinator, or an employer sees the work. That is their standing in the record: the adults who were there put their names on what they saw, and the program that declared a row is named on it. What none of them does is own the result. The learner holds the record and takes it with them, through every job change, every new employer, and every move, and a reader anywhere checks it at one link without asking the program or us. The format is published at eformogi.com/spec so that this stays true whether or not we are in the room, and the promises behind it are written down in the sovereignty contract. A BOCES center or a district program does not enroll through the self-serve terms; the place to start is a letter to hello@eformogi.com. The price list is on the pricing page.

Open the sample record

See also: Workforce Pell and the learner record · the Portrait page · how a program issues on the record · the interoperability chapter