HB 505: Career Readiness and Economic Development Act; enact

Georgia law already requires students to develop a plan in middle school covering academic and career goals, which is currently called an individual graduation plan. House Bill 505 renames this the career development plan and adds new requirements, including a student portfolio with a resume, skills, and awards, and consideration of extracurricular activities when aligning goals. It also extends the window for creating a plan to 90 days after enrollment for high schoolers who transfer in without one. The bill directs the Department of Education to build or contract for an electronic platform where school staff, students, and parents can create and update these plans, see related data, and access career and workforce information. Students would keep access to their plan and portfolio after graduation. The Department would also use anonymized data from the platform to study how well the plans work. The bill updates related sections across Title 20 of the Georgia Code to use the new terminology.

• Renames the 'individual graduation plan' required for Georgia students to a 'career development plan' across multiple sections of Georgia's education code (Title 20).
• Adds a required student portfolio to the plan, including a resume, skills, awards, and activities, and requires alignment with extracurricular activities.
• Extends the deadline for creating a plan to within 90 days of enrollment for high school students who transfer in without an existing plan.
• Requires the Department of Education to build or contract for an electronic platform for creating, storing, and updating career development plans.
• Requires the platform to preserve student access to their plan and portfolio after high school graduation.
• Directs the Department of Education to use de-identified (anonymized) data from the platform to evaluate how well career development plans are working.

Georgia public middle and high school students and their parents or guardians, school counselors and teacher advisers who guide plan creation, local school systems and chronically low-performing high schools with reform grant requirements, and the Department of Education, which must build and operate the new electronic platform.

Students and families would use a new state-run online system to build career plans starting as early as sixth grade, with a required portfolio of skills and achievements that follows them past graduation. Schools and counselors would need to adopt new terminology and processes, and the state would gain new data to track whether these plans help students transition to college or careers.

• Section 2 revises definitions in O.C.G.A. § 20-2-326, replacing 'graduation plan' with 'career development plan' and adding a formal definition tied to the new Code Section 20-2-327.
• Section 3 rewrites O.C.G.A. § 20-2-327 to require a portfolio (resume, skills, awards, activities) as part of each plan and to add a 90-day deadline for transfer students without a plan.
• Section 3 also requires the Department of Education to build an electronic platform (subsection (d)) accessible to school personnel, students, and parents, with access preserved after graduation.
• Section 3 requires the Department of Education to use de-identified data from the platform to evaluate the effectiveness of career development plans (subsection (e)).
• Section 4 updates chronically low-performing high school reform grant requirements (O.C.G.A. § 20-2-329) to reference the renamed plan.
• Section 5 replaces 'individual graduation plan' with 'career development plan' throughout four other Code sections, including the Dual Enrollment Act (O.C.G.A. § 20-2-161.3).
• Section 6 updates O.C.G.A. § 20-3-242, covering web based counseling resources from the Georgia Student Finance Commission, to use the new plan name.

1. 2025-02-20House Second Readers (House)
2. 2025-02-19House First Readers (House)
3. 2025-02-18House Hopper (House)

• Scott Hilton (R, HD-048)Primary sponsor
• Sandy Donatucci (R, HD-105)
• Carter Barrett (R, HD-024)

• career readiness
• K-12 education
• school counseling
• student data privacy
• workforce development