• NACES members must be independent, private or non-profit organizations.
• NACES members must employ or have on staff at least one full-time senior evaluator with no fewer than five consecutive years of substantive, supervised professional experience as an international credential evaluator.
• NACES members must have a substantive reference library pertinent to the evaluation of foreign educational credentials, that includes standard and accepted reference materials in the field international credential evaluation.
• NACES members’ reference libraries must include substantive historical and contemporary reference materials which are representative of the best resources available to credential evaluators in the US. Reliance on proprietary databases of world education is not deemed sufficient to meet NACES’ membership criteria as regards a reference library.
• NACES members must make available to the public, on request, the following:
  • The composition of their Board of Directors, Advisors, or other governing group, including officers and administrators.
  • The members of their senior evaluation staff and their qualifications.
  • A clear statement of their evaluation policies.
  • The scope of the services they offer, including the fees for said services.
  • Their application procedures.

NACES Members Evaluation Reports must:

• Consider and review all necessary and relevant documents concerning an individual’s educational history – the documents evaluated, and the purpose of the evaluation, must be clearly stated in the evaluation report.
• Be based on appropriate resources in order to provide the most accurate evaluation possible consistent with the purpose of the evaluation request.
• Include at minimum, the name and location of the institution attended; the name of the qualification received as indicated on the official document or the program followed, if not completed; the year the qualification was awarded, or the years of enrollment if the program is not complete; and the major field of study, if applicable.
• Clearly state the Member’s judgment concerning the US equivalency of the qualifications received for evaluation.
• Must clearly state if they have been prepared on the basis of incomplete documentation, or if the evaluation represents a reconstruction of academic documentation.

NACES Standards Concerning the Qualifications of International Credential Evaluators
An international credential evaluator is a professional whose responsibility is the assessment of educational credentials from one country in terms of their equivalence in level, scope, and intent, to credentials from another country.

The evaluators employed by NACES members must be capable and qualified.

• An evaluator must be able to provide an equivalence that includes the credential earned, as well as subjects completed, their credit values, and grade equivalents.
• Evaluators must be trained and/or supervised by fully trained senior evaluation staff.
• Evaluators must possess and demonstrate a thorough current and historical knowledge of all aspects of a given country’s educational system, including traditional academic, vocational, technical, professional, and graduate education.
• Evaluators must have a thorough knowledge of the bibliographic and reference resources employed in credential evaluation for the countries whose qualifications which they evaluate.
• Evaluators must have a thorough current and historical knowledge of all aspects of the educational system to which the credentials they evaluate are compared.
• Evaluators must have a thorough knowledge of the methods and practices commonly used by international credential evaluators to conduct all aspects of a credential evaluation.
• Evaluators must have a thorough knowledge of the procedures commonly used to identify fraudulent documents and the ability to identify those anomalies or inconsistencies in educational records that may be indicators of fraud, or that need special explanation in an evaluation.
• Evaluators must have an ability to develop and maintain professional relationships with educational officials in other countries in order to obtain information about educational credentials, programs, and systems in such other countries. This includes the ability to conduct thorough and professional communications with educational officials in other countries.
• Evaluators must have the ability to explain clearly, and patiently, to the Member’s clients, end-users, and others not familiar with the field of credential evaluation, the various rationales used in preparing an evaluation report.
• Evaluators must have cross-cultural sensitivity in dealing with colleagues and clients, to the extent that they have contact with such persons.
• Evaluators must have formal education comparable to the level of a US Bachelor’s degree or its foreign equivalent.
• Evaluators must participate on an on-going basis in Member-developed, self-study and outside conferences, courses, continuing educational programs, and professional development and professional activities designed to maintain and further develop the international credential evaluator’s professional knowledge and skills in educational systems of the world and the evaluation of international credentials.
• Senior evaluators must be capable and competent to evaluate credentials from any country of the world.
• Senior evaluators must maintain significant appropriate contacts with professional associations in the professional fields for which their employer evaluates foreign educational credentials for the purposes of certification, licensure, registration, employment of professional membership upon such credentials.
• Senior evaluators must supervise international credential evaluators and support staff and have ultimate responsibility for all evaluations.
• Senior evaluators must be responsible for establishing and updating NACES members’ evaluation policies and procedures and provide training on the same for all evaluation staff.