Rachel Pleasants McDonnell, Jobs for the Future

October 15, 2014

Improving & Designing Pathways for Adult Learners at Our Community Colleges

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Today’s Presentation

• Overview of the Accelerating Opportunity Model

• Best Practices for Program Development and Implementation

• Opportunities and Challenges

• Resources

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Accelerating Opportunity: An Overview

• Multi-state, multi-college career pathways initiative

• Started with a planning year in 2011

• Approaching the end of the three-year implementation phase now

• Primary emphasis: redesigning Adult Basic Education and Career/Technical Education to enable more low-income adults to complete postsecondary credentials that are of value in the labor market.

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7 States, Over 85 Colleges

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Programs lack supports and are ill-equipped to meet the needs of non-

traditional students

The “black hole” of developmental education:

Low completion rates for underprepared students

Remediation not customized to career pathway

requirements

Lack of alignment with career/technical credential programs postsecondary entrance requirements

Traditional ABE/GED Programs

Developmental Education

Postsecondary Career

Programs

Multiple Loss PointsLow rates of program completion and credential attainment

Disconnected Educational Pathways

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• Accelerated skill-building integrated with credit coursework

• Support through gate-keeper courses

• Intensive transition counseling

• Comprehensive supplemental services

• Intensive counseling

• Flexible program options

• Job placement

More Adult Learners Succeeding in ABE to Credential Pathways

Articulated Career Pathways

Stackable Credentials with

Labor Market Value

Accelerated and Integrated ABE and GED programs

• Career exploration

• Contextualized learning

• Skill-building for postsecondary/career success

• College and career counseling

Streamlined Adult Education Pathways

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Accelerating Opportunity’s Core Components

Accelerated Credential Attainment

Linkages to Comprehensive Career/Technical Pathways

Team Teaching Credit-Bearing Pathways

Supplemental Instruction Intensive Support Services

Demonstrated Alignment with Labor Market

Demand

Partnerships with WIBs and CBOs

The Accelerating Opportunity Instructional Model

Career/ Technical Pathway

At least 25% overlap

in classroom instruction

Adult Education

Support Services

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Current Progress: Enrollments, Credentials, Systems Change

Total

Enrollments

Total Credentials

EarnedTotal Earning 12+ credits

Percent of Enrollments Earning 12+

CreditsTotal

Employed

Georgia 161 95 95 59.0%

Illinois 701 1043 272 38.8% 294

Kansas 2386 4030 989 41.5% 834

Kentucky 1343 1702 1014 75.5%

Louisiana 1325 1120 82 6.2% 97

TOTAL 5916 7990 2452 41.4% 1225

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Student Population

• Adults (17+) with low basic skills

– 6th-12th grade in math or writing

– Low English language skills

• With or without a high school credential/GED

Gender

15% 23% 18% 22% 19%

0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100%

17-19

20-22

23-26

27-35

36-54

>54

Age

47% 53%

0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100%

Male

Female

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Best Practices

• Career Pathways/Stackable Credentials

• Accelerated, Relevant Instruction

• Comprehensive Supports

• Labor Market Alignment

• Partnerships

• Focus on Policy and Practice

• Buy-In at Multiple Levels

• Provide Professional Development for Faculty & Staff

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Best Practice: Stackable Credentials

• Series of interconnected education and training programs

• Start with short-term credentials

• Include multiple stop-out points – and make it easy for students to come back

• Build in ladders and lattices

• Encourage students to continue on the pathway

• Develop maps that help students visualize their career and educational plans

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Best Practices: Integrated (or Contextualized) Instruction

Strategies:

• Team Teaching

• Contextualization

• Dual Enrollment

Benefits:

• Promotes Acceleration:

– Students need to earn a credential and find a job quickly – they don’t have time to spend a year or more on remediation

– Academic/CTE content covered simultaneously, not sequentially

• Relevance:

– Connect basic skills instructions to students’ career goals

• Embedded support:

– Model how to be an effective student

– Focus on study skills, time management

– Supplemental instruction to build skills

Best Practice: Comprehensive Support Services

Barriers to Persistence and Completion

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Best Practice: Comprehensive Support Services

• Academic Advising: to support academic success

• Nonacademic Advising: to foster students’ sense of connection to the college, enhance self-confidence, ability to access resources and make decisions

• Career Services: to identify student goals, share information, ensure alignment of courses with goals and facilitate transition to employment

• Financial Services: to support financing of studies and build students’ self-efficacy around managing finances

• Social Services and Counseling: to help manage personal lives to support persistence and completion

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Best Practice: Comprehensive Support Services

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• Provide a full range of coordinate supports• Make supports an integral part of the program

model• Develop partnerships to complement college

resources• Coordinate provision of supports among partners• Communicate the availability of supports to

students, faculty, and staff• Reduce barriers to access• Remember the value of relationships

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Best Practice: Partnerships & Stakeholder Engagement

• Why?

– Leverage resources, expertise

– Create widespread buy-in and momentum for systems change

• Who?

– State-level partnerships between education, workforce, commerce, social services

– Local partnerships:

• Workforce Investment Boards/One-Stops

• Community-based Organizations

• Employers

• Industry Associations

• Making it work:

– Partnerships take time to develop – both sides need to see a benefit

– Ongoing engagement, not episodic

– Communication is essential – be sure to have a consistent message

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Best Practices: Labor Market Alignment

• Why is this important?– Students need jobs, so local demand needs to exist!– Employers need to be confident that students have the

credentials/skills/knowledge needed to be successful• Strategies for assessing demand:

– Traditional and real-time labor market data– Input from local employers, WIBs, industry

associations• Best practices:

– Assessing programs and curricula – are students learning what they need to know?

– Balancing output with employer demand

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Best Practice: Dual Focus on Policy and Practice

• Why include a policy component?

– Remove barriers to implementation

– Incentivize adoption of the model

– Provide new sources of funding

– Promote sustainability

– Facilitate culture change

• Examples from Accelerating Opportunity:

– Delayed placement exams

– Enrollment policies

– Tuition funding

– Performance-based funding measures

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Best Practice: Dual Focus on Policy and Practice

Best Practices

• Start with assessment

• Develop a policy team

• Develop a work plan

• Examine both hard and soft policy

• Create feedback loops between state systems and institutions

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Best Practice: Buy-In at Multiple Levels

Why is this important?

• Commitment of high-level leadership helps with changing institutional policy change reallocate resources

• High-level support can legitimatize the initiative

• You also need buy-in from the people charged with implementation – faculty, staff, support services, college admissions and registrar

Best practices:

• State and local commitment to the goals of the initiative

• Clear messaging about why the initiative is needed and the problems it is trying to solve

• Frequent communication about initiative progress – what’s working and what’s challenging

• Ongoing professional development and communities of practices

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Best Practice: Professional Development for Faculty and Staff

Why is this important?

• Changing instructional practice is difficult

• Those administering a new program need guidance as well, including clear definition of roles and responsibilities.

Best practices:

• Provide ongoing PD, not just at the beginning of the initiative

• Provide a range of PD opportunities that target those just getting started as well as more experienced faculty and staff

• Provide PD to instructional staff, support staff, and administrators

• Create opportunities for faculty and staff to share best practices within and across institutions

• Make sure faculty and staff have someone to turn to when they have questions or when challenges arise

• Develop internal expertise to train new faculty and staff as they come on board

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Resources

Initiative Overview:

• http://www.jff.org/initiatives/accelerating-opportunity

Publication: Promoting Persistence through Comprehensive Supports

• http://www.jff.org/initiatives/accelerating-opportunity

Accelerating Opportunity Field Guide:

• http://www.acceleratingopportunity.org/field-guide/

Resource Library:

• http://acceleratingopportunity.org/virtualacademy/resources

RACHEL PLEASANTS MCDONNELLSENIOR PROJECT MANAGER, JOBS FOR THE FUTURERMCDONNELL@JFF.ORG617-728-4446 X187

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