Guest Post: A Closer Look at Accelerating Opportunity

Today, Rachel Pleasants, senior project manager at Jobs for the Future, shares the inside scoop on a national effort to restructure adult basic education, another part of the postsecondary pipeline that shares some characteristics—and students—with developmental education programs.

Accelerating Opportunity, an initiative managed by Jobs for the Future, has ambitious goals: to change the way adult basic education (ABE) is structured and delivered at the state and college levels so that substantially more low-skilled adults get the education and credentials they need to access family-supporting careers. Building on Washington’s Integrated Basic Education and Skills Training (I-BEST) program and the Breaking Through initiative, Accelerating Opportunity promotes the development of integrated pathway models that combine ABE with career and technical training.

It’s clear that postsecondary credentials are essential for accessing jobs that pay a living wage, but these credentials are out of reach for many adults without a high school diploma or GED. Low-skilled adults seeking to advance their education and career face numerous barriers to success, including a lack of career guidance and disconnected educational systems. Like developmental education students, ABE students often find themselves in long remedial sequences, with very few ultimately transitioning to postsecondary credit-bearing programs.

Through Accelerating Opportunity, JFF and our partners and funders aim to address the systemic barriers that prevent low-skilled adults from achieving their goals. We believe that in order for this to happen, states and their colleges have to focus on three areas: developing career pathways, shifting their culture to one that views ABE as an important part of the postsecondary pipeline, and building in plans for scale and sustainability. This is a major undertaking that includes changes in policy as well as practice. And not only are we asking states and colleges to engage in systems change, we are asking them to do it at scale: each implementation state in the initiative (five so far) has committed to awarding at least 3,600 credentials to students in the target population within three years.

The initiative began with a one-year design phase; in November 2011, the leadership team selected Illinois, Kansas, Kentucky, and North Carolina to move into the implementation phase. In May 2012, we added Louisiana as a fifth state. Across these five states more than forty colleges are developing and implementing integrated pathways.

Far from being deterred from the ambitious goals set out by Jobs for the Future along with its funders and partners, the states have embraced the Accelerating Opportunity vision and are already producing results. Less than a year into the implementation work, nearly all the participating colleges have pathway programs in place, enrolling a total of more than 800 students. Students and faculty are beginning to see the benefits of an integrated pathway approach and the team teaching model. Partnerships between ABE, career and technical education, the workforce system, and TANF agencies are being developed and strengthened. Some states have even begun to move toward policy changes. In Illinois, for example, ABE outcomes, including transition to postsecondary, is now part of the state’s performance funding formula. In Kansas, the eligibility criteria of a state scholarship fund have been revamped to better target AO students.

There are still many challenges ahead for the five states, including funding (especially given the loss of Pell’s Ability to Benefit provision), recruitment, professional development, and stakeholder engagement.  But we see a remarkable commitment on the part of state and college leaders to developing the types of pathways and structures that will enable many more low skilled-adults to access and succeed in postsecondary training. For example, the governors in many of the implementation states have supported JFF and other national organizations in advocating for the inclusion of an exception to the Ability to Benefit change for students enrolled in career pathway programs.

There is a growing national emphasis on career pathway development and an increasing awareness of the importance of postsecondary education, and the goals of Accelerating Opportunity are aligned with these national trends. JFF and our partners and funders believe that Accelerating Opportunity has the potential to raise the profile of adult basic education, ensure its inclusion in the college completion agenda, and ultimately provide thousands of adults with access to economic opportunity. In all this work, there is shared commitment with other national initiatives like Achieving the Dream and DEI as well as collaboration and peer learning toward a shared goal: accelerating progress for all students toward postsecondary credentials.

Linky, Linky

• Today in Inside Higher Ed, Mike Rose writes powerfully about the challenges of our existing developmental education system:

  “But now we are at a watershed moment when not only are individuals and programs trying to do something fresh with remediation, but national attention -- public and philanthropic -- is focused on the issue as well. To make significant changes, we’ll need to understand all the interlocking pieces of the remediation puzzle, something we’re not oriented to do, for our disciplinary and methodological training and public policy toolkit work against a comprehensive view of the problem.”

  Rose raises a familiar lament about disciplinary and methodological silos, drawing particular attention to the lack of interaction between intellectuals focused on remediation and those focused on basic writing.
  
• In the spirit of breaking down silos (check out last week’s post about efforts in Ohio to align dev ed with adult basic ed), we want to draw your attention to an article published this morning by The Hechinger Report about basic skills education. Sarah Butrymowicz lifts up these programs: “Across the U.S., thousands of workers stuck in low-paying jobs are trying to get a leg up through free basic-skills classes that train them in everything from elementary math to basic literacy.”
• The U.S. Department of Education is hosting a Community College Virtual Symposium on April 27 from 2:00-5:00 PM EDT. There will be presentations on policies and practices that support bridge programs for low-skill adults, alignment of secondary and postsecondary education, improved developmental education, and college-employer partnerships that promote curricular change. Register here to participate.

Guest Post: Asking the Right Questions: Aligning Basic Literacy and Developmental Education Classes in Ohio

We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: finding and implementing scalable solutions to the dev ed challenge requires integrated college and state policy strategies. Today’s post from Karen Scheid, Regional ABLE Consultant and Director of the Developmental Education Initiative for the Ohio Board of Regents, looks at the Buckeye State’s approach to widespread alignment of ABLE and developmental education instruction.

A key focus of the Ohio’s state-level Developmental Education Initiative plan has been the establishment of a pilot project to promote the alignment of remedial services between Ohio community colleges and local adult basic and literacy (ABLE) programs. Why did we select this as an approach for improving student success? Research has demonstrated that developmental education students in need of the most remediation seldom achieve a postsecondary certificate or degree. Those students who do succeed in advancing through traditionally delivered developmental education courses find that they have depleted much of their financial aid in doing so.

Could ABLE programs that are offered at no cost to students be more successful at helping those students starting at the lowest level of developmental education to acquire the skills needed to enroll in credit bearing classes or at least begin their college studies at a higher level of developmental education? Why might ABLE programs succeed in doing so? ABLE programs target instruction to specific learner needs as determined by required assessments administered to students at the program’s orientation. In addition, ABLE programs use information gleaned from learning style inventories and learning disability screenings to offer students insights into how they learn best. In recent years, more ABLE programs also are infusing both career awareness and postsecondary-related information into their day-to-day instruction and directly teaching students learning strategies to help them improve their abilities to obtain, retain, and recall information, as well as manage their learning experience.

Ohio ABLE programs have demonstrated their effectiveness at increasing students’ basic skills performance two or more grade levels per program year. But, can the way ABLE programs provide remediation be modified to accelerate the rate of progress for the students referred by the colleges? If so, what modifications lead to student success?

Since the launch of the pilot at the end of July 2010, 22 of Ohio’s 23 community colleges and their ABLE partners have submitted agreements for colleges to make ABLE referrals for students who score below an agreed level on a placement test. The agreements, most of which are in early implementation, reflect diverse approaches—some ABLE programs have established single-subject ABLE classes, while others are addressing multiple subjects within the same class; some have established  managed enrollment classes with definite beginning and end dates, while others are maintaining an open enrollment environment; most are offering the ABLE classes on the college campus; and most colleges are providing some college privileges to students referred to ABLE even if the student is not officially enrolled in college classes.

Through observing the partnerships and tracking students’ academic progress over time, we will:

• Determine  the instructional approaches and support services that are most successful in helping students transition from ABLE back to community colleges,
• Identify best practices for developing and sustaining ABLE-community college agreements for serving students who are not college ready,
• Recommend a  uniform developmental education placement policy,
• Determine state policies and decisions that could support ABLE-community college agreements.

There is no question that this project is a work in progress and that we and the college-ABLE partnerships are learning as we progress.  All of us, though, are keeping our eyes on the main reason for trying this approach—the chance that the ABLE-developmental education alignment will result in more students who are least prepared for college work ultimately succeeding at the postsecondary level.