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Home | Resources
Breaking Through Publications
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- Breaking Through report
Around the country, innovative community colleges are playing a larger role in helping low-skilled adults gain the valuable skills and credentials that are the gateway to family-supporting careers. Breaking Through looks at whether--and how--these institutions can significantly improve the odds that low-income, low-skilled adults earn the college-level occupational and technical credentials that remain elusive for many Americans. The study focuses on low-skill, low-literacy adults and how they can move to college and get what they need to succeed in good jobs. It defines "success" to include both educational and economic advancement. And it identifies a set of powerful, transferable strategies rather than describing several effective schools/programs whose complete program design may not seem replicable.
- Breaking Through: The Initiative After One Year
- BreakThroughs
BreakThroughs is the newsletter for the Breaking Through initiative. It "tells the story” of Breaking Through colleges and their partners and how they are creating more effective pathways for low-skilled adults to enter and complete occupational and technical degree programs in community colleges. Each issue of BreakThroughs contains news of the initiative's accomplishments and the challenges of the work, as well as resources—information, tools, examples—that can aid efforts to help low-skilled adults succeed in college and careers.
Breaking Through Tools
Peer Learning Materials
And from the Jobs for the Future website
Public Policy
States are using various approaches to help undocumented students fulfill their college aspirations. Community college systems, which typically serve as the first point of entry into post-secondary education for many of the nation's underserved and low-income populations, are key stakeholders in these approaches. This policy brief, created for Achieving the Dream, a national initiative to increase the success of underserved groups in community colleges, explores and highlights some of the actions being taken by states and institutions to improve the access of undocumented students to postsecondary opportunities, particularly in public community colleges. The brief focuses on the five states currently participating in the Initiative, all of which have large or rapidly growing immigrant populations. It also reports on developments in several other states and at the federal level. Achieving the Dream is funded by the Lumina Foundation for Education.
Access to Community College for Undocumented Students originally appeared in 2005. A 2007 update analyzes activities in a number of states that moved toward introducing and enacting legislation that would award in-state tuition and other benefits to undocumented students who meet common criteria.
- State Policy and Advocacy for Student Success
"Although the patterns for funding for community colleges vary greatly from state to state," writes JFF’s Richard Kazis in the April/May 2006 issue of Community College Journal, "colleges in most states derive somewhere near half their institutional funding from state budgets. Not surprisingly, then, what transpires in the halls of state government is of great interest to community college leaders."
- Making Performance Accountability Work: English Lessons for U.S. Community Colleges
In the United States, efforts to use performance accountability as a way to drive improvement in public higher education institutions and systems have yielded mixed results. A more encouraging story has unfolded in England. There, a nationwide accountability system for further education colleges—England’s community-college counterparts—has led to impressive increases in student outcomes since it was implemented in 1992. Students from disadvantaged backgrounds have made particularly large gains. Making Performance Accountability Work takes a detailed look at the policy innovations in England. For U.S. policymakers, they provide both reason for caution and guidance for designing and implementing better performance measurement and funding systems.
- Building Skills, Increasing Economic Vitality: A Handbook of Innovative State Policies
States have been exploring a variety of strategies to increase economic vitality by building the educational and technical skills of the workforce. In this handbook for policymakers and practitioners, Jobs for the Future showcases the range of policies and approaches that states have taken and their successes in meeting ambitious goals. Building Skills, Increasing Economic Vitality highlights some of the most promising and exciting developments in state workforce and skill development policy, particularly in four areas of policy innovation: redesigning financing for workforce development; strengthening workforce development/economic development linkages; building the capacity of new labor market institutions; and expanding community college capacity. This report is designed to help states learn quickly from the best efforts of their peers—and to accelerate the trends toward coherent clusters of state policies that build skills and promote economic vitality over the long run.
- State Data Systems and Privacy Concerns: Strategies for Balancing Public Interests
Better institutional systems for collecting and reporting student outcome data could help institutional, state, and national policymakers improve those outcomes, yet the collection of data confronts another powerful public interest: individual privacy. This policy brief, prepared for Achieving the Dream, a national initiative to increase the success of underserved groups in community colleges, explores how states can balance the interests of accountability and privacy. It describes how the five Achieving the Dream states and several other states have addressed the collection and use of student record data within the limits and constraints set by federal privacy laws, with particular reference to the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA). Achieving the Dream is funded by the Lumina Foundation for Education.
- Access to Community College for Undocumented Immigrants: A Guide for State Policymakers
States are using various approaches to help undocumented students fulfill their college aspirations. Community college systems, which typically serve as the first point of entry into postsecondary education for many of the nation's underserved and low-income populations, are key stakeholders in these approaches. This policy brief, created for Achieving the Dream, a national initiative to increase the success of underserved groups in community colleges, explores and highlights some of the actions being taken by states and institutions to improve the access of undocumented students to postsecondary opportunities, particularly in public community colleges. The brief focuses on the five states currently participating in the Initiative, all of which have large or rapidly growing immigrant populations. It also reports on developments in several other states and at the federal level. Achieving the Dream is funded by the Lumina Foundation for Education.
Effective Practices
- The Landscape of Noncredit Workforce Education: State Policies & Community College Practices
The report provides detailed findings on state policies and community college practices from the Community College Research Center's study of community college noncredit workforce education. Drawing on interviews with state policymakers in all 50 states and case studies of 20 community colleges in 10 states, the report offers recommendations for policy and practice. Noncredit workforce education can play in important role in responding to local labor market demands, while also connecting students to long-term educational opportunities and documenting outcomes in a meaningful way.
- Adult Learners in Higher Education: Barriers to Success and Strategies to Improve Results
This report synthesizes the research literature on the challenges facing adult learners in higher education today and on emerging strategies for increasing the number of adults over 24 who earn college credentials and degrees. The synthesis is meant to provide perspectives on key issues facing adult learners and the institutions that serve them.
Prepared for the U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration, Office of Policy Development and Research, in collaboration with Eduventures and Futureworks, the report identifies the primary obstacles that adult learners face in trying to earn credentials with labor market value. It review the research on innovative practices that address the particular constraints facing adult learners. And it recommends changes in institutional and governmental policies that might help more adults enroll in, persist in, and complete higher education credential programs.
- Improving Workplace Opportunities for Limited English Speaking Workers
Our society includes millions of people whose contributions and desire to integrate often go unnoticed and unfulfilled. Immigrants play a vital role in America, but we have yet to fully understand or act on how best to help them achieve their full potential as members of U.S. society and workers in our economy. Moreover, from now until 2015, half the growth in the U.S. working-age population will come from immigrants. And for the following two decades, all of that growth will be from immigration. Thus, it behooves us to recognize both the contributions and the needs of our immigrant workers.
In fact, research by JFF and the National Association of Manufacturer's Center for Workforce Success identified a number of initiatives that have both promoted business goals and strengthened workers' English and technical skills. These programs combine technical skills training with English language instruction. Employers support them because they have measurable, positive impacts on the bottom line.
- A Survey of Selected Work Readiness Certificates The United Way of Rhode Island asked Jobs for the Future to prepare a scan of work readiness certificates that have emerged throughout the United States in recent years. Like many other states, Rhode Island finds itself challenged by employers who are demanding "work-ready"job candidates and significant numbers of residents who have trouble getting a job due to lack of educational and professional credentials. This report summarizes five of the nation's many work readiness certificates, which are representative of the diverse range of such initiatives in terms of target population, certification requirements, geography, and other factors: the WAGE Certificate Program, the Workforce Skills Certification System, the Work Certified Program, the WorkKeys Career Readiness Certification, and the National Work Readiness Credential. The report highlights the benefits and costs associated with each, as well as issues that stakeholders should consider in determining which approaches would most benefit their state's unique demographics, economy, and political landscape.
- Strategies for Success: Promising Practices from the 2004 Winners of the MetLife Foundation Community College Excellence Award
MetLife Foundation created the Community College Excellence Award to celebrate institutions that are helping low-skill youth and adults to enter college—and achieve their economic goals. The Award recognizes community colleges whose policies and practices provide pathways to opportunity for large numbers of individuals from the following populations: first-generation college-goers, at-risk and out-of-school youth, unemployed and underemployed adults, adults with limited English language proficiency, and others who lack the skills necessary for college success.
Strategies for Success draws on the experience of the seven finalists for the 2004 MetLife Foundation Community College Excellence Award. It presents promising examples from community colleges dedicated to helping underprepared youth and adults succeed in college and careers, highlighting practices and strategies in three areas:
- Recruitment and outreach: enrolling the underserved;
- Developmental education: getting students ready for college success; and
- Student support services: from access to success.
- Walking the Talk: Community Colleges Where Everyone Wins
Through personal stories from students, faculty, staff, and leaders, Walking the Talk brings to life the programs, policies, and supports that help underserved youth and adults meet their educational and career goals at two award-winning colleges. City College of San Francisco and Community College of Denver were honored, in 2004, with the MetLife Foundation Community College Excellence Award. This award celebrates colleges that demonstrate a singular, institution-wide commitment to low-income students, first-generation college-goers, and working adults.
- Changing Courses: Instructional Innovations That Help Low-Income Students Succeed in Community College
In recent years, interest has grown in the role of community colleges in helping low-skill and low-income individuals advance toward self-sufficiency. MDRC's Opening Doors Project has both recognized that potential and identified obstacles to realizing it. As part of this project, MDRC asked Jobs for the Future to look at curricular and program redesign strategies that community colleges are using to speed advancement from lower skill levels into credential programs and to shorten the time needed to earn a credential. Changing Courses presents a framework for understanding the range of experimentation taking place in community colleges, and it identifies programs that exemplify promising approaches.
- A Future That Works: First-Person Accounts of Community Colleges That Change Lives
A Future That Works brings to life the profound impact of community colleges on students who must juggle school, work, and family. With personal stories from the winners of the 2002 MetLife Foundation Community College Excellence Awards, A Future That Works puts a human face on the struggles and accomplishments of students confronting barriers of poverty, language, or limited expectations of their potential.
- Driving Change in Community Colleges
Community colleges can play a pivotal role in improving the options for success and advancement available to low-income Americans. Driving Change in Community Colleges, prepared by Jobs for the Future for the Ford Foundation, identifies high-leverage strategies that can change the alignment of forces, pressures, mandates, and incentives that make it hard for promising practices to diffuse widely and reach significant scale.
And from the National Council for Workforce Educators
Additional Resources
Adult Learning
- Returning to Learning: Adults' Success in College is Key to America's Future
How can we increase baccalaureate degree attainment for nontraditional students, while preserving the strengths of existing programs (such as those in community colleges) that do not end in a four-year degree? This and other questions are addressed by this publication developed by the Emerging Pathways project, a research project focused on issues of access, equity and success for adult and non-traditional learners in post-secondary education. The report describes a number of issues and presents potential strategies for change.
Available at: www.luminafoundation.org/publications/ReturntolearningApril2007.pdf
- Adult Education in America
A new study funded by OVAE, this report by the Educational Testing Service (ETS) provides a comprehensive picture of federally supported adult education activities in the US. Data from more than 6,000 adult learners in 1,200 programs nationwide revealed that a large share of learners demonstrated skills in the lowest level of proficiency scales. This is the first nationally representative study of learners and programs using comparable measures to assess participants' literacy and numeracy skills. The survey is the first allowing researchers to compare adult education students' skills to those of the general adult population. The study also marks the first time a large-scale measure of literacy skills was conducted in both English and Spanish. An interactive data tool is also available.
Available at: http://www.ets.org
- Review of Adult Learning and Literacy, Volume 7
This newest volume in the annual series from NCSALL presents chapters on the persistence of adult education students, adult education program quality, assistive technology, individualized group instruction, health literacy, research on professional development and teacher change, adult literacy and numeracy development in Australia, adult basic education in South Africa, and annotated bibliography on workplace education.
Available at: www.ncsall.net/index.php?id=1175
- Building Blocks for Building Skills: An Inventory of Adult Learning Models and Innovations
- This report from the Council for Adult and Experiential Learning (CAEL), produced for the U.S. Department of Labor’s Workforce Innovation in Regional Economic Development (WIRED) initiative, presents the key components – or building blocks – of effective adult learning and skill development programs: need focused planning and analysis, progress and success focused program design, adult centered implementation, and strategic partnerships. The building blocks have been identified from existing research on this topic, the experience and networks of CAEL, and documented best practices of practitioners nationwide. The report presents descriptions of and background for each of the key components for adult learning and skill training programs, and examples of real programs that have used these building blocks to achieve their goals. It also discusses some of the most effective and promising innovations that various organizations have tried and/or promoted.
Available under Public Policy at: http://www.cael.org/publications_research_whitepapers.htm
- Persistence Among Adult Education Students
The National Institute for Literacy and the National Center for the Study of Adult Learning and Literacy present "Persistence Among Adult Education Students Panel Discussion." This 30-minute video focuses on persistence in ABE, ESOL, and GED programs, and features a NCSALL study entitled, "Supporting the Persistence of Adult Basic Education Students."
Dr. John Cummings’ presentation examines student persistence in adult education programs. He offers a working definition of persistence, examines existing research, and describes NCSALL's three-phase study of the factors that support and inhibit persistence. Two practitioners, Kathy Endaya and Ernest Best, are also on the panel.
Available (in video-stream and transcript) at: http://www.nifl.gov/nifl/webcasts/persistence/persistence_cast.html
(You may need to cut and paste the whole web address in your browser, or you could try this shorter version: http://tinyurl.com/s6tcu. Macintosh users will need to select the Quicktime format for viewing the presentation.)
Community College Leaders
- Shaping Organizational Futures Through Generative Leadership
This article explores generative leadership, which creates the kind of space where imaginative ideas can occur. As community colleges face a number of challenges, helping participants prepare for new ways of engaging in meaningful discussion is central to the objective of achieving innovative outcomes. Tracy Edwards outlines new roles that community college leaders can play in fostering future institutional success. Available at: http://www.league.org/publication/leadership/issue.cfm. Immigrants
- The Integration of Immigrants in the Workplace
This report from the Institute for Work and the Economy documents the findings of an exploratory initiative created to help human resource professionals, community activists, educators, labor activists and professionals in the public workforce system seek and develop solutions to the real-life challenges of integrating immigrants in the workplace. The primary objective is to illuminate polices, practices, and processes that lead to the successful integration of immigrant workers. Immigrants are a significant part of a rapidly growing number of labor markets. Their integration needs to be a major component of an area’s workforce strategy, whether it is aimed immediately at high wage-high skill labor, or initially at lower-skilled workers that are afforded opportunities to pursue career pathways leading to high skill jobs. The report offers seven basic lessons for aligning policies and practices to successfully and simultaneously achieve integration at three levels: employer, worker, and community.
Available at: http://www.workandeconomy.org/
- Supporting English Language Acquisition: Opportunities for Foundations to Strengthen the Social and Economic Well-Being of Immigrant Families
This briefing paper from Grantmakers Concerned with Immigrants and Refugees highlights several promising practices in promoting language acquisition, drawing examples primarily from California, Illinois, and Texas, states with longstanding immigrant populations and historically high numbers of immigrant children and families. Together, the five models featured in this paper have been replicated in twenty-seven states and the District of Columbia and five countries. The paper also provides a set of recommendations for foundations interested in supporting approaches that help immigrants and refugees learn English, while also strengthening family functioning and economic well-being for low English proficiency adults and children.
Available at: http://www.gcir.org/resources/gcir_publications/Language%20Acquisition%20Paper.pdf
Career Pathways
- Career Pathways Toolkit: Innovative Strategies and Tools for Career Pathways
The toolkit is a new resource for state and local leaders working to expand education, training and learning opportunities for America's current and emerging workforce. Replay the webinar which featured the toolkit author and experts from the field of community college policy and workforce development on how to use the toolkit.
Available at: www.communitycollegecentral.org
- Career Pathways in Ohio/KnowledgeWorks Foundation Career Pathways Video
This new video highlights regional efforts in Cincinnati and Lima, two of six sites that have been funded by the State of Ohio, KnowledgeWorks Foundation, and the Ford Foundation through the Ohio Bridges to Opportunity Initiative.
Available at: www.workforcestrategy.org
- Career Pathways: Aligning Public Resources to Support Individual and Regional Economic Advancement in the Knowledge Economy
- The report by Davis Jenkins of the Workforce Strategy Center, defines "career pathways", an approach for effective regional workforce and economic development. It compares career pathways to other education and workforce preparation models, and describes its potential benefits and limitations. The report includes an in-depth case study of Elizabethtown, Kentucky, where leaders have used a career pathways framework to help to revitalize their flagging economy.
Available at: http://www.workforcestrategy.org/
See also the Workforce Strategy Center’s toolkit for policy makers and practitioners. It provides examples, lessons learned, and useful tools for developing career pathways collected from across the country.
Available at http://www.workforcestrategy.org/toolkit.html
- Career Pathways in Oregon
Explore exciting examples of career pathways on Oregon’s Pathways to Advancement website.
Available at: http://www.oregon.gov/WORKSOURCE/PATHWAYS/Type.shtml
Learn more about the value of Career Pathways through the stories of Portland Community College students who have completed them.
Available at: http://www.pcc.edu/continuing%2Deducation/career%2Dpathways/profiles/
- Jobs Aren’t Enough: Toward a New Economic Mobility for Low-Income Families
A powerful case for a focus on the advancement of low-income workers, this book by Roberta Iverson and Annie Armstrong tells the story of participants in the five Annie E. Casey Foundation’s Jobs Initiative sites (Philadelphia, Milwaukee, New Orleans, St. Louis, and Seattle). Jobs Aren’t Enough is an ethnographic rendition of the experiences of twenty-five families who are trying to transition from prior economic disadvantage to family- supporting wages through work. The book demonstrates that the social institutions of family, education, labor market, and policy all intersect to influence—and inhibit—employment mobility. It proposes a new mobility paradigm grounded in cooperation and collaboration across social institutions, along with revitalization of the "public will."
Available at: http://www.temple.edu/tempress/titles/1755_reg.html.
State Policies
- High School to Colleges and Careers: Aligning State Policies 2007
The Southern Regional Education board (SREB) released this report. Different state policies govern many key areas of college readiness, including: the courses and tests required in high school, early outreach, joint enrollment programs, college admission and placement standards, colleges' reports to high schools about their graduates performance, and state financial aid. This update to the 2005 and 2002 reports provides a one-page summary of each SREB state's policies in these areas.
Available at: http://www.sreb.org/main/Goals/Publications/06E20_Aligning_2007.pdf.
Other
Workforce Strategy Center has collaborated with CCbenefits/Economic Modeling Specialists Incorporated to develop a set of reports designed to help planners analyse their regional economies (defined by counties or ZIP codes). The first, the Gap Analysis Report, provides a concise overview and analysis of the regional economy using demographic, educational attainment, industry, and occupational data. The second, the Regional Industry Focus Report, provides a more detailed analysis of the region based on a specified industry sector or cluster including the top occupations and associated educational requirements.
Available at: www.workforcestrategy.org
- Education Pays: Second Update
This supplement to Education Pays 2004: The Benefits of Higher Education for Individuals and Society, presents information on differences in earnings by educational level, across age groups, and across demographic groups. It also presents the benefits of an educated workforce for economic growth and family development.
Available at: www.collegeboard.com/prod_downloads/press/cost06/education_pays_06.pdf
- Innovative Employment Approaches and Programs for Low-Income Families
A new report from the Urban, this document was prepared for the Administration for Children and Families at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The study distills key lessons from the body of research undertaken to date and identifies and profiles several innovative approaches and programs for improving the employment prospects of low-income families. This information can help policy makers and program administrators identify strategies to promote stable employment and wage growth among low-income populations.
Available at: www.urban.org/url.cfm?ID=411467
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