At a time when the vast majority of Americans believe that higher education is more important than ever to a successful future, a growing percentage of Americans believe that rising costs are preventing qualified students from attending college, according to a new national survey about the quality, affordability, and access of higher education. Meanwhile, the vast majority of Americans believe that higher education could do more to control costs while helping more students enter and graduate.
These are among the findings of Squeeze Play: How Parents and the Public Look at Higher Education, a national survey of Americans, conducted by Public Agenda and the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, that has tracked public attitudes toward colleges and universities since 1993. The survey was supported with a grant from the Lumina Foundation for Education as part of its Making Opportunity Affordable initiative, which JFF manages.
Today, a record level of Americans say that a college education is necessary for success: 50 percent in 2007 compared with 31 percent in 2000, according to the report. Meanwhile, 58 percent of Americans say that college prices are going up faster than other expenses, and 62 percent agree that many qualified and motivated students do not have the opportunity for a college education, compared with 57 percent in 2003 and 50 percent in 1993. And reflecting an undercurrent of discontent, the public blames colleges and universities, in part, for spiraling costs and seems open to dramatic change.
In April, the Graduation Promise Act, designed to improve high schools and reduce dropout rates, was introduced by U.S. Senators Jeff Bingaman (D-NM), Richard Burr (R-NC), and Health, Education, Pensions, and Labor Committee Chairman Edward Kennedy (D-MA). The legislation calls for the federal government to support states, districts, and high schools in targeted efforts to help all students stay in school and graduate ready for college and work. It was proposed by JFF, the Center for American Progress, the Alliance for Excellent Education, and the National Council of La Raza, and is supported by a growing list of 33 education organizations nationally.
3National Summit on America's Silent Epidemic: Highlighting Early College High School
In May, policymakers, nonprofits, media, and business leaders participated in the "National Summit on America's Silent Epidemic" in Washington, DC. The day-long event was spearheaded by MTV, Time, Civic Enterprises, the National Governors Association, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. It provided a venue for in-depth discussion about how stakeholders can work together to address issues highlighted in The Silent Epidemic: Perspectives of High School Dropouts, based on one of the most extensive surveys of American dropouts.
Released at the Summit was Early College High Schools: Opportunity for a Lifetime, a new video prepared by Public Interest and Jobs for the Future. Looking at graduating seniors from early college high schools in Los Angeles, CA, Brooklyn, NY, and Spindale, NC, the seven-minute video illustrates how these innovative new schools combine academic rigor with the opportunity to save time and money to motivate students to stay in school, work hard, and meet serious intellectual challenges.
4Jobs to Careers: Promoting Work-Based Learning for Quality Care
Request for Proposals: Partnerships for Advancement
The Jobs to Careers Initiative has issued two Calls for Proposals for 2007. Grants will be awarded through a competitive process. Proposals must be submitted through the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Grantmaking Online system.
Jobs to Careers seeks to support partnerships to advance and reward the skill and career development of incumbent workers providing care and services on the front lines of our health and health care systems. The project is a national initiative of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, in collaboration with the Hitachi Foundation. JFF serves as the national program office for Jobs to Careers.
Jobs to Careers will award up to eight Program Grants. These will support projects that involve emerging or existing partnerships of at least one health or health care employer and at least one educational institution (e.g., a community college) that provides academic credit or an industry-recognized credential. Applicants may apply for grants of $437,750 over three years.
This is a three-stage solicitation, beginning with brief proposals that must be completed online by June 12, 2007, 3:00 p.m. EDT.
The Research Program of Jobs to Careers will award up to eight grants to support applied research to inform efforts to increase the skills and enhance career opportunities for workers providing care and services on the front lines of our health and health care systems. Applicants may apply for grants of up to $200,000 over two years.
The deadline for receipt of research proposals is June 19, 2007, at 3:00 p.m. EDT.
Work-based Learning Resources
Work-based learning is a cornerstone of Jobs to Careers. As an approach to adult education and training, it emphasizes the employee as learner and the work process itself as a source of learning. It involves methods of education and training that capture, document, formalize, and reward learning that occurs on the job.
Now available on the Jobs to Careers Web site are resources for developing work-based learning strategies. Included are examples of work-based learning, as well as resources on pre-assessment, the development of work-based curricula, pedagogy techniques and institutional support for work-based learning, prior learning case studies, distance learning, and occupational training.
5Request for Proposals: 2008 MetLife Foundation Community College Excellence Award
MetLife Foundation and Jobs for the Future invite community colleges across the nation to apply for the 2008 MetLife Community College Excellence Award. The award will honor two community colleges for their institution-wide commitment to helping low-income students, first-generation college-goers, and working adults enter and succeed in postsecondary education. Each winner will receive a $30,000 award and national recognition.
6High Standards and High Graduation Rates: Moving Forward on a Dual Agenda in Massachusetts
In April, JFF and Achieve, Inc., presented ambitious recommendations for creating an education pipeline capable of moving all Massachusetts high school students through an advanced level of skills and credentials that will connect young adults to the well-paying jobs being created in Massachusetts. The report, High Standards and High Graduation Rates, makes specific recommendations about how the Commonwealth can build on current progress, and it calls on different stakeholder groups to act quickly to move the Commonwealth closer to achieving high college- and career-ready graduation rates.
7Adult Learners in Higher Education: Barriers to Success and Strategies to Improve Results
JFF, in collaboration with Eduventures and FutureWorks, has synthesized the research literature on the challenges facing adult learners in higher education and on emerging strategies for increasing the number of adults over 24 who earn college credentials and degrees. The report recommends changes in institutional and governmental policies that might help more adults enroll in, persist in, and complete higher education credential programs. A key finding is that traditional higher education programs and policies are not well-designed for the needs of adult learners, most of whom are “employees who study” rather than “students who work.”
The report, Adult Learners in Higher Education, was prepared in 2006 for the U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration, Office of Policy Development and Research. It is now available for downloading.
The April 2007 issue of Achieving Success, the Achieving the Dream State Policy Newsletter, features an interview with Nancy Shulock, of the Institute for Higher Education Leadership and Policy at Cal. State, Sacramento. She talks about her recent publication, Rules of the Game: How State Policy Creates Barriers to Degree Completion and Impedes Student Success in the California Community Colleges. This powerful and provocative study looks at how policies designed to encourage access to community college education can unintentionally create barriers to student success--and how these consequences might be reversed.
Also featured in Achieving Success are top policy priorities for the nine Achieving the Dream states and an update on legislative activity around the nation regarding undocumented students and in-state tuition.
Achieving Success is published by JFF for Achieving the Dream: Community Colleges Count, a national initiative to help more community college students succeed.
Click here to download Achieving Success.
As part of its efforts to foster institutional change, Breaking Through provides opportunities for colleges to learn from each other through semi-annual peer learning meetings and other learning groups. In April, the 26 Breaking Through colleges participated in a two-day meeting on strategies for helping low-skilled adults succeed in college and careers. These colleges demonstrated an impressive commitment to the task at hand, and the meeting provided them with new tools, connections, and ideas. And the keynote speech, by Maria Flynn, Administrator of the Employment and Training Administration, U.S. Department of Labor, was a demonstration of the department’s interest in Breaking Through and its goals.
The meeting focused on four areas: making connections across colleges in the Breaking Through initiative, sharing lessons learned, challenges, and successes; deepening content around key high-leverage strategies, and developing foundation for institutionalizing Breaking Through at each college.
Breaking Through promotes and enhances the efforts of community colleges to help low-literacy adults prepare for and succeed in occupational and technical degree programs. The multi-year demonstration project is a collaboration between JFF and the National Council for Workforce Education.
10Workforce Innovation Networks—WINs: 10 Years of Bringing Workforce Investors Together
WINs Webinars Focus on Solutions
Over the past decade, WINs, a partnership of JFF, the National Association of Manufacturers Center for Workforce Success, and the Institute for a Competitive Workforce at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, has demonstrated the usefulness and power of business organizations within a community that bring workforce investment organizations together. This spring, WINs presented two Webinars describing the value that employer organizations add to their local publicly funded workforce investment system and offering solutions for improving the performance of these partnerships.
WINs at Workforce Innovations 2007
Drawing further on the initiative’s 10 years of experience, the WINs partners will offer a session at Workforce Innovations 2007 in July. This conference will explore ways in which key partners, including business, economic development, education and workforce systems, can collaborate and innovate to break down boundaries and create a competitive advantage.
Double the Numbers 2007 will ask the nation to take on the urgent goal of doubling the number of low-income students who earn postsecondary credentials. To do so will require a dramatic increase in both high school and postsecondary completion rates. Over two days, several hundred invited participants will examine promising practices and policies—developed by schools, school districts, states, the federal government, postsecondary systems, and nonprofit organizations—designed to double the numbers.
DTN07 will build on a 2003 conference, also organized by JFF, that first convened practitioners and policymakers from across K-12 and higher education under the idea of “doubling the numbers” of college graduates. Like the first Double the Numbers conference, DTN07 will bring together three communities that tend to operate separately: those concerned with high school reform, those committed to improving postsecondary outcomes, and those working on better aligning and integrating the two systems. With renewed commitment to the goal of doubling the numbers, together they will address these central questions:
What progress have states made since 2003 toward doubling the numbers?
What do recent data tell us about the size of the problem and where the greatest leaks occur in the education pipeline?
What policies and practices appear to make a difference?
What are the most intractable problems? Why do they resist change? And what are effective strategies and policy opportunities for addressing them?
At DTN07, JFF will release Minding the Gap: Why Integrating High School with College Makes Sense and How to Do It and several other new publications. Also, during DTN07, the Alliance for Excellent Education is holding a complementary convening on federal high school policy entitled: From No Child Left Behind to Every Child a Graduate.
A Decade of Urban School Reform:
Persistence and Progress in the Boston Public Schools
In the last decade, the Boston Public Schools has undergone critical reforms that have been of intense interest to school leaders and policymakers throughout the country. This new book, edited by S. Paul Reville, looks at this critical era in the Boston schools and distills valuable insights and lessons for school leaders and reformers everywhere. Contributors include JFF’s Lili Allen and Adria Steinberg.
ED in 08 Campaign Launched
Strong American Schools is a nonpartisan public awareness and action campaign offering a voice to every American who supports “ED in 08.” Its goal is to ensure that the nation engages in a rigorous debate and to make education a top priority in the 2008 presidential election. ED in 08 hopes that candidates will offer genuine leadership rather than empty rhetoric and tell voters how they intend to strengthen America’s schools so all students receive the education they deserve.
Urban Schools That Work:
Lessons and Questions from Detroit’s University Preparatory Academy
Peter Plastrik and Doug Ross write about a public school in Detroit that aims to demonstrate that “urban learners”—low-income, minority children—can achieve dramatically better education outcomes if their schools are designed to engage them in learning. When it was founded in 2000, University Preparatory Academy committed to “90/90” goals: 90 percent of high school students would graduate, and 90 percent of graduates would enroll in college and other postsecondary learning. UPA now has 1,200 students, K-12, and its first high school graduating class will be in June.
Expanding Learning Time Through Supplemental Educational Services
In this paper from the Center for American Progress, Elena Rocha and Cynthia G. Brown examine the accountability and school improvement provisions of the 2001 No Child Left Behind Act. They propose that expanded learning time be included as an allowable use of supplemental educational services funds to increase student learning and add a whole-school improvement strategy to a pot of money that is currently targeted to individual students.
The Alternative Staffing Alliance
The ICA Group has launched this national association dedicated to supporting and promoting social-purpose staffing as a sustainable workforce development model. With funding from the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, the Alliance will create a dynamic community of practice and provide alternative staffing organizations with tools and resources to more effectively market their services and support disadvantaged individuals’ participation and success in the mainstream labor market.
Can Massachusetts Community Colleges Make the Grade? Commonwealth magazine acting editor Michael Jonas provides an overview of some of the issues facing community colleges in Massachusetts. As JFF’s Richard Kazis notes in the article, “No number of small, boutique, one-off programs will do the trick. What’s needed is an institution-wide approach to student success.”
Business Tools for Better Schools Toolkit
This toolkit from Achieve is designed to engage, energize, and focus company and business organization efforts in education reform. It is geared toward both policy and practical involvement, primarily at the state and local levels, in key K-12 education reform business priorities.
Now More than Ever: Americans Value Higher Education But Have Concerns 
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In April, the Graduation Promise Act, designed to improve high schools and reduce dropout rates, was introduced by U.S. Senators Jeff Bingaman (D-NM), Richard Burr (R-NC), and Health, Education, Pensions, and Labor Committee Chairman Edward Kennedy (D-MA). The legislation calls for the federal government to support states, districts, and high schools in targeted efforts to help all students stay in school and graduate ready for college and work. It was proposed by JFF, the Center for American Progress, the Alliance for Excellent Education, and the National Council of La Raza, and is supported by a growing list of 33 education organizations nationally. 
The April 2007 issue of Achieving Success, the Achieving the Dream State Policy Newsletter, features an interview with Nancy Shulock, of the Institute for Higher Education Leadership and Policy at Cal. State, Sacramento. She talks about her recent publication, Rules of the Game: How State Policy Creates Barriers to Degree Completion and Impedes Student Success in the California Community Colleges. This powerful and provocative study looks at how policies designed to encourage access to community college education can unintentionally create barriers to student success--and how these consequences might be reversed. 
As part of its efforts to foster institutional change, Breaking Through provides opportunities for colleges to learn from each other through semi-annual peer learning meetings and other learning groups. In April, the 26 Breaking Through colleges participated in a two-day meeting on strategies for helping low-skilled adults succeed in college and careers. These colleges demonstrated an impressive commitment to the task at hand, and the meeting provided them with new tools, connections, and ideas. And the keynote speech, by Maria Flynn, Administrator of the Employment and Training Administration, U.S. Department of Labor, was a demonstration of the department’s interest in Breaking Through and its goals. 
