This three-part special on WBUR radio in Boston takes a campus tour of public colleges and universities in Massachusetts to see how well schools are performing. It explores what students, partners, administrators, and business leaders think about the public higher education system, and it points to the implications for the economic future of the Commonwealth. The series concludes with a roundtable discussion featuring University of Massachusetts Board Chair Stephen Tocco, Boston Higher Education Partnership Executive Director Deborah Hirsch, and JFF Senior Vice President Richard Kazis.

 

Workforce shortages in health and health care are reaching crisis levels, prompting many employers to adopt creative approaches for recruiting and retaining workers. Employers are turning to “grow your own” strategies that help lower skilled, frontline workers advance to higher skilled, higher-paying jobs. One overarching strategy that integrates these various approaches uses the framework of career ladders, a strategy that has the potential to benefit employers and workers alike, both now and in the future.

This issue brief, by Rebecca Klein Collins and JFF’s Rebecca Starr, draws on the experience of the Baltimore Alliance for Careers in Healthcare to illustrate how one such career ladder system could work, as well as to suggest some important considerations when designing and implementing such a system. The alliance is a grantee of Jobs to Careers: Promoting Work-Based Learning for Quality Care, a national initiative focused on establishing systems that train, develop, reward, and advance current frontline health and health care workers in order to improve the quality of care and services provided to patients and communities.

Click here to download Advancing in Health and Health Care Careers.

• Resources from the National Commission on Adult Literacy
  The National Commission on Adult Literacy, a project of the Council for Advancement of Adult Literacy, focuses on the need for fundamental reform in adult education and literacy services. A number of resources are available from the commission’s April 2007 meeting, including a DVD presentation featuring Marc Tucker, president of the National Center for Education and the Economy; Forces Changing Our Nation's Future, a report by labor economist Andrew Sum of Northeastern University; and Dare to Dream, a collection of papers from a resource group of over 100 education and literacy professionals.
  
  
• Innovative Employment Approaches and Programs for Low-income Families
  The Urban Institute prepared this report to assist states and localities in identifying innovative strategies for promoting stable employment and wage growth among low-income populations. It identifies and profiles 12 innovative approaches and 51 programs for improving the economic success of low-income parents.
  
  
• The Promise of Dual Enrollment:
  Assessing Ohio’s Early College Access Policy
  For more than 18 years, Ohio high school students have been able to take college courses for both high school and college credit at no cost to them, thanks to the Ohio Post Secondary Enrollment Options policy. This report from KnowledgeWorks Foundation is the first to collect and analyze available data on the policy.
  
  
• The State Role in Accelerating Student Growth in Low-performing High Schools
  The goal of state intervention in a school or district designated as low-performing is not to punish; it is to help figure out how to improve student learning. The challenge, particularly for a chief state school officer or state board of education, is how best to leverage assistance to schools that have varying degrees of need. This Education Commission of the States issue brief examines what has been learned from research and looks at the subsequent implications for state policy.