State Policy and Helping Low-Skilled Adults Enter and Succeed in
College and Careers Breaking Through, a multi-year initiative of JFF and the National Council for Workforce Education, seeks to help low-literacy adults prepare for and succeed in college, with JFF coordinating research on state policies that can support institutional strategies. The policy series overview, prepared by the Center for Law and Social Policy, is now available. In the coming months, JFF will release reports on student financial aid policy, academic remediation policy, and state institutional funding policies. All reports will be available at: www.breakingthroughcc.org, www.jff.org, and www.ncwe.org.
What to Measure and Reward at Community Colleges
Fewer than half of degree-seeking community college students achieve their goals. Policies that reward progress and success might help improve that record. George R. Boggs, president and CEO of the American Association of Community Colleges, and Marlene B. Seltzer, president and CEO of Jobs for the Future, address this issue with reference to performance funding incentives in Washington State.
Achieving the Dream State Policy Priorities
Now available are materials summarizing the work of the 15 Achieving the Dream state policy teams as they seek to advance policy agendas that support community college student success. The materials include “Framework for State Policies to Support Student Success,” “Achieving the Dream State Policy Accomplishments 2006-07,” and “Achieving the Dream: Trends in State Policy.”
Raising Graduation Rates in an Era of High Standards:
Five Commitments for State Action
State leaders are grappling with one of the most difficult and important challenges of K-12 reform: how to substantially increase the percentage of young people graduating from high school, while also continuing to align academic standards with the skills and knowledge required for success in higher education and employment. Addressing that challenge requires policymakers to directly target closing achievement and graduation gaps between low-income and struggling students and their peers.
Massachusetts College and Career Readiness Leadership Summit
In January, several hundred leaders, practitioners, and policymakers came together for this summit, cosponsored by the Massachusetts Department of Education, Board of Higher Education, Office of the Governor, and other agencies and organizations, including JFF. In the plenary, David T. Conley, director of the Center for Education Policy Research, spoke on “What Do We Mean by ‘College and Career Readiness’ and How Do We Get Our Students Ready?” Other sessions included “Successful Transitions from High School to College,” “Dual Enrollment: Creating Pathways to College,” and “First-Generation Student Voices.”
The Early College High School Initiative:
Portrait in Numbers
This four-page summary provides the most current data on the growth and impact of the Early College High School Initiative, including early information on student outcomes, descriptions of the various types of early college schools, and much more.
Empowering Students:
How Georgia College Early College Changes Student Aspirations
Housed in the Georgia College & State University School of Education, Georgia College Early College offers hope of a brighter future to its students and their families in its rural community. This case study by JFF’s Anne Newton examines how GCEC achieves its mission of college success for all. GCEC’s college-going culture, small classes, and the adults and college students who work with the school’s students enable these young people to believe in themselves as learners, achieve academically and socially, and raise their aspirations.
Why Admissions Offices Should Be Interested in Early College High Schools Recruitment and Retention magazine interviewed JFF Associate Vice President Michael Webb, who discusses the academic structures, social supports, and other factors that prepare early college high school students for success in college.
Beating the Odds: What High-Achieving Schools
Can Teach About Closing the Math Achievement Gap
One of the most persistent inequities in U.S. education is the gap in math achievement along income and race lines. Yet some secondary schools “beat the odds,” producing consistently strong math performance with students who likely would fail in traditional settings. JFF’s Susan Goldberger and Katie Bayerl highlight overlooked obstacles to raising math achievement and describe the key characteristics of model schools that are rising to the challenge. JFF prepared this report for the Carnegie-IAS Commission on Mathematics and Science Education.
The STEM Workforce Challenge:
Creating a Competitive Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics Workforce
Long-term strategies to maintain and increase living standards and promote opportunity require coordinated efforts among public, private, and nonprofits to promote innovation and prepare an adequate supply of qualified workers for employment in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics fields. In this report prepared for the U.S. Department of Labor, JFF notes areas in which the department can increase its role in strengthening the STEM pipeline: building the gateway to STEM careers; enhancing the capacity of talent development institutions; and catalyzing and supporting innovation, entrepreneurship, and economic growth.
Taking Care of Business:
The Lessons of WINs
Including a guidebook and four user-friendly manuals, this series from Workforce Innovation Networks—WINs—shows how organizations can play a unique and important role in advancing the employer side of the nation’s workforce equation. The guidebook and manuals provide clear information and guidance on replicating the successful practices learned throughout the course of the 10-year WINs partnership.
WINs is a partnership of the Center for Workforce Success, the nonprofit education and training arm of the National Association of Manufacturers’ Manufacturing Institute; the Institute for a Competitive Workforce, a nonprofit affiliate of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce; and JFF. From 1997 through 2007, WINs, collaborating with local and state employer organizations, showed how these organizations can meet the needs of businesses for employees at the entry-level and above and improve the economic prospects of disadvantaged job seekers and workers.
Jobs to Careers Awards Grants to Eight Projects:
Initiative Helps Frontline Workers Upgrade Skills and Advance
The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation has awarded $3.5 million in grants to projects in eight states to help advance the careers of frontline health care workers by providing training to build skills, increase earning potential, and improve the quality of care and services that patients receive. The grants are part of Jobs to Careers: Promoting Work-Based Learning for Quality Care, a national initiative that supports a variety of projects to develop the skills of workers who deliver direct health care and services. The new grants bring the total number of Jobs to Careers projects to seventeen. JFF serves as the National Program Office for Jobs to Careers.
The National Fund for Workforce Solutions:
A History of Collaboration
In 2007, several national foundations and the U.S. Department of Labor launched the National Fund for Workforce Solutions, a $50 million effort to strengthen and expand high-impact workforce development initiatives across the country. NFWS, which builds on years of important work by many people and institutions both nationally and locally, has the potential to play a major role in improving how workforce development services are funded and delivered. This report traces how national foundations, smaller local foundations, and government agencies helped to shape this new national workforce development initiative.
Exploring Rural Context and Opportunities:
A Report to the National Fund for Workforce Solutions
In preparing the National Fund for Workforce Solutions, the investors gained experience with the urban component of such work, but the rural context was less well understood. The Annie E. Casey Foundation, on behalf of the NFWS Investor Committee, engaged the services of the Aspen Institute Community Strategies Group to explore how the initiative might operate in rural America. This report identifies design issues that should be taken into account in developing a rural-focused element to the NFWS grantmaking program. It also identifies “sites of excellence” or promise from which to learn.
Working Solutions:
Addressing the Workforce and Education Challenges of Black and Latino Males
In January, more than 200 government and school officials along with business and community leaders discussed ways to help men of color overcome traditional obstacles to gaining and succeeding in high-skill, higher-paid jobs. The discussion took place at the fifth annual “Making a Difference in Our Community” breakfast, hosted by JFF in honor of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday. Winning the Skills Race and Strengthening America's Middle Class:
An Action Agenda for Community Colleges
This report from the College Board’s National Commission on Community Colleges makes a number of recommendations around data systems, accountability, and metrics. Among other recommendations, the commission asks Congress to include in a proposed Community College Competitiveness Act of 2008 “an appropriation sufficient to assist the colleges to improve the success rates of their students by bringing the Achieving the Dream: Community College Counts research initiative to scale across the country.”
A Qualitative Evaluation of the Massachusetts Extended Care Career Ladder Initiative
Commonwealth Corporation has released a Research and Evaluation Brief, Qualitative Evaluation of ECCLI. The Massachusetts Extended Care Career Ladder Initiative has been providing career ladder and other training opportunities to the long-term care industry since 2000.
Each and All:
Creating a Sustainable American Higher Education System
In the Robert H. Atwell Lecture at the American Council on Education Conference in February, LaGuardia Community College President Gail Mellow addressed two questions: How can we grow a sound higher education ecosystem? What are the requirements and principles that should guide us?
Adult Education in America
ETS Policy Notes summarizes the results of the Adult Education Program Survey, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education and conducted by ETS. The results provide a comprehensive picture of federally supported adult education activities in the United States.
Community Colleges: Pathways to Opportunity 
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