JFF’s Breaking Through Practice Guide is designed to help community colleges and other programs serve adults who have low literacy and math levels and who want to succeed in postsecondary education. The Practice Guide highlights innovations from community colleges participating in Breaking Through, an initiative promoting the development of practices and policies that connect low-skilled adults with postsecondary occupational or technical education. Breaking Through is a collaboration of JFF and the National Council for Workforce Education.

On May 4, JFF Education Policy Director Cassius Johnson testified before the U.S. Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee about how to restructure the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. He drew on our work with school, district, and state partners to improve college-ready high school graduation. Johnson reported on JFF’s experience that dramatically better outcomes—especially for low-income students and students of color—are possible, and he made two recommendations to Congress: invest in innovation and in scale.

“Fourteen years ago, I was a senior and student body president at Hamilton High School in rural northwest Alabama,” Cassius Johnson said in his testimony to the U.S. Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. “My alma mater is one of the 2,000 low-graduation rate high schools across the nation that together produce more than half of U.S. dropouts.”

Cassius was not one of the dropouts. After earning an Associate’s degree from Bevill State Community College in Alabama, he went on to receive a B.A. in political science and honors studies from Texas Tech University and a Master’s in Public Affairs from the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin, where he was a Barbara Jordan Scholar. And before joining JFF, he was chief of staff for a member of the Texas House of Representatives.

Cassius directs federal secondary and postsecondary policy development and advocacy for JFF in Washington, DC. Through his work on the proposed Graduation Promise Act and other federal legislation, he aims to improve education options and outcomes for the large and growing numbers of low-income youth and adults who struggle to succeed in today’s economy.

“From my small hometown to the great urban centers of this country,” says Cassius, "continuation of current trends in high school performance and graduation will lead to an unacceptable bifurcation of opportunity: a widening gulf between individuals with the skills and credentials and the poor and low-skilled who have little prospect of advancement. These trends pose a severe threat not only to our nation’s future economic growth but to our social fabric.”

On May 4, six national organizations, including JFF, wrote to key U.S. Senators and Representatives with advice on improving the educational and economic outcomes of low-skilled adults: “We see a tremendous opportunity in the reauthorization of [the Workforce Investment Act]: to make changes to Title II so that adult education and English literacy programs are able to ensure that more low-skilled individuals move along the continuum from low skills to success in college and job training, career pathways, and jobs that pay a family-supporting wage.”

Developmental education as traditionally delivered does not appreciably increase the likelihood that a community college student will earn a credential or degree. This broken model of remedying students’ academic deficiencies is not sustainable in an era of tight budgets, swelling enrollments, and pressure for more accountability for results.

Through the Developmental Education Initiative, six states are focusing more intently on policies to support dramatic improvements for students whose assessment scores indicate the need for developmental education. Connecticut, Florida, North Carolina, Ohio, Texas, and Virginia are committed to an aggressive policy and capacity-building agenda to support community college efforts to improve success in this area. The initiative’s State Policy Framework & Strategy specifies levers that policymakers in these and other states can use to support changes in the organization and delivery of developmental education.

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Jobs for the Future identifies, develops, and promotes new education and workforce strategies that help communities, states, and the nation compete in a global economy. In nearly 200 communities in 41 states, JFF improves the pathways leading from high school to college to family-sustaining careers.