EARLY COLLEGE: SPREADING A GOOD IDEA

A DIALOGUE OF SUBSTANCE

“Why didn’t early college catch fire?” Tom Vander Ark recently asked this question on his blog, Getting Smart. He is certainly the right person to ask, having been present at the birth of the early college idea in 2001. He comes out in strong support of early college but still wonders aloud, “Why aren’t there 2500 early colleges?”

Commenting on Vander Ark’s blog, JFF’s Joel Vargas and Nancy Hoffman said that early college has caught fire, especially when compared to other efforts to prepare minority and low-income students for college: the 230 early college schools started through the Early College High School Initiative since 2002 now serve 53,000 students nationally, and it has inspired the creation of at least 100 other schools.

Vargas and Hoffman also pointed out that the early college concept is still growing. “What JFF wanted to prove,” they wrote, “was that providing low-income, underprepared young people with a quotient of college-level courses in high school, strong academic and social supports, and connections to a postsecondary institution would boost college going and completion.”

Today, given the extraordinary success in proving that point, JFF is moving forward in two directions. One is our work on what we call “early college designs” for all students in a district. An example of how we are doing this, described below, is the Hidalgo Early College District Toolkit.

The second is based on Vargas’s conclusion: “Early college will only grow faster if policies reward it.” Toward that end, we offer What Gets Measures Gets Done, a brief that highlights how states can reward schools that do what early college schools do: raise the college readiness and success rates of low-income students as indicated by their completion of meaningful college courses that give them momentum toward a degree.

—Marlene B. Seltzer, President and CEO, Jobs for the Future

THE HIDALGO EARLY COLLEGE DISTRICT TOOLKIT: EXPANDING EARLY COLLEGE DISTRICTWIDE

The Hidalgo Early College District Toolkit is a resource for practitioners seeking to prepare all students for postsecondary success. Nationally recognized for its innovative approaches and strong results, Hidalgo is a small, rural school district in South Texas where every student earns college credits before graduating from high school. After collaborating with Hidalgo for the past two years, JFF is sharing the district’s knowledge, in its own words, about what it takes to make “college for all” a reality.

Hidalgo is only one example of how JFF helps districts significantly increase the number of students who graduate from high school prepared to succeed in college. We have developed a portfolio of Early College Designs to help districts of varying sizes and demographics achieve what Hidalgo has.

For more information on how Early College Designs can help your district or state, please contact Dr. LaVonne Sheffield, lsheffield@jff.org, 617.728.4446.

WHAT GETS MEASURED GETS DONE: ACCOUNTABILITY STRATEGIES THAT PROMOTE COLLEGE AND CAREER READINESS FOR LOW-INCOME STUDENTS

States are laying the foundation for ensuring that more students start college prepared for college-level work. However, this is no guarantee that they will reach the finish line—a postsecondary degree or credential. What can states do to prime all students for postsecondary success—especially low-income, minority, and first-generation college students? What Gets Measured Gets Done proposes that including college-course completion as a measure of K-12 accountability is a robust strategy for driving such educational improvement.

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PREPARING COLLEGE STUDENTS FOR TODAY’S JOBS

CREDENTIALS THAT WORK: REAL-TIME INTELLIGENCE ABOUT OCCUPATIONS AND SKILLS IN DEMAND

Using new technologies that make it possible—for the first time—to collect up-to-date labor market information, JFF has launched Credentials that Work, an initiative with the potential to transform how postsecondary institutions and systems align occupational training programs with the economy’s needs. Ten colleges in the Credentials that Work network began using the new technology in September. The initiative is funded by the Joyce Foundation and Lumina Foundation.

“If colleges expect to attract more students and prepare them for sustainable careers, they must better align program offerings and course curricula to the needs of their local labor markets,” said JFF Program Director John Dorrer.

ALIGNING COMMUNITY COLLEGES TO THEIR LOCAL LABOR MARKETS

This brief by David Aldstadt examines the emerging role of real-time labor market data. It documents the work of colleges and states that are leading the way in using online job ads to gather real-time intelligence about occupation and skill demands. Their experiences demonstrate both the possibilities and pitfalls of utilizing this exciting new approach.

ONLINE TOOLS FOR ADVANCING HEALTH CARE WORKERS

Health care employers and the college educators who collaborate with them have a new tool for advancing frontline employees. Jobs to Careers, a national initiative for educating frontline health care workers, has released an online toolkit that details steps toward creating a work-based learning program. This approach, a hallmark of Jobs to Careers, enables workers to earn college credits and credentials faster and more affordably by turning job tasks into learning opportunities.

On October 18 and a second date to be announced soon, JFF is offering a webinar to introduce the toolkit and explain the major elements of work-based learning. We invite employers in health care and other industry sectors to register, as well as educators, workforce development and human resource professionals, researchers, private funders, and government policymakers. CLICK HERE to register.

Jobs to Careers, managed by JFF, is a $15.8 million initiative sponsored by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, in collaboration with The Hitachi Foundation and the U.S. Department of Labor.

PROFILE: RANDALL WILSON

JFF’s co-manager of Jobs to Careers is Randall Wilson, an expert on workforce development in health care and on career advancement for lower-skilled workers. Randy has 20+ years of experience researching and evaluating workforce development and urban community development projects—including work in housing, economic development, and community planning, as well as education and training. The common thread, he says, is that success in all these areas ultimately depends on people having access to good jobs. “My path has always circled back to work—not just the skills of the worker but the quality of the jobs.”

Randy began his career as an urban planner, then shifted to teaching and research, earning a doctorate in public policy from the University of Massachusetts, Boston. But he maintained a constant connection to practice with consulting and teaching for community groups, trade unions, and workforce agencies—and JFF. In 2005, Randy joined our staff, “to join the national conversation about career advancement.”

Another theme in Randy’s life is music. As a disc jockey at a University of California, Santa Cruz, radio station, he hosted a popular program focused on classic rhythm and blues and other American roots music. He is quite pleased that his love of music has carried over to his 12-year-old son Micah, who plays electric guitar in the Angry Toddlers, a band of middle schoolers.

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DEVELOPMENTAL EDUCATION

HIGH FLYERS: POLICIES AND STRATEGIES THAT BOOST SUCCESS

State policy in Florida sheds light on potential ways for states to improve the success of students who begin their college careers in developmental education. High Flyers analyzes features of the state’s policymaking environment that have enabled three high-performing colleges to implement solid developmental education strategies. Based on the aspects of the Florida policy environment that undergird strong performance, the report includes a questionnaire that state policymakers can use to consider their own policymaking environments. This brief was prepared for JFF by Lande Ajose, Ria Sengupta Bhatt, and Gagandeep Kaur of BTW Informing Change.

TESTING GROUND: USING A NEW ASSESSMENT TO INCREASE COLLEGE READINESS

State governments and private foundations are pursuing the elusive goal of improving college completion rates. Driving these efforts is an awareness of the large proportion of students who come to college—especially community college—unprepared for college-level coursework. This challenge is one that the states and colleges involved in Achieving the Dream and its Developmental Education Initiative have been addressing for several years.

Now states are turning to a familiar tool—student assessment—to advance college-readiness efforts. Testing Ground, by Pamela Burdman, describes how Florida’s Division of Colleges worked with K-12 partners to design, plan, and launch an ambitious college-readiness agenda, with a new college placement test as its centerpiece.

JAMMING ON DEVELOPMENTAL EDUCATION: JFF HOSTS ONLINE DISCUSSION

In August, JFF’s Lara Couturier, Gretchen Schmidt, and Barbara Endel moderated “Turning Around Failure: System Triage for Severely Underprepared Adults in Higher Education,” an online “Jam” session on ways to better align adult basic education and developmental education. The Jam, an extended online forum in which participants come and go as they please, was co-hosted by the Education Commission for the States, Knowledge in the Public Interest, and JFF.

More than 140 people participated in the seven-hour event, discussing, for instance, what floor (if any) should be established for determining whether students get admitted into developmental or Adult Basic Education—and why so many practitioners advocate for a floor even when they dislike the idea of limiting some students’ options.

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WHAT’S NEW AT JFF?

OPINION: YES, WE NEED JOBS. BUT WHAT KIND?

As President Obama prepared his speech proposing the American Jobs Act, JFF board member Paul Osterman wrote in a New York Times op-ed that “too often, what is lost in the call for job creation is a clear idea of what jobs we want to create.”

The day after the op-ed appeared, The Times’ Steven Greenhouse interviewed Osterman for “The Challenge of Creating Good Jobs.”

Osterman is coauthor, with the late Beth Shulman, of Good Jobs America: Making Work Better for Everyone. Their insightful look at our nation’s policies and practices that create—or fail to create—quality jobs offers specific policy recommendations for dramatically improving the quality of jobs.

IMPROVING THE GED SYSTEM

Less than 1 percent of New Yorkers eligible for the GED earn it each year, and far fewer ever obtain a postsecondary credential. Failing the Test, a report from the Center for an Urban Future, examines several options for improving New York State’s GED system. The report quotes JFF’s Terry Grobe on the benefit of students’ getting “good upfront information about how much they might need to invest in their education in order to pass the GED. Grobe, who works with JFF’s city and state initiatives directed at improving outcomes for struggling students and out-of-school youth, recently assisted John Garvey on GED to College Degree, a report on a framework for transforming short-term GED programs into more intensive, college-connected designs.

OCT. 11-12: JFF AT NATIONAL COUNCIL OF LA RAZA WORKFORCE FORUM

Heading to NCLR’s October Workforce Development Forum? Be sure to catch JFF’s two sessions on advancing Latino workers. In “Pathways to Green Partnerships,” JFF’s Geri Scott, joined by representatives from Wider Opportunities for Women and the Working for America Institute, AFL-CIO, will discuss how these organizations partner to provide high-quality, green career pathways for low-income individuals. In “Post-Secondary Education in Focus,” JFF’s Amy Girardi and others will talk about how to develop an effective language program.

OCT. 22-25: JFF AT NATIONAL COUNCIL FOR WORKFORCE EDUCATION ANNUAL CONFERENCE

JFF is presenting at 11 sessions over this three-day event. They range from a look at how Native-American communities are benefiting from our Breaking Through initiative to a report on achievements and lessons from Michigan’s statewide Center for Student Success. Also, there will be sessions for learning more about various JFF initiatives, including Jobs to Careers, Accelerating Opportunity, Credentials that Work, and more. We invite you to visit our booth for a complete list. And follow our tweets for more ideas about advancing low-skilled workers.

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JFF develops, implements, and promotes new education and workforce strategies that help communities, states, and the nation compete in a global economy. In more than 200 communities across 43 states, JFF improves the pathways leading from high school to college to family-sustaining careers.

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