SPOTLIGHT: DROPOUT RECOVERY

DROPOUT RECOVERY IS NATIONAL RECOVERY

High school dropouts need more than credit recovery these days. As we all know, it takes more than a high school diploma to advance in a 21st-century economy. As Senator Kay Hagan of North Carolina said at Jobs for the Future’s November 2 briefing on dropout policy: “We need to implement best practices . . . that bring our young people who have dropped out back on the path to a career or to attend college.” Senator Hagan called this “a national priority.”

How do you make a difference with a dropout population that grows by 1.2 million each year? JFF has developed a Back on Track design for schools and programs. This design has three phases:

• Enriched academic offerings;
• Bridges to postsecondary education; and
• First-year supports to ensure that young people get the academic momentum they need to attain a postsecondary credential.

These phases are laid out in detail on JFF’s new Back on Track: Pathways Through Postsecondary website, the place to go for guidance, tools, services, and much more as the nation seeks to diminish losses at key junctures along the education pipeline and reduce the subsequent drain on institutions and the economy.

Senator Hagan—along with dozens of other policy leaders, practitioners, and students at the convening—reaffirmed that we have effective models today for helping dropouts get back on track, accelerate their acquisition of skills, and pursue family-sustaining careers. Our next step is scaling up and sustaining what works.

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

IMPLEMENTING A BACK ON TRACK MODEL

National youth-serving networks, low-income school districts, and community colleges are all on the front lines of helping disconnected youth gain the education and skills they need to contribute to a productive workforce and rebuild our communities. Adria Steinberg and Cheryl Almeida highlight one such effort, the Postsecondary Success Initiative, a collaboration of JFF, YouthBuild USA, the National Youth Employment Coalition, and the Corps Network, with generous support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Open Society Foundations.

The first group of young people to go through the initiative are graduating from high school, enrolling in postsecondary education, and persisting in the first year at two to three times the rate of their peers. The initiative is succeeding in its ambitious goal: to create momentum toward postsecondary credits and credentials among young people who otherwise would likely remain disconnected from both educational and workforce systems.

HOW FEDERAL POLICIES CAN SUPPORT THE SPREAD OF BACK ON TRACK PATHWAYS

How can we make Back on Track available to far more young people across our nation? Ultimately, bringing successful efforts to statewide and national scale will require policies that:

• Encourage and reward strategic collaborations across secondary and postsecondary institutions and community-based organizations;
• Promote investments in models that work; and
• Create mutual accountability among these systems to effectively serve this population of young people.

Kathryn Young, director of national education policy in JFF’s Washington, DC, office, writes about opportunities to help scale what works via legislative and regulatory changes. She also calls on federal and national policymakers and opinion leaders to use their convenings and “bully pulpits” to advance these efforts.

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IMPROVING DEVELOPMENTAL EDUCATION

VIRGINIA REVAMPS DEVELOPMENTAL EDUCATION

Our nation can only meet its ambitious college-completion goals if students who start in developmental education earn meaningful postsecondary credentials. Innovation at Scale describes how Virginia is redesigning developmental education across its 23 community colleges to increase college readiness and improve student success. The redesign will transform the way students learn and engage with their colleges. Data-driven, committed, and participatory, this story is sure to be instructive for innovators in other states.

DOCUMENTING STATE PROGRESS

Three years ago, the six states in the Developmental Education Initiative embarked upon substantive and innovative policy changes designed to help students succeed in developmental education, even during these challenging economic times. The goal of this multistate policy effort is to expand the groundbreaking programs and strategies that are key to dramatically boosting college completion rates for low-income students and students of color.

In Scaling and Sustaining JFF’s Lara Couturier documents the states’ progress in pursuing policy changes in five areas essential to improving developmental education: data use; innovation; K-12 alignment; assessment and placement; and finance. Using data from the initiative’s self-assessment tool, she describes the scope and magnitude of policy changes in Connecticut, Florida, North Carolina, Ohio, Virginia, and Texas.

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CAREER ADVANCEMENT

SCHOOLING IN THE WORKPLACE: LEARNING FROM WORLD LEADERS IN VOCATIONAL EDUCATION

In the United States, far too many young people enter adulthood without adequate preparation for the 21st-century job market. What can we learn, adopt, and adapt from the world’s education systems that best prepare young people for fulfilling jobs and successful adult lives? In Schooling in the Workplace, JFF Vice President Nancy Hoffman addresses this question head on: “The smartest and quickest route to a wide variety of occupations for the majority of young people in the successful countries—not a default for failing students—is a vocational program that integrates work and learning.”

CHAMPIONING GREEN JOB DEVELOPMENT

In a Community College Times commentary, JFF’s Gloria Mwase and Julian Keniry of the National Wildlife Federation highlight how North Carolina community colleges are preparing students for high-skilled, high-wage jobs as national and global economies respond to energy, resource, and climate challenges worldwide. “A commitment to workforce training at community colleges,” they write, “will help accelerate our ability to tackle climate change and changing energy and transportation choices while creating economic opportunities and pathways out of poverty.” JFF and NWF are partners in The Greenforce Initiative, a national effort to strengthen the capacity of community colleges to develop, enhance, and refine green career pathway programs.

PRE-APPRENTICE CONSTRUCTION TRAINING

The Multi-Craft Core Curriculum, developed by the AFL-CIO’s Building and Construction Trade Department, helps pre-apprentice construction workers gain a nationally recognized set of skills that cut across 14 related trades. JFF, through a partnership with the AFL-CIO’s Working for America Institute, will offer our Pathways Out of Poverty affiliates this training in how to build a pre-apprenticeship program, which is the first step to highly valued apprenticeships in the building trades.

Pathways Out of Poverty, a two-year, $8 million project, is ramping up pathways into green industries for unemployed and disadvantaged individuals as part of the Green Pathway Initiative of the National Fund for Workforce Solutions. Educators in Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles, Milwaukee, and Philadelphia are heading to the National Labor College in December to learn the Multi-Craft Core Curriculum, earn two college credits, and prepare to train aspiring green construction workers in their regions.

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JFF ON THE ROAD

NOV. 14: HELPING ADULTS GET FROM ABE TO COLLEGE DEGREE

Nate Anderson discusses the goals and structure of the Accelerating Opportunity initiative at the National College Transitions Network’s national conference (Providence, RI).

NOV. 15: WORKFORCE COLLABORATIVES

Fred Dedrick talks to employers at Update SC Alliance’s annual Greenville County Partnership Day about how the National Fund for Workforce Solutions can help them build a sustainable workforce (Greenville, SC).

NOV. 18: DROPOUT PREVENTION

Cassius Johnson joins an American Youth Policy Forum panel on why students drop out of high school and what policy changes at all levels of government can help curb this epidemic (Washington, DC).

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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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