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Building Integrated Pathways to Sustainable Careers: An Introduction to the Accelerated Opportunity Initiative

The core belief of Accelerating Opportunity is that postsecondary credentials are the gateway to family-supporting wages—and that those credentials are critical to breaking the intergenerational transmission of poverty in America. The four-year initiative represents an unprecedented investment in Adult Basic Education (ABE). It will support the efforts of 11 states to ensure that more adults gain the skills they need for today’s good jobs through innovative education that leads to a valuable credential.

Accelerating Opportunity seeks to fundamentally change the way ABE is delivered and to ensure that state policies encourage dramatically improved results for students in terms of completing credentials of value in the labor market. This paper highlights the policy-based, systemic, and programmatic barriers to student success; and how Accelerating Opportunity is structured to address them, enabling many more adults to succeed in their quest for postsecondary credentials.