Employment Program 2010 Annual Report

Good paying jobs require advanced technical skills and, increasingly, postsecondary education. Federal and state governments spend millions on adult education and training, yet too many workers lack foundational, basic skills. Remarkably, some employers in the height of the recession couldn’t find workers with the skills they needed and still can't. With Joyce support, workforce development leaders have reexamined their approaches to ensure that adult education meshes with the complex lives of workers, industry needs, and state economic development priorities. New policies and strategies have emerged that focus on boosting skills, supporting attainment of credentials, and responding to the needs of the Midwest economy.
 

Shifting the Gears
With sustained funding of more than $10 million from Joyce and $6 million in state matching grants since 2007, five Midwest states have been working to craft coordinated statewide adult education plans to meet the needs of low-skilled workers and local industries. "Shifting Gears" strategies include prioritizing training for important industries; breaking programs into shorter chunks more manageable for working adults; and embedding literacy and other basic skills in an occupational context—using communication and math skills needed for auto repair, for example, or health care—along with workforce readiness and support services.

By 2010, the Shifting Gears approach was producing significant policy changes in several states.

Wisconsin, for example, streamlined the approval process for new occupational credential programs so colleges can respond to labor market needs; empowered colleges to break programs into shorter modules; approved 40 new Adult Basic Education programs preparing people with limited basic skills for college level programs; began testing a new strategy of awarding a high school equivalency diploma to students earning college-level occupational certificates; and developed measures to track the outcomes. Michigan and Minnesota have made similar advances. With policy changes in place, states began focusing on implementation. Illinois began pushing development of programs that gear literacy training to the workplace, and Minnesota encouraged creation of new adult education and skills training options.
 

Community College Innovation
Community colleges are the linchpin of adult education, enrolling more than six million students each year. “Despite their critically important mission, community colleges are under-recognized, under-resourced, and many are under-performing,” according to the Aspen Institute, a national think tank. Too many students drop out before earning credentials or credits to switch to four-year colleges, and many fail to get decent jobs after their education ends.

To change that picture, Aspen, with support from Joyce, the Lumina Foundation, Bank of America Charitable Foundation, and JP Morgan Chase Foundation created a $1 million Aspen Prize for Community College Excellence.

Announcing the prize at the White House Summit on Community Colleges in October 2010, President Obama said it would “shine a spotlight on community colleges delivering truly excellent results.” Organizers hope the competition will establish solid measures of performance, spread successful models, and stimulate innovation. Noting the colleges’ role in workforce development, Joyce Foundation President Ellen S. Alberding stressed that the Prize “will emphasize workforce outcomes as a key indicator of success.”

Joyce further committed to strengthening community colleges by funding The City Colleges of Chicago Reinvention. Chicago community colleges enroll more students than Northwestern, DePaul, and the University of Chicago combined, yet City Colleges has struggled with boosting its student outcomes and local businesses have been hesitant to hire its graduates. In 2010, City Colleges and the Chicago business community laid the groundwork to provide students with the education and training they need to secure jobs with local businesses.
 

Transitional Jobs: More Work Needed
2010 also saw the release of the first-year results of the Joyce-funded Transitional Jobs Reentry Demonstration. The Foundation set out to learn what strategies work and don’t work to reduce recidivism, and although the short-term results were not as substantial as expected, the report is now part of an important body of research on the transitional jobs field.

The first-year results are a clear signal that more work is needed to understand the complexities of reducing recidivism, and key findings are already being implemented. Goodwill/Easter Seals in St. Paul, MN, for example, has adapted its transitional jobs model to include an upfront assessment to determine if program participants will benefit from a transitional job or if they should receive job placement services instead.

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