Guided Pathways for Career and College Readiness: Guided pathways, a movement to redesign students’ journeys through postsecondary education to help achieve college completion and student success and to help close achievement gaps, is gaining momentum and is improving some student experiences, according to a new report from The Center for Community College Student Engagement. Approximately 300 community colleges used this program in the fall of 2019 as a tool to help students choose a program of study and prepare these students for college and career readiness. In the report, the researchers highlight that there are still several challenges with the programs, and understanding these gaps will help student achievement grow.
Benefits to Extending Pell Eligibility: The American Association of Community Colleges released a new report describing why community colleges should support extending Pell Grant eligibility to short-term programs. Researchers provide information on the financial benefits to students in both for-credit and non-credit short-term programs. Three case studies that focus on employment outcomes for short-term credentials in Virginia, Louisiana and Colorado are highlighted, as well as a case study in Iowa on the success of non-credit credentials, and a case study in Wisconsin on the financial benefit of short-term programs.
Recommendations for Next Reauthorization of WIOA: Results for America encourages lawmakers to use data and other evidence to improve the outcomes for the national workforce system during the next reauthorization of the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA), according to their new report, “Moneyball for Workforce Development”. To achieve their desired workforce outcomes, state and local governments need to use WIOA to regularly build, test and use data to know what is effective in WIOA grants and contracts; fund evidence-based interventions that have been proven to work; and ensure that evidence-based services are reaching unemployed and underemployed job seekers, current workers and businesses.
Measures of Holistic Success in Community College: Ithaka S+R released a new report, “Measuring the Whole Student: Landscape Review of Traditional and Holistic Approaches to Community College Student Success” and have found that traditional metrics of success for postsecondary institutions have not taken into account the various demographics of community college students nor their unique challenges. In the first report of the series, through the Holistic Measures of Student Success (HMSS) project, the researchers provide a review of how postsecondary metrics are prioritized, defined, quantified and used, and what is needed for a more holistic view to help identify and address gaps that students are experiencing at community colleges.
Labor Market Downturn Effects on Postsecondary Enrollment and Program Choice: A new report from the Education Finance and Policy journal uses the number of workers directly affected during mass layoffs as an indicator to define local labor demand during economic downturns and understand the effect on postsecondary enrollment and program choice. Some of the key findings in the report include an increase in two-year college enrollment, CTE course completion, and short-term certificates within previous mass layoffs.
Lessons from Perkins IV in Oregon: Researchers studied participation and outcomes under Perkins IV in Oregon to help guide the implementation of the Perkins V updated state plan in a new report. Some of the findings show that participation and CTE concentrators increased overall, however, some disparities, such as by gender, economic disadvantage, special education status, and English learner status, persisted. CTE concentrators also were found to graduate from high school within four years at higher rates than non-concentrators, and had higher annual earnings. Based on these findings from Perkins IV, the researchers suggest recommendations for implementation of Perkins V to strengthen equity and access.
Community Colleges Funding Shortfall: Community colleges receive $78 billion less than four-year colleges, according to a new report from the Center for American Progress. This gap in revenue makes it challenging for community colleges to have enough to spend on students’ success and wraparound services, even though the students going to community colleges have disproportionately higher needs and would benefit from more services provide by colleges, such as counselling and advising, child care and help with food and housing. The researchers encourage state and local officials to try and close the funding gap by providing equitable resources to two- and four-year institutions.
Data on CTE Student Outcomes: A new report from the National Center on Education Statistics (IES) uses longitudinal data from graduates between 2012 and 2018 from Round Rock Independent School District in Texas to evaluate CTE student outcomes, including college enrollment, degree or certificate attainment, and employment, and the alignment between CTE programs and high-wage, in-demand career pathways. Graduation rates for students with one or more CTE study areas increased, and more than 80% of CTE graduates enrolled in a two- or four-year college or were employed within one year of graduating. The researchers also found over half of the CTE graduates completed course requirements that aligned with high-wage, in-demand career pathways.
Successful Strategies for a Prepared Workforce: The Southern Regional Education Board Commission on Strategic Partnerships for Work-Ready Students met to discuss promising practices to ensure students are prepared for the workforce. The Commission came up with 11 recommendations for states to adopt:
- Strengthen business and industry partnerships in support of CTE.
- Prioritize funding to develop career pathways to in-demand jobs.
- Extend work-based learning to middle school.
- Include work-based learning in graduation requirements and school accountability ratings.
- Provide funding for compensation and liability for work-based learning placements.
- Provide funding for industry partnerships.
- Use incentives for employers to provide work-based learning opportunities.
- Increase wraparound services for career readiness.
- Utilize virtual solutions to expand work-based learning opportunities.
- Create a taskforce to identify, evaluate and approve industry certification examinations, technical skills assessments, dual credit courses and end-of-course assessments.
- Promote dual enrollment courses.
Data on Post-College Outcomes for Graduates: Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce has released a report based on data from the Department of Education’s College Scorecard to evaluate post-college outcomes for students a year after graduation, including earnings by credential broken down by individual states, colleges and majors. On average, workers with more education earn more money in the first year of employment. However there is overlap in median earning ranges across all levels of education. More than a quarter of those with an associate degree earn more than the median earnings of those with a bachelor’s degree. As in earlier research on this topic, researchers found that the type of degree rather than the level of the degree can be a better indicator of potential earnings.
New Data on Prior Learning Assessment: A new report from the Council for Adult and Experiential Learning and the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education finds that students with prior learning assessment (PLA) credits are more likely to complete academic programs compared to students without PLA credits. Program completion increases to 49% for adult students across all demographics compared to 27% completion for students without PLA credit, and PLA credit saves students time and money. However, Black students, Pell Grant recipients and students who live in lower-income communities were least likely to have participated in PLAs.
Kentucky’s FAME Program Case Study: Opportunity America and Brookings published a case study on Kentucky’s Federation for Advanced Manufacturing Education (FAME) program, which offers paid apprenticeships to students for credential attainment. Researchers explored the outcomes of FAME graduates, such as postsecondary enrollment and employment, and found that FAME graduates were more likely to complete their program of study compared to non-FAME participants. FAME graduates also had higher earnings both during their first year post-graduation and five years after graduation. Also included in the report are data from FAME graduates on the dimensions of the program that were most important to them.
Student Progress and School Quality on 2018-19 State Report Cards: Due to disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, the Data Quality Campaign decided to postpone the annual Show Me the Data 2020 report and instead looked at indicators of student progress and school quality provided in states’ 2018–19 report cards. The researchers insist that states must continuously provide transparent data to families and communities on their report cards by constantly evaluating the chosen data tool’s ability to meet the needs of the audience and provide clear, understandable information about school quality and student progress. Both progress and challenges that states are facing with their school report cards are highlighted in the report.
New Web Tables from Postsecondary Institutions: The Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System has added new web tables including graduation rates for 2011-16, outcome measures for 2011-12, student financial aid in postsecondary institutions for 2018-19, and admissions in postsecondary institutions for fall 2019. Some key takeaways include: 21% of first-time, full-time students graduated in two years from a two-year postsecondary institution, 39% of first-time, full-time students graduated in four-years, and 44% of first-time, full-time students who received a Pell Grant completed a degree or certificate program.
Pennsylvania CTE Funding Report: Pennsylvania Partnerships for Children released a report on how CTE funding is structured in other states as well as recommendations for Pennsylvania to follow in order to be a leader in education for workforce preparedness. The report also recognizes the impact and challenges for CTE brought on by COVID-19.
Top Five Competencies Sought by Employers: Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce released new data on employers’ top five in-demand competencies across the labor market. The top five competences were chosen out of 120 knowledge, abilities and skills and the ones that were the most important are communication, teamwork, sales and customer service, leadership, and problem solving and complex thinking.
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