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>> MARK FUCELLO: Good morning. Let's get started. My name is Mark Fucello and I'm the Director
of the Division of Economic Independence in the office of Planning, Research and Evaluation.
My division is responsible for putting this conference together each year, um, and we
hope you had a productive and informative day yesterday, and I'd like to take this opportunity
to welcome you to the second day and I'd like to tell you a few things about today's agenda.
But before I do that, I would like to recognize everyone in my division, um, my team I call
them. Brendan Kelly, Molly Irwin, Girley Wright, Michael Dubinsky, Erica Zielewski, Emily Schmitt,
Matt Borus, Hilary Forster, Sara Sattlemeyer, Katie Glenn, Jason Despain and Akilah Swinton.
Um, each day, you guys put your shoulder to the wheel to discover meaningful knowledge
in the service of the nation's vulnerable families. And as intelligent and diligent
and dedicated as you are, you can't imagine the depths of my admiration for you. So, keep
up the good work.
So, today, at 2:45 we will hold simultaneous facilitated roundtable discussions in rooms
noted in the conference program book. These will offer folks a chance for facilitated
conversations on a range of topics from assessing TANF agencies research needs to replication
and scale up of evidence-based programs to the challenges of food and security and more.
So, once you identify a roundtable that interests you, find the location indicated in the program
book. Signs on the tables will indicate the discussions on specific topics are taking
place in each room. If there's a large group of people in your topic area, please spread
out and form smaller groups to discuss the topic at different tables or in different
sections of the room.
At 12:00 p.m. conference attendees who are interested in pursuing a career in research
related to poverty, family, self-sufficiency, and social welfare outside of academia can
go to the Congressional Room for a lunchtime discussion. This panel will include four speakers
from different backgrounds, Federal Government, State Government, non-profit and a Think Tank
Research Organization. They will discuss their careers in research and offer advice and answer
questions. And while this panel is aimed at emerging scholars, we welcome everyone to
attend. In addition to the roundtables, we also have two breakout sessions planned for
the day at 10:15 and 1:15. And please join us back here in the Regency Ballroom at 4:00
p.m. for a plenary on Family Homelessness that will conclude today's, uh, agenda.
As a reminder for those who will be viewing the upcoming plenary and other sessions via
live stream, you can send questions to panelists at, if you're using e-mail at, wreclivestream@gmail.com
or directly on the live stream site via the submit question function or by Tweeting with
the hashtag #Wreclive. And one more note, um, if you haven't already, I encourage you
to sign up for the OPRE e-newsletter. You can sign up on our website or at the OPRE
booth that is set up across from registration area. And you can also connect with us on
Twitter using, @opre_acf and on Facebook.
So, now I would like to introduce Mary Alice McCarthy. Um, she'll be our moderator for
the next panel, Working Across TANF, Adult Education and Workforce Systems to Support
Career Pathways for Low-Income Populations. Mary Alice is OPREs go-to colleague at the
Office of Vocational and Adult Education at the U.S. Department of Education, and her
work includes supporting a variety of policy reforms and evaluation efforts including competency-based
credentialing and career pathways. And prior to joining OVAE, Dr. McCarthy worked in the
Office of Workforce Investment at the, in the Employment and Training Administration
at the Department of Labor. Mary Alice?
>> MARY ALICE MCCARTHY: Maybe I do that. Ah. There we go. Okay. Good morning, everyone,
and, uh, thank you, so much Mark, and thank you, uh, to the conference organizers for,
for inviting me to be here today. This is a very exciting panel that we have. As Mark
mentioned, I work in the Office of Vocational and Adult Education. Is this too loud, too
quiet? Okay. Okay. Uh, I work in the Office of Vocational and Adult Education which oversees,
uh, two important pieces of legislation, the Carl D. Perkins Act for Career and Technical
Education and the Adult Education and Family Literacy Act. And that means that we end up
having an overlapping research interest and policy interest with our colleagues at the
Administration for Children and Families and with our colleagues at the Employment and
Training Administration, particularly around the economic and education advancement of,
uh, at-risk youth and low-skilled and low-income adults.
So, as a result we find ourselves often in conversations with one another. And one of
those areas of policy, overlapping policy interests is career pathways, which is, uh,
the, uh, focus of this panel. So, our goal this morning with this panel is to highlight
some of the very successful practices, uh, of folks working across different systems,
workforce, education and human service systems to create comprehensive career pathway programs
that enable youth and adults to succeed both in school and at work. We have four incredible
leaders in this area who have been doing pioneering work for, for some years, um, and have really
been sort of figuring out how to do this work, um, and, and teaching all of us, uh, at the
federal level, hopefully how, how we might be able to align our policies to better support
it.
So, we're going to hear from practitioners who operate from different systems, from the
Public Workforce system, from the community, from Higher Ed and the Community College systems
and from a community based organization and labor management organization, and how they
work to stitch together different funding streams and different, uh, different p- different
funding streams and different um, um, sort of sources of, uh, support to make sure that
their clients succeed. And then we also have a subject matter expert, [unintelligible]
we’ll introduce in a minute who has been working on career pathways and supporting
these efforts, um, and sort of elevating everyone's awareness around the policy programmatic implications
of career pathways for, for some time.
So, we know that coordinating and integrating services and aligning them with the needs
of the labor market is what's at the heart of career pathways. Um, before I introduce
more formally each of our panelists though, I did want to spend a minute to talk, uh,
talking about some of the efforts underway at the federal level to support, uh, the career
pathways movement that's taking place at the state and local level. Um, we are wor- you
know, the Departments of Education, um, Health and Human Services and Labor are actively
working to try to, uh, uh, keep ourselves sort of informed of one another's efforts
and to do our best to, uh, align our programs and our investments so that they support the,
uh, development and sustainability of these programs of the career pathway programs and
the state and local level.
Uh, in particular in 2009 and 2010, I would say we, the, the agency started to become
m- involved in each other's, uh, um, you know, sort of discretionary formula and grant programs
and, um, began sort of including one another in, um, conferences and institutes around,
that were, that were d- that were directed at helping state and local areas build career
pathways on the Department of Labor's tech- career pathways, technical assistance initiative
included, um, s- invited staff from, uh, ACF and, uh, Labor to help our gr- help our grantees
the, um, health, Health Professionals Opportunity Grant program also, uh, periodically invites
and, uh, consults with, uh, Department of Labor and Department of Education folks to
help sort of think through, or help their grantees and provide technical assistance.
The TAACCCT program, the Trade Adjustment Assistance Community College and Career Training
Grants also, you know, as those solicitations are developed, there's a lot of consultation
across programs, because we know that, that while we're asking - w- w- we know that there's
growing evidence that coordinated and integrated service delivery works best for our clients,
and we know that we can sort of model that and facilitate that through better alignment
of the federal level the more that's likely to happen.
So, some of this, uh, informal, uh, cooperation that was happening in the last few years,
um, came together in a joint letter that we issued in 2012, in April of 2012, and this
is the joint letter on career pathways, uh, that is highlighted here in this slide. And
what this letter does is that it endorse, it, it's three federal departments: Departments
of Labor, Education and Health and Human Services, adopting a common definition for something,
which might not sound like much but actually it's sort of a big lift at the federal level
to get folks to come together on a single definition. And this is our definition of
career pathways. And if we could go to the next slide that definition then n- n- which
is on the next slide. Can I move the slides? [cross talk] There, there, pardon me. Okay.
Now we know. The green button. Okay. And so here is the definition of career pathways.
A series of connected and education and training strategies, um, and support services that
enable individuals to secure industry recognized credentials and to, uh, advance both within
their occupations and within their, um, education.
Um, so this definition was an important sort of launching point for, again, how we can
then incorporate a common language in our, in our policies, in our investments and in
our guidance. And the definition also includes a set of key components of what a career pathway
is. And I just want to point this out, um, this is, in the letter we have a very detailed
definition of what career pathways are. It's not a definition unfortunately that fits on
the back of an envelope, but it is a very comprehensive definition. And so if you look
at these different elements of what makes a career pathways program a career pathways
program, you'll see that it's really all about making sure that the programs are comprehensive,
that they're geared towards the learning needs of adults and non-traditional learners and
that they're aligned with the labor market. No career pathway program has all of these
elements, but every career pathway program has some of these elements. So, the departments
issued this letter and then we formed an interagency staff working group that is continuing to
look for the next opportunities to coordinate our, uh, technical assistance, um, uh, coordinate
our communication around career pathways and, um, hopefully continue to find ways to help
states and local areas stitch together these different programs.
Um, so I just wanted to highlight that a little bit. Um, our interagency working group is
continuing to work, as a next step we are hoping to issue a request for information,
so keep an eye out for that in the fall, which will come out across our different systems
asking state and local areas more and practitioners more about what are the barriers and what
are, to actually implementing career pathway programs and actually, um, doing what we asked,
uh, to do in the letter, which is to adopt these approaches. So, this morning we're going
to hear from three folks who have, as I said, been real pioneers in developing these programs,
sustaining these programs and scaling these programs.
We're going to start by hearing from Cheryl Feldman who is the Executive Director of District
1199C Training and Upgrading Fund, which is a labor-management educational trust fund
with 50 contributing employer partners and the National Union of Hospital and Healthcare
Employees and the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees or AFSCME.
Ms. Feldman has helped develop the funds learning center, uh, into a comprehensive educational
center providing a wide range of career services, literacy and English language classes, credentialed
skills training, and collegiate programs and the program, uh, the center annually serves
16,000 adults and youth residing in Southeastern Philadel- uh, Pennsylvania and Southern New
Jersey. It provides services to an adverse population of unemployed adults and youth,
and incumbent workers and giving them, provides them access to career pathways education,
uh, primarily in the healthcare fields, health information, human services, and childcare.
Then we're going to hear from Marléna Sessions who is the Chief Executive Officer with the
Workforce Development Council in Seattle-King County. Marléna has been the Chief Executive
Officer of, uh, King, of the, uh, [unintelligible] in Seattle-King County since 2009 and has
guided that council to national prom- prominence as an innovative leader in job, uh, in job
training initiatives. 2010, the Working for America Institute named the organization of
the top four workforce boards in the United States. And as you read, uh, Marléna's, uh,
bio, it sort of is a testament to the importance of partnerships. Marléna is, sits on the
Executive Committee for the Economic Development Council of Seattle and King County. She sits,
she is a member of the Seattle co- uh, Community College Chancellor's Advisory Committee. She's
on the South King County STEM Network. She serves on the Washington Families Fund Leadership
Committee. She is also a member of the U.S., she's President of the U.S Conference of Mayor's
Workforce Development Council and a founding member of the National Advisory for Connecting
Homeless Job Seekers to the workforce system. So, we see someone spanning many systems here
and that's, I think we'll hear about what an important part of building career pathways
that is.
Next, we'll move from the Local level to the State level and hear from Karon Rosa of the
Arkansas Department of Higher Ed. Uh, Dr. Rosa has more than 40 years of educational
experience and serves the, um, uh, as the Program Director of the Arkansas Career Pathways
Initiative. This initiative serves low-income students in Arkansas, at, at Arkansas two-year
colleges. It has enrolled more than 27,000 students and issued more than 24,000 certificates
and degrees since 2005. The g- um, Career Pathways Initiative has received almost $90
million in TANF funds from the Department of Workforce Services to support the initiative
which takes place at 25 colleges in Arkansas. So these will be our three, our three panelists
and then we will have our, um, we'll hear from Evelyn Ganzglass, uh, who will sort of
provide some, some comments and, and reactions to the, uh, to the three panelists.
Evelyn is the Director of Workforce Development, of the Workforce Development TEA at CLASP.
She has extensive, uh, experience in workforce development policy, education, economic development
and social services policies and programs, and she leads CLASPs national and state advocacy
in technical assistance efforts related to postsecondary and adult education, workforce
development, career pathways, and credentials. And for anybody who has been working in career
pathways, we know that CLASP has really been out there, sort of educating all of us about
what's happening at the State level, what the policy implications are of these programs
and, and also providing a lot of technical assistance about how to actually do the work,
stitch together the, the programs and braid the funding. So, with that I'm going to hand
things over to Cheryl.
>> CHERYL FELDMAN: [cross talk] Good morning. Um, I'm really honored to be on this panel
with such distinguished members. A lot of years of service and a lot of experience,
uh, up here, so it's wonderful to be here. And I'm excited to share a little about what
we've developed at, at a regional level, uh, in the Philadelphia area. Um, our goal has
been, uh, as we evolved over the years, and, and you know in working these partnership
programs that it's always evolving, right? It's always an evolution, but, uh, our goal
has been to integrate academic skill instruction with employability skill instruction and occupational
skill instruction resulting in credentials so that our graduates, uh, can, uh, get jobs
that really are family sustaining for them. Uh, here's a little picture of some of our
graduates, and we serve, uh, very diversed populations, uh, youth to adults. Uh, we have,
uh, TANF recipients, dislocated workers, immigrant's refugees as well as, um, incumbent workers.
Uh, since we are a partnership of 50 employers in the Philadelphia area, we are really serving
the needs of those healthcare employers. And so, it's a really incredible mix of people
who are working, people who are not working, but all kind of within this one system of
career pathways where people can enter where they need and, uh, get the skillsets that
they need.
So, um, Mary Alice shared a little bit about our background. Uh, it's interesting to just
note that I report to a Boards that's half employer representatives and half labor representatives.
And so we are hearing the employer voice, we're hearing the worker voice and that has
been really critical to our ability to innovate, um, and stay attuned to what the needs are
in the work place and ensure that our programs are aligned with those needs. Uh, we have
organized our programs in one kind of vision, although there are myriad funding sources
that support that vision. And I'll try to get into that in a little bit, but we have
a Nursing Pathway, Behavioral Health, Allied Health, Health Information and also Childcare.
Uh, the context in Philadelphia is similar to many large urban areas. Um, we have a great
deal of poverty, uh, even, uh, folks in the workforce. Uh, there are just, uh, an inordinate
number, I don't have the numbers in front of me, but of low wage workers themselves,
many of them healthcare workers. Um, and we have a big literacy problem in Philadelphia,
over half of the adults, that includes working and non-working adults. Um, that's more than
a half million residents have literacy issues, and so we have mismatch between the great
healthcare jobs which require skills and credentials, and a population which is educationally disadvantaged
and is not prepared to really move into those jobs without quite a bit of work, uh, being
done.
So, uh, I do want to share with you that, uh, in Philadelphia we're lucky that the healthcare
industry is the largest employer. Um, and the great thing about healthcare for those
of you who, who work in this industry, you know that there is a wide range of employment
opportunities, and that's great for usually in preparing low-income wage workers, because
we can help people move up a pathway as long as we align our programs with the credentials
and educational steps required by those pathways. Um, and with emerging new jobs, help create
those pathways and partnership with our employers. So, the, um, the major, uh, aspects of our
model, uh, and again, this evolved over time, but it really has been the vision that drives
the whole agency at this point. And, uh, we serve over 4,000 students a year as Mary Alice
noted, uh, in total is 6 - 16,000 people come to usually for assessment services and career
services, but about 4,000 of those are in classes. And so we have to have a vision of
what that looks like in terms a career pathway system in healthcare.
And you'll see in a minute we kind of tweaked a OVAE DOL model to align our educational
programs with the steps on the pathway articulated with, uh, collegiate level work, as well as
a kind of a wraparound career coaching support service. So, I don't know if you can see this,
but, um, it is really our organizing model. And what we did, is we took the various, uh,
l- educational level starting with adult basic education skills, moving all the way through
the Bachelor's Degree and then these are just examples on the bottom, uh, for the four different
pathways that we offer. Um, there are many, many other examples that could be put in place.
But what we've attempted to do is that each of the academic levels integrate occupational
course work that those individuals qualify for. So, you could start at any point in the
pathway.
An incumbent worker who's already a nurse aid might start at that mid-level certification
where they're trying to go for LPN or even right into the RN program. Um, whereas somebody
coming off of TANF who hasn't had a strong work history might have to start, um, at the
first level, the semi-skilled position. The idea is, that our teachers, our faculty who
work on the academic side have enough professional development that, and as much as we can get
them so they understand the pathways, they can contextualize course work, and sometimes
very specific to those pathways and help the students to, uh, really have a plan in their
head and that's what the career coaches do, of what their next steps are and how they're
going to get there. Um, so this is just an example for you of, uh, some of the family
sustaining jobs that were preparing students for. We do much more than this, but I wanted
to give you a sense. If we can start a TANF, uh, recipient out in an $11 an hour job with
benefits, we feel that we've gotten them a good start. And if we can start them at $13
an hour, uh, even better. Um, but the idea is that we need to get the students the credentials
and we need to have the employer partners and this is so key, lined up so that we can,
uh, really have real jobs for these folks when they're finished.
So, I, I'd like to share with you, uh, some of the pipeline, uh, programs in aspects and
give you some real examples. Um, first of all, in terms of contextualized basic skills,
we've heard a lot about this. We try it all. We try not to leave any stone unturned. So,
in some cases, uh, it's a pre-employment program that students are in. In other cases, we're
trying to blend the literacy with the occupational training in the same program. And in other
cases we've used the IBIS model where we have a teacher whose teaching literacy and a teacher
who's teaching the occupational program in the same classroom. We do whatever we can
do to align the funding sources to make that possible. Um, and also, wherever possible,
link it to collegiate level programs. And, uh, we have some amazing programs, uh, in
partnership both with community colleges and with universities.
Um, I need to mention that Temple University who I think is in the audience, is part of
this collegiate pipeline program at this point, where students are able to move up through
an HPOG Grant, uh. All the way from entry level, occupational training, through, uh,
a Coding Certificate to an Associate Degree, a Bachelor's Degree, and a Master's Degree
and Temple has done a phenomenal job and we're part of that program in helping to organize
that, that great project. Um, we've also developed a Behavioral Health Pipeline, and why I think
this one is so great, is because our technical program has been vetted for 21 college credits.
So, the students don't have to repeat it. They take the technical, they move right into
college and with three more courses they have a 30-credit College Certificate onto their
Associate Degree and their Bachelor Degree. And as a result, people who have never been
to college before, never dreamed of it, we now have 50 associate degree graduates after,
I think it's four years, um, and, and moving on. Many more examples, uh, including our
39-credit Coding Certificate with Camden, uh, County College.
Uh, as most of you know, and I hope we can get more and more evaluations on this, because
in my opinion career coaching is key to the success of any program. Um, I'd like to give
you, and I'm trying to run through these quickly, but, um, similar to HPOG, in the old days
during Welfare to Work we had a $4.4 million TANF grant, cohort training, uh, lot of incentivized,
uh, wrap around services and other supports for the students. And I was just so proud
that after one year we still had a 71% retention, uh, for, for a population that basically had
very little work history previous to that, and 93% of those were fulltime jobs. And it
just shows you what can be done if the services are available in my opinion. Um, right now
however, uh, we've really moved to a different time and we find that to be successful, we
need to blend our funding sources. That's the only the way to make it work, uh, is through
partnerships. Whether it's the partnership, uh, that Temple has offered us, usually or
whether it's partnerships that we create ourselves, where we put together the we [unintelligible]
$2.00 with [unintelligible] one workforce dollars with, um, foundation dollars, with
our employer dollars, whatever it takes to fund that pathway and the steps along that
pathway, uh, we will put together myriad funding sources to make it work. Um, the key is, that
you have the vision of what the career pathways is and then you align the funding sources
to make it possible.
Um, I just wanted to give you a, an example. Um, we have our own Practical Nursing program
a home, our own Nurse Aide program, in the past we would have strictly TANF funds where
we had cohorts of nurse aides, and cohorts of LPN's that were funded no longer. And so
in order to help TANF recipients to do this, we have to identify other funding opportunities
which we work very, very hard to do. We fund them through WIA, um, individual training
accounts, we found them through foundation grants that we raise, we fund them through
a DOL grant that we happen to have right now for the long-term unemployed, we do whatever
we can to put together a funding package for these individuals.
The key in my opinion, and I skipped the slide below, I just wanted you to see some of our
employer partners. The man on the right is our Union President, uh, and then, uh, the
employers there are from Thomas Jefferson University Hospital who has been a great partner
to us. When you're working closely with employee partners you can design programs that look
totally different than if they weren't at the table. You can up-front design on the
job training where employers are getting a wage incentive, and then work backwards to
prepare the students to qualify for those OJT's through the literacy classes and the
workforce classes. And those learn and earn par- partnerships I think, have been phenomenal
for our students, um, and we've replicated that, um, in a number of programs.
Um, if you wrap those programs around with a career coach who's helping that student
arrive to that vision, and you have aligned a group of stakeholders which we have done
in an industry partnership where you have Higher Ed, employers, the public workforce
system, other funders in the same room talking together about how we're designing these systems
and how we're going to prepare the students for those jobs, it's just a win-win for everybody.
Um, and if anyone's in Philadelphia, happy to have you come and tour our facility and
get a sense of our programs.
Uh, so we've learned a lot. Uh, we've learned a lot about the relationship building on the
employer side. We've learned a lot about creating a vision that is seamless to the student where
they can really see what the discrete steps are, it's transparent to them and we can move
them through. We've learned a lot by integrating funding sources so we can have an integrated
education model. Obviously the career coaching and most of all, we learned we must be flexible,
because at least in healthcare it changes very rapidly, and we have to really look at
those emerging jobs and ensure that we create programs, not just for the traditional jobs,
but for the emerging jobs coming down the pike. And then, next week, June 5th, our graduation.
These happen to be GED graduates from our last, uh, year, but I would venture to say
that the majority of them are now finishing up occupational programs in healthcare and
moving on into employment. So, thank you very much.
>> MARLÉNA SESSIONS: [cross talk] Hey, good morning, and, and greetings from Seattle,
Washington where it's very wet and rainy right now, so I'm delighted to be here on many,
on many levels. Um, I am Marléna Sessions and, and as Mary Alice I think mentioned a
couple of times, yes, I'm a veteran in workforce, lots of years. I won't go into how many, but
certainly, um, want to start by thanking you for all of your work, because as a veteran,
as many years into the field of workforce development I know this is not easy work and
your commitment to it is very important. So, I, I really, whether you're at the practitioner
level or the research and evaluation level, we need you all in this field, so thank you
and stick with it please. Uh, I, uh, am, am a workforce board of director a WIB if you
will. Shout out to Clyde McQueen my, my peer, uh, as well. And the public workforce system,
you know, has come a long way baby and I'm here to tell you that in terms of, uh, some
of the, the same themes that you're hearing in terms of, uh, trying new things, innovating,
piloting and researching and being a think tank even.
We, we in Seattle, Washington and, and King County which is my local area, Martin Luther
King Jr. County, we in addition to overseeing the One-Stop System and the youth programs
that we do and, and definitely taking a sectorial approach to our work, we like to think of
ourselves as mini think tank and we try stuff and we do stuff. And some of it works and
it's great and we go on for several years and expand, and others, you know, we learn
from those, those other things. But what I want to share with you today is three very
simple, and I can't emphasize enough, very simple models. The key, the difficulty if
you will, the challenge is in actually doing them, but as, as far as grasping what the
models are, they're very simple and every effective I'd have to say. So green button
here. Right? [cross talk] Oh, top green one, thank you, so much.
Um, several years ago our, uh, we were blessed with a, a small grant, but a significant grant
from the Aspen Institute to start looking at something that's now become part of all
our vocabulary, something called a Navigator, a Navigator model. And you know, we talk about
working across systems and this theme of this discussion, and I love that way of talking,
and I think in reality too we need to say and recognize that sometimes we're working
around systems, right? We're having to do some work-arounds to make this work and put
all these things together, and the navigator could be our [unintelligible] and maybe, um,
maybe a good rebuttal of why are all of our systems so complicated and complex that we
actually need to add a navigator, that, is that the case? And I wouldn't tell you, yes,
that is the case. So, some of the discussions around my shop are, let's put the navigator's
out of business. [laughs] Let's get this figured out to the point where we don't need so, so
many layers.
But, I have to tell you, thanks to some great evaluation years after, uh, it's been about
a 10 year, uh, trajectory for usually on navigators, Aspen found that they are effective, the evaluation
came through with kind of a ma- we were even amazed at the statistics. With a navigator
involved, um, an individual is 95% placed, okay? And with, in this particular, um, study
that was done without the navigator, it was only 40%. And this was in the field of automotive,
uh, at Shoreline Community College in the North part of my local workforce area. So,
it is a complex system. It's important to, or complex systems, plural. It's important
to recognize that for both employers and job seekers, but we've seen great things with,
with plugging in a navigator and, and we've had, we started with employer navigators,
making sure they were very industry specific, as I mentioned, automotive. We've taken that
to community college navigators, navigating the community college system within and, and
around, uh, workforce with TANF recipients, with all job seekers through the public workforce,
and WEA system.
And most recently in the last couple of years we've been trying a pilot of homelessness
navigators for homeless individuals. One of my passions was always, why, back to systems
getting together, why can't homeless individuals and families access better the public workforce
system, the, the thing that I represent and work for every day. And, um, we've made some
progress, we're getting there, but we're still, we've still got a long way to go. So, we've
been trying homeless navigators, um, for homelessness individuals and families, again, taking the
services out to wherever the job seeker is and then making sure that on the other end
of that, the employer, as Cheryl themed very well, um, is, is there as well. So, navigation
has made sense for us. It has made the job seeker experience much more streamlined, and,
and it forces some collaboration amongst and between, uh, those various systems.
I was a little disappointed I have to say. The first year that we started out with our
homelessness navigator, we wanted to go great guns and refer X number of individuals and
get them through training and get them to jobs. That first year, we had to train our
own system, multiple systems. We had to do the professional development to make sure
people understood, are we dealing with a different clientele now? Is, are there, are there unique
circumstances? Are there barriers and biases in, within our own 300 different professionals
in our Seattle system? So, um, baby steps, baby steps.
The second very simple model, have to stress the, these are such, so simple and, and I
have to give a lot of credit. It goes back further as Cheryl mentioned, but the, the
time that we in Seattle really came into this cohort model and became big believers and
big utilizers was during the Recovery Act, uh, back in 2009. We heard we were getting
an injection of funds thanks to the ARRA. We quickly said, we can do cohorts? What are
those? And this was a time when I, I'm blessed with 11, um, community and technical colleges
in my workforce area, so I make it my business to get to know those 11 colleges as much as
I can, my staff certainly knows them better and is in the trenches with them.
But we a, this was a time when our community colleges were saying, we don't have capacity.
We can't just keep taking these. Thanks WEA, but we can't keep taking these individual
training account one-off's. It doesn't do usually a lot of good. And so we found that
quickly moving in April of '90 into, um, and RFP for as many cohorts as people could come
up with, we, as a workforce board, we found that we could negotiate costs down in a better
fashion. We were buying the whole package. We were buying, uh, a whole class. We were
buying books and supplies, certainly the instructor, the lab, the bricks and mortar, you name it.
We were buying the whole package. And we also, using that, uh, leverage if you will of purchase
power and competition, we were able to say, we know you don't have a crystal ball. We
didn't know we were all entering the greatest recession of our, of our lifetime in, in April
of '09 but, you have to show us really quickly some programs across these 11 community and
technical colleges, across many industries that have jobs at the end of them. Let's not
be crystal ball about this. Let's not project too much. It's, it's these are tough times.
We've got to get this money out, we've got to get some people trained and back into the
labor force.
And we were so delighted once we pushed, put the, the money out, pushed it out, we were
able to again, negotiate costs down, we were able to get jobs that had self-sufficient
wages in a very tough time of, of labor market. And then, um, immediately added scale, so
the community colleges were happy that they were able to use late afternoon, weekend,
compress some of their curriculum. They beca- they were nimble, very responsive. Came, became
very creative about some of the things that they were able to do. They brought in extra
tutors if there was need for that. So, we really just became big believers in the cohort
model back then, and ever since, our, our, we were blessed with an HPOG grant as well
in Seattle King County, that whole grant was written on cohort models, and we're still
seeing 90% and 100% employment and retention coming out of those cohorts.
I remember a conversation, I was new to my job in, in '09 and I remember a conversation
with Evelyn who came out to pay usually a visit and I said, you know, we're finding,
um, such motivation by the p- the peer support that comes out of this, uh, these projects,
these cohorts. The, the students themselves are helping each other get through and retain
and on and on. And she said, well, you know, that was part of the idea of when we, when
we designed it. And I was, unintended on my part but hey, that, that was a fabulous, fabulous
model. So, can't, um, thank the brains behind, uh, whoever invented the cohort model enough,
but we really, and under the Workforce Investment Act we sort of continued to, um, take risks
and do more cohorts and, and we will continue as long as it's allowable and even after it's
not allowable we'll find the money that is. So, that's that working around and working
across systems.
And then finally, the third, um, model, while it may not sound, um, s- very job seeker specific,
it is back to, if we aren't letting industry lead us, if we don't have employers at the
table, um, in real time, which is ever-changing and I, I'm responsible if you will for all
sectors, uh, which is a challenge, uh, then we aren't doing our job seekers any favors
whatsoever. So these sector panels is the third tool or model that we use a lot in Seattle
King County. And it's, it's simply, again, simple concept, a convening, a time sensitive
convening of employer leaders in one particular industry. In Washington State there is something
called Skills Panels which is, is sort of what we've modeled, but I always want to refer
to them as Sector Panels, Industry Panels, because I don't want to make any assumptions
going into these panels and say it's about skills. We need to hear from the employer
at that moment in time what is it about? Is it about you need skilled-up workers? Is it
about an aging out? Is it about outreach and recruitment of new, the, the future workforce?
Um, is it about your particular industry doesn't get enough love in the, in the world and doesn't
have a great reputation and we can help you with that?
Sometimes it's, it's a marketing issue, a PR issue. So, we do sector panels as often
as we can, as many as we can at one time. It's a staffing thing. We need to, we as the
workforce board staff them and this is six meetings, no more than that. We make a commitment
to these industry leaders. Your time will not be wasted. During that six meetings there's
a cycle of how a panel goes. The first couple meetings are confusing and a lot of brainstorming,
a lot of dialogue. Then we get into what lever can we pull at this very particular real time
in, in this industry? And then we, uh, either go find some money to do something or bring
the money that we know we have already to the table and then we make, make a product
at the end.
And right now I have a maritime panel running and I have a healthcare panel running, and
I'm about to launch at the request of some local government, um, elected officials in
my area, a government sector, um, panel, which I'm not sure what that's going to be yet,
but I'm excited to try it. So, uh, the, the, the sector panel model is just something,
again, if we're a think tank, if we're innovative, if we want to keep in touch with the industry,
we need to do, um, real time check-ins and it's a way and a tool that we found that,
um, really helps us do those real time check-ins. Uh, we do focus on one ind- we keep it compressed,
one industry. We also are guilty of micromanaging who gets to be at that table.
We found that if we invite everybody pl- the employers plus everyone else, at least at
the first couple meetings, the employers look around the table and think, why am I here?
So, we're very careful that the employer's get the loudest voice. We listen to their
voice. They lead. We also bring in training providers, of course labor, of course trade
associations, of course economic development, but we're, we're careful about how those,
those meetings are staffed and, and, uh, we do see products come out of them. I have to
tell you that 10 years ago, it's because of the panel that we started 10 years ago, our
very first one in healthcare, we're on, on Part 2 of healthcare now. Um, that, we believe
that got us to tens of thousands of people in career pathways in our local hospitals
to, uh, a specific grant, thanks to, to HPOG, that is doing more of the same. And again,
it's, it's impacted tens of thousands of work, of, of individuals and employers in our area.
So, getting six or eight of the key industry leaders around a table for a time compressed
time, staffing it really well, making sure there's some money there to do something with,
um, and listening to industry, letting industry lead has really been an absolutely great tool.
So, three simple models, very simple concepts and of course the trick is, is just do it,
right? So, that's, uh, that's it for me for right now. Thank you.
>> KARON ROSA: I love that all the women at this table have said we have many, many years
of experience. So, this is your wisdom of women's panel this morning, and delighted
to have, uh, the room fill up, because wouldn't you love all the requests, I watched the Democratic,
or not, a Gubernatorial candidate this morning say, you know, for every state what we actually
should be working at this immediate crisis which is jobs. And that's exactly what we're
doing with every one of the models here today. We're connecting something, we're, uh, uh,
either collect- connecting the employer to education or connecting education to employment.
So, I'm delighted to be here with you and share our model.
Our model in Arkansas has been a state partnership, and I think the thing that when I was talking
with my mentor in the room, Shauna King-Simms from the, uh, Kentucky Community College system
and the, the, the wisdom women here, we all, in a short time identified, the most, uh,
immediate barrier to all of this is, uh, the communication breakdown, you know? Uh, state
agencies working together or employers working with Higher Ed or non-profits working with
Higher Ed and employers, it's the acronyms you come with. It's the misunderstanding.
It's the hidden rules within an agency that prevent a lot of things that, that we all
would know would make this a, a, a great, uh, nation, it's just understanding those.
And just like she said, as simple as having a meeting, having a set time for a meeting.
And so the barrier seems to be that of miscommunication or living in our silo. Uh, in 2005, now which
one do you punch? [cross talk]
In 2005, I came from a world of Higher Ed. I had worked so many years in Higher Ed that
I was retired. And I th- I thought I understood Higher Ed quite well, and I did, but we wrote
a proposal, we found out that an agency in our, in our state, and at that time it was,
uh, HHS, received TANF funds. Now, I sat at the table after I was retired and had the
most wonderful career in the world, I worked two days a week as a consultant for the Department
of Higher Ed , and I'd worked with state agencies all over the United States, so I thought this,
this is simple. And it was like Mission Impossible.
I would go in, have my assignment on a computer of, that's when you had computers only on
desks, [laughter] uh, computer of someone who was not there that day. And I came in
one day in November or December and it said, we have a proposal. We've been to Na- National
Governor's Association. We found out about these funds that might be available for Higher
Ed so we'd like you to write a proposal. So I did exactly what you did. I got, convened
pe- you know, we all do this. Employers or educators, we have a meeting about it. So,
we had a meeting and I said, okay, if we could partner these two agencies and these funds
what would we do? They started throwing out acronyms, and like I said, I was already retired
from Higher Ed, I did not understand. I didn't know what TANF meant. I didn't know what TEA
meant. I didn't know what degree of relationship as a parent meant, you know, all of that.
I would just jot notes as fast as I can. And there was another consultant there from Workforce
Strategies Systems in New York and I took all the notes and I would go home and look
them up. You know, it's like, what does all this mean? You know, I thought I w- I, I thought
this was going to be easy. I spent my entire Christmas vacation writing this proposal,
handed it in, and they were out of extra help money so I retired again.
But it was a great proposal. It was like a dream. I thought, I've used all the words,
and at that time, honestly, in 2005 if we had had a panel like this, I would've traveled
to the end of the earth to hear about career pathways, because all you could find was a
little bit that Davis Jenkins had written on career pathways, you know? So I put all
of this, like we do as educators, I piled all this research into the proposal. I wrote
as much as I could about each agency, and that time again it was HHS. But I read in
the paper and saw in the news that they actually got a grant for $12 million and I was just
blown away. I thought, this is so good. But then when they had money and I started working
again at the agency as a consultant part-time, I was almost afraid to go back to that division.
Like, oh, my gosh, they're going to find out that I wrote all of these directions and,
and did it really work?
You know, for two agencies, one to be the lead agency and one to be the funding agency,
did it work? Well, it worked and we thought it would work for about five years and we
are now in our eighth year with the Career Pathways Initiative and the Arkansas model
that really is a partnership between two state agencies, and it's actually mandated or codified
in law, they, you know, the, the wisdom of our legislators, they said this may not work
unless we write the rules for it. So, we're codified in law and it said that, uh, the
local WIB's would be the one, you know, to give advice on what programs we should do.
Uh, DWS at, at that, at the very same time our TANF funding in Arkansas was moving over
from HHS to DWS. So, it, it's almost been like what's the old saying, the blind leading
the blind, you know? They were new with the funding, we were new with the leads, so it's
been a great partnership of learning, I think, for all of us. In all of our funding, our
direct student support for the students is through the TANF block grant in Arkansas that
goes to HHS. This page has a lot on it, way too much, but it's the overview, and it's
exactly what you've heard today. It's connecting and, and again, we wrote these, these things
in the proposal and I'll look back at them and go, oh, my gosh, we have to do this now.
It's con- it's closing the educational gap in Arkansas to, so that it has an effect on
the economic gap. So, I put a lot of material on the slide. You’re welcome to the slides;
I'm sure they'll have the slides available. And again, it's just telling you that if you're
writing a framework like this, we connected, we said that the educational institutions
would be the two-year colleges in Arkansas because their mission was employment. Most
of their, uh, most of them end with an associate degree that's just designed not for transfer,
but as a terminal to agree into employment. So, uh, the grant goes from, it's sub granted
from Department of Workforce Services, the TANF funds are, uh, we get a grant award at
ADHE and then we subcontract with the two-year colleges and the two-year colleges, uh, actually
have the 25, uh, career pathway sites that we have in Arkansas.
So, we had another connection that we had to do too, and that's work with the presidents
of the two-year college, which was again, another thing of, it's not just Pell Grant,
it's not just more funds for the student, there really is a method to this madness.
You, we have to track these students, and we have to make sure that as you said, there's
an employer out there, there's an employer that's ready, that you're working with the
employer all the time, that, that you're dan- actually dancing with all the partners at
the same time. After the first year they [word] out an Admiral in the Navy, you remember that
Shauna, was the first Director and he said, I can't take this anymore, [laughter] and
they said, we're going to put your part-time hours in there and I was like, what's the
problem? And it's like, DWS thinks he's answ- asking the same question all the time. Well,
he wasn't, because we have used TANF guidelines to ensure that the, the student is eligible
and it could be the grandmother that would be the custodial parent. It could be the mother's
sister that was the custodial parent. So, to them it was the same question. To us, it
was something very different.
On establishing the criteria for eligibility, and that was left with the HHS and the funds
were coming from DWS so I said, okay, I'll just go back. Well, Tom, this sounds like
a, a lot of fun. It sounds like I'm going to learn a lot of things. Little did I know
how much I would learn with, uh, connecting all of those agencies. But we connect two
state agencies, actually connect with not only the two-year colleges, but we use the
DWA, DWS local case management and HHS. Some, a, a lot of times provides other services,
WIB provides services. So, we call it, we came up with a real neat term that we call,
wink- linking all the resources in the local communities. Now, as a state director and
being the age that I am, I think you can just mandate everything and say, okay.
Uh, in 75 counties, what are the HHS rules for childcare? Guess what? They're different.
Depending on the culture of that county, depending on where the office is located, it may not
even be located in the county, and so all of those things. So, I also had to back up
and say, okay, let's just build huge, let's just build systems like you said, let's just
build a system that, that collects the big picture So, what are the standards, what are
the resource documents? So, we backed all the way up to the law.
And again, our legislators had said, you have to measure enrollment, you have to measure
attainment, you have to measure whether or not the state, the, the client got a job,
and if they were retained in the job. So, I said, okay, let's just back up. Let's build
systems for those, and as long as the 25 sites are measuring this, and as long as we're making
sure that they're staying TANF eligible, then it's going to have to be, those systems need,
need to be, uh, in the beginning we had only 11 of the two-year colleges that would take
it on, and we had 25 in the state. So, let's do systems that we can replicate, but let's
make them simple enough that they only capture what is needed within the grant and to sustain
the grant, and then let it be the culture of that two-year college in the local offices.
And that's the only way the presidents would take it on, and it's made it work for us.
So, you do have to listen to your partners, whether they be your two-year colleges, whether
they be your employers, the HHS office, so we've had to make it work, not only 25 ways
at the two-year colleges, but almost, we have 75 counties in those county offices, so 75
ways. We have, uh, 10 local Workforce Investment Boards that some of them were as formal as
just having a lunch and forgetting it. Some of them wanted to be very involved. Some of
them have done a lot of the student supports. Some of them have done, like you said, the
[unintelligible] funds and the sectorial things.
So, we, we've been blessed to get connected with those because I think the two-year colleges
had a very, uh, formal relationship with them, and didn't use them to the extent of linking
resources. And if our grant money goes away, I feel that that will be one of the sustainables,
one of the unintended consequences of the career pathway system. Even if the federal
money goes away, there will be that link of local resources that if a student is really
unprepared and does not have resources, the two-year college will know how to do it. So,
our purpose again was a, a work, and the presidents, we had just gone with North Central and they
had moved up from vocational schools to two-year colleges and go North Central. So, it was
a little hard for the presidents to digest again that there was going to be a, a work-based
learning program with some performance measures on it.
And so to make real believers out of them, and again, you know, I feel like if you, if
you think hard enough you can come up with a, a system. So, we asked our funder if we
could reserve a $1 million of funding for performance measures at the end of the year.
So, the presidents didn't like it, [laughs] but you're measured on enrollment, attainment,
uh, not just reported placement, but do your completer's match your unemployment insurance
data that's housed in another agency? Can you connect with that data? Can you match
it? And then six months later, are they still there and 12 months later.
And that was probably the biggest barrier with the presidents. They, uh, are not, they
were not real receptive to reporting, but then when you put $1 million on it and some
of the colleges earned up to $70,000 in incentive funds, you still had to spend it on TANF eligible
expenditures, but it was like at the college's discretion where they spent it. And they might
need laptops because they were a very rural area. Uh, they might need computer cards for
access for mothers at night that study at 10:00. So, uh, it, it made believers out of
them that we really were going to measure, we were serious about it to sustain the grant.
We had to.
And one of the things when we were, uh, identified as one of the 10 most promising pathways last
year, one of our, uh, notable, and again, it was unintended but we're so delighted we
have it, is a rich database with 33,000 records on it with unit record data on every one of
them, because we did do the measures. We said we're going to be serious about this. This
is what it says we measure by law and we're going to make sure we have systems that can
be verified. You know, did a student really get a GED? Well, we didn't collect that at
Higher Ed , they collected at Career Ed, so we collect all of those records and are very
fortunate that we also wrote, and I don't know where this came from, uh, we wrote in
five state staff and someone said last week to me, what do you think makes the difference
in this and some grants collapsing at the two-year college in a year? And I said, you
have to have a driver. You have to have someone who's responsible. If everyone was responsible,
nobody's responsible.
In our Career Coaches program and Arkansas is a great example, great program, I believe
in it, but they did not collect, they did not have a data collector the first year.
So, they lost their TANF funding within a year, you know, because they didn't have that
to back it up. And we made sure from the very beginning that we collected our own data and
we built the data system around it. So, again, the purpose of it is to encourage upward education
and career mobility. The key objectives now, DWS wrote these into our state plan, our Memorandum
of Agreement. They wanted to increase their work participation rate. They wanted to increase
basic skills. They wanted to increase attainment of college-level ertificates and associate
degrees and improve job retention, and they wanted to increase self-sufficiency. And they
said, what do you want as a partner? We said, well, we'll just go with the law. We'll say
that within Higher Ed we'll draw for enrollments, we'll take on the extra that the current TEA
on Arkansas, TANF does not mean a cash recipient.
Our TANF criteria is written into MOA and it's very broad. In Arkansas our temporary
assistants, uh, for employment assistants are our cash recipient of TEA. And our population,
the reason it's, the reason it's much larger than some other programs is within that we
capture the TEA population which is the cash assistance that has, they, they will have
a, uh, case manager with DWS and their funds, they also receive some TEA funds, and it runs
about 12% every year. In the beginning when we did the data on the counties in the two-year
colleges, they were running less than 10%. So, we've increased that, but, but it, it's
still a population that's very hard, and she's saying stop and I didn't watch.
Let me get, let me do my, somebody asked for performance measures again. We've had over,
uh, 90 million, that's our pathway that, uh, we developed. Our program successes, I don't
know how to go backwards. I just skipped over it. How, which one is back? [cross talk] I'll
hand it back to you so I won't do any more slides. Our program successes again are we've
enrolled over 27,000 students, 24,000 of them have some kind of attainment and that can
be duplicated on our entered employment where we match it to the unemployment insurance
data. We meet every goal. Over 50% - 55% of them have to stay in Arkansas and we have
a lot of border schools. Uh, our largest program is, uh, Allied Health and then we have to
meet and 80% benchmark at six months and, uh, 12 months. Thank you. She said stop. [laughter]
>> EVELYN GANZGLASS: Right. I guess this is working now. Right. So, uh, let me go on to the next, yes. Excuse us.
Okay. Why don't I start and you figure… [cross talk] Oh, okay. [cross talk] It worked.
Uh, so, as, there we go. As you've heard from this panel, there really has been a lot of
experimentation. There's growing evidence that, uh, a more integrated, holistic approach,
a cohort approach really does have better success, both in terms of more positive labor
market outcomes, educational, uh, outcomes, uh, that students are able to persist and,
and, and get to credentials at, at a increasing rate. There is a lot of interest in career
pathways, a room full of people early in the morning coming to listen to career pathways.
Uh, Mary Alice talked about the federal guidance in this area. Um, career pathways has built,
been built into all kinds of discretionary funding at the federal level, level. Foundations
have poured money into it. So, this is really the, uh, the topic de jour. [laughter] Uh,
and yet there seems to be a lot of confusion [laughs] about what is career pathways or
what, what isn't a career pathway? Uh, everything seems to be a career pathway at the moment,
and this is not to say that the work isn't good, but there's just a lot going on within
this bucket of career pathways. So, we thought that it was really important in order to move
the field forward to really a, a strong evidence-base about career pathways to bring some clarity
to what all these, how all these pieces fit together and what we really mean by high-quality
career pathways programs and systems. And I want, want to highlight the, the programs
and systems part.
This is just, um, a slide from, from Oregon that we stole that just shows the, the cacophony
around career pathways. Uh, bridge programs, navigators, uh, c- you know, contextualization,
support services take, you know, whichever words you want they're in this, uh, this picture
and they do all fit together. Uh, but the question is really, how do they do that? So,
um, about a year ago with support from the, uh, Irvine Foundation and the Joyce Foundation,
CLASP, uh, joined in partnership with 10 states, 10 states including Washington State and Arkansas,
you'll see, uh, Virginia, Wisconsin, other states are included in that. And the purpose
of this partnership is really to, to do two things. One is to identify a framework that
defines high-quality career pathways systems, um, and I'll show you some slides on that,
including quality criteria in- indicators.
So, what really are, if you really want to define what a high-quality system is, what
would be the elements of that and how would you know at the state and local level that
you have those in place? Um, and then we are in the process of developing a set of shared
metric, performance metrics both for measuring and managing, uh, their success. Measuring,
thinking more in terms of performance management and managing more in terms of, of continuous
improvement and how those fit together. Uh, as I said, we're working with 10 states. These
states have put together teams of people from community colleges, Adult Education, Workforce,
TANF, uh, employer groups, state folks as well as, uh, local people, there's a traveling
team where we meet together and then there's a, a home team, a much broader one, uh, that
is going to review all of the materials.
We have a national advisory committee, uh, and Cheryl is part of that aren't you? I think
you are. Or, you, no. You're not. Somebody, I'm sorry. But broad national advisory on,
on career pathways. Uh, hopefully next week, I believe it will be next week, we will be
coming out with the beta version of both the indicator c- the criteria and indicators as
well as the performing metrics. And, um, I want to say they are a beta version. They're
going out to the 10 states, uh, which will spend the next several months carefully going
through, uh, all the materials that have been developed providing feedback. And then next
spring, we, um, hope to be, uh, issuing the, the first beta version, uh, because with all
the research coming in they'll be changing all along.
We have a working definition of career pathways which is consistent with the federal one,
but really was developed by the state and local folks who came together. Um, and we
really tried to move away the notion of a, a structured sequence of activities to a more
flexible approach that showed, that helps people progress along, but that they can accelerate,
they can move in and out, they do move in and out, so it's a, a more flexible, uh, kind
of approach.
I, I want to spend a couple of minutes on these slides. I'm going to go through this
really quickly. The point of, this is a, a picture or, or a figure demonstrating what
a local system is trying to do. It really has multiple on-ramps or entry points, understand
to a accommodate people who are coming with different skill levels, with different levels
of experience, with different potential barriers to employment. There are multiple exit points,
uh, leading to family sustaining employment, to credentials, to entry into further education
and training, you know, going as far as, as people can go. Um, pathways are trying to
help people gain the academic skills, the credentials from basic skills to degrees,
employer ability, career planning, and, and soft skills as well as occupational skills.
I'll get to programs later on.
I think this is [sighs] kind of a key slide here. We really got very confused about what
a system is, what a program is, what a career pathway is, and in talking to talks we've
really tried to think about that. So, you'll see, I don't have the pointer, but at the
top it says career pathway system. So the career pathway system, and Karon of part,
you know, the career pathway leads the career pathway system in, in, um, Arkansas. It really
is a partnership of the multiple agencies of employer groups that are trying to align
polices, funding, uh, provide support for local system development. So, they don't really
have the system, they work general with employers but it's really happening at the, at the local
level. You have the local career pathway system, and you'll see they're two kind of, uh, segmented
pieces there. Those segmented pieces in our mind are the programs. So, there are career
pathway programs.
Uh, Cheryl talked about a program that has lots of good elements in it, but it's not
the whole pathway from, um, basics, you know, from very low basic skills to advanced, uh,
degree. Her program is a part of that and she's in partnership with other agencies,
with community colleges, with other groups. Some pathways are longer than others because
of the occupation or the industry in which they are working. Some of them really in,
build in the, the bridge component, the basic skill component. Some of them have been broken
out. They lead to different, uh, credentials. So, you have pathways which are these segments
and these elements of it are really programs. Some programs are longer as you see than others,
some are very short, but are aligned and feed into to, uh, the other programs. I only have
10 minutes, so I have to go really quickly.
Um, you will see in this bottom box, uh, that the career pathway systems are really all
following a, a, a certain guiding principles that I think, um, characterize these, these
systems. They adopt and articulate a shared vision and strategy, uh, at both the state
level and at the local level of career pathways. Demonstrate leadership and commitment to institutionalizing
career pathways. Ensure that career pathways are demand driven, and everybody talked about
that, are focused on sectors, uh, in which there are good paying jobs that help people
advance in the, in, in the economy. They engage employers. They align policies and measures
and funding, performance measures and funding. They use and promote data and continuous improvement
strategies and they enhance the capacity of all of the providers in all of these various
programs.
You have another box at the local level and I think what you've heard from each of the
previous speakers are examples of just the kind of quality criteria of the programs.
Uh, and they are participant focused approaches to instruction and occupational training,
uh, contextualized basic skills, instruction, accelerated learning, um, you know, various
kinds of the, what do you call it, bridge programs, other kinds of strategies, and everybody
has talked about those kinds of things. Uh, probably didn't talk as much about assessment,
um, as I think you all could have, but assessment is a, a key part of that. It helped people
not only with career planning, but also in, in placing them and helping them, uh, get
the credentials they need and, and move, move along. Supportive services, people talked
about that. Ongoing navigation assistance and a direct, direct connection to um- to
employment.
So, this is really our conceptual framework so that when we hear about all these good
things we try to figure out how do they fit together, and we really can see the state,
local and federal systems as a, an ongoing feedback loop, uh, where one informs the other.
Where federal policy needs to be implemented, interpreted and, you know, and, and what you
experience at the local level gets fed, fed back and hopefully improves at, at the other
levels as well. So, we will be coming out with the, our, uh, indicators for state systems,
for local systems, for programs and I know I'm going over, I'm sorry, um, next week.
And, uh, they'll be going out to the states.
Folks who are interested can come to the CLASP website and, and, um, get access to those
as well. We're going to do it in a somewhat controlled manner so that we can really get
feedback. The idea is this is not ready for implementation, this is ready to get feedback,
to get by and to make sure that language works for everybody and that's part of the, the
exercise here is to get agreement between the community college people and the Adult
Ed people and the TANF people about this is really what we're, we're after. So, we welcome
your input.
Uh, and the last slide, last slide is just to say that we have, this is in addition to
what I was just talking about, an updated toolkit on federal funding for career pathways.
Uh, talk about 10, uh, key funding. so, federal funding sources and how they can be used to
support key parts of career pathways and the newest part of the, the toolkit is really
an appendix on support services, which is one of the hardest to get funded. So, uh,
by popular demand we've, uh, included a career pathways, uh, support services appendix. Thank
you.
>> MARY ALICE MCCARTHY: Well, thanks to all the panelists. Um, I think those were excellent
presentations and I think now we have time for questions and, uh, some questions, our
Question and Answer period. There are two microphones at the back of the room, um, so
if you have a question please go there and then I'm not sure if we have any live stream
questions. Looks like we got somebody, great.
>> AUDIENCE QUESTION: LIZ KNOLL: Good morning. Uh, my name is Liz Knoll. I'm from the University
of Pennsylvania, School of Social Policy and Practice. And I'm doing some research right
now in Pennsylvania that has a program that's funded by the Department of Public Welfare
in, uh, cooperation with the community colleges. And one of the things I'm doing is thinking
about these performance measures from the point of view of the women who are actually
in the program. And one of the things that I'm finding out as I interview those women
is that there seems to be this sort of tension between the, the requirements of the, the
county assistance office and of course the performance requirements at the community
college level. And that sometimes the way the program is implemented makes it actually
more difficult for the women to do what they need to do. So in other words, it's setting
up more barriers because of the pressures on either side, and I wonder if anyone on
the panel has come into, you know, uh, if that pr- problem has arisen in the work that
you've done?
>> MARLÉNA SESSIONS: In Arkansas 90% of our students, uh, are women because the first,
uh, criteria is that they must be the custodial parent. And we ran into that with, uh, our
TANF funding, so, uh, we can cover childcare, all the needs of women. We can cover the childcare,
uh, the transportation, uh, the tuition. We thought that all qualify for Pell. Like I
said, we've learned a lot. A l- most of ours have a year of college and they messed up
somewhere, they got pregnant, they got on drugs, and then by the time th-, uh, when
we sent our data off they were 31 years of age and we didn't anticipate that either.
So, we are serving working poor mothers and, yes, the need is great and that's, I asked
someone what a, a TEA check and was surprised to find out it's $67 which doesn't buy diaper,
you know, it won't buy diapers a lot of times. So, we do give our students, and we don't
limit the support on them, we say, you know, our goal is $1,500 but there may be someone
that will need $3,000. But we got full permission to use all of our TANF funds to identify the
barriers of women and then, um, supply all of those needs with our TANF funding. Does
that help? Did I hear the question correctly?
>> AUDIENCE QUESTION: LIZ KNOLL: Well, maybe I didn't, um, express it correctly, but what
I'm talking about are more implementation issues. For example, uh, when the women have
to do 20 hours per week in addition, um, after their 12 months, right? First of all, that's
really not enough time to get an associate’s degree. You know, a 12 month certificate may
be really difficult and not provide a family sustaining wage. But the issue is for example,
uh, the classes are 55 minutes long, that doesn't make up an hour. So, where do they
make up this extra hour, or this extra five minutes without being sanctioned? You know,
things like this, whereas, you know, on the county assistance level, you know, from their
perspective they have to do that. And, but it just doesn't seem to, you know, just take
into, uh, account the way the women live every day. That's kind of what I'm talking about.
>> MARLÉNA SESSIONS: Yeah, I would just add and it's probably a naïve response. First
of all, I love that you're looking at it from that perspective, but, um, the naïve response
in me is that, uh, we found when we've gotten the leaders together from the various systems,
about half of the rules can be thrown out right away because they were created, they
aren't law, they aren't legislation, they, they're actually, you know, created a long
time ago sort of thing. So, to, again, not, probably naïve response, maybe not real helpful,
but are the community college presidents, the state legislators, the state whoever folks,
et cetera, aware that there's a couple, and even if you could pick a couple of these examples
to say this and this, couldn't we compress the, expand the class for five minutes or
compress it to, the, the regulation down. Um, we've just been amazed at how many regs
can be cut out of the discussion when you get the right people in the room.
>> AUDIENCE QUESTION: LIZ KNOLL: Well, that's what I'm hoping at some point. [cross talk]
>> EVELYN GANZGLASS: I, I just wanted to additional that performance when you talk to people about
what the hardest part of, of blending, braiding funding is, it's always performance standards.
And I'm sure TANF is, uh, probably the hardest one, uh, because it's really not outcome focused
and has all of the work requirements and time requirements and, and process kinds of measures.
Uh, but there's flexibility there as well and there are lots of examples of, of how
that can be done. The performance measures that we, uh, will be coming out with next
week to really to get input from other folks, are quite different, not the, the measures
themselves, many of them are not different they're the same, you know, employment earnings,
labor market outcomes, credential measures, that people are using.
Um, but instead of being focused on the funding source, it's really focused on people within
the pathway and trying to make that pathway more successful and looking at how people
are moving along a pathway and then being able to allocate back to the funding source.
But currently all the per- all the performance to the federal or state funding sources that
comes through as opposed to the people who are moving through, through a pathway. And
included in the, the, the proposed measures that we will be coming out with are really
outcome measures as well as some interim measures, uh, to help measure peoples progress along,
along the pathway and not just at the tail end of it.
>> AUDIENCE QUESTION: LIZ KNOLL: Thanks.
>> CHERYL FELDMAN: I, I just wanted to follow-up on that by saying that, it really depends
on the state also and their position. So, in Pennsylvania we are a work-for-state. And
so what we've done in our programs to help the TANF clients is to embed some real quick
job training and help people to get some kind of ability to qualify for work even if its
part-time so that they can actually go to school and work at the same time. It, it's
a big burden on them. It's not for everybody, but we have tried to do a workaround where
we need to, uh, so that there is work involved in their portfolio of activities, and it's
not just, uh, education, uh, because of the focus on work first. Um, so I'd be happy to
follow-up after if you're interested, uh, and, and tell you kind of a little bit more
detail about that. But, it, it has been successful, uh, with our nurse aide to LPN for example.
We've been very successful in combining the work experience with the education experience.
>> MARY ALICE MCCARTHY: Great. It looks like we have another question coming.
>> AUDIENCE QUESTION: CELIO MORALES: Uh, yes, uh, my name is Celio Morales and I'm with
the Employment and Training Reporter. And I sort of want to ask a little bit of a contextual
question about the whole career pathway thing. I first heard of career pathways sometime
in the early 90s, so the idea is not new, but it's in, in, since the 90s we've seen,
uh, changes in policy and if you've all been paying attention, uh, last week the, uh, Subcommittee
on Appropriations, it said, said they're, they're ceilings for labor HHS and education
went down 20%. How they going to find the, the 20% to take out is another story, but
that's an indication of where things are going federally, right? And I, and I'm wondering,
it seems to me is if what you're saying is that, well the hell with whatever the federals,
uh, federal government does or the state government does and whatnot, we're going to create a
system for itself, is that more or less what you're, you're doing?
>> MARLÉNA SESSIONS: [laughter] No, no to hell with certainly. Um, the working within
and, and with the resources that at hand, which of course are perennially underfunded,
so regardless of what trough you're talking about, whether it be federal philanthropic,
private, corporate, whatever. So, um, I think, you know, I, I would, I would call it something
very different. I would call it innovation using all systems. No comment, how's that.
[laughter]
>> EVELYN GANZGLASS: To add I think the economy, uh, is demanding different outcomes from the
workforce system from community colleges. Community colleges are really, uh, being pressed
on increasing completion and attainment of credentials and have increasingly, uh, really
poor students who have multiple needs and who need more supports. So, from each of the
systems, from the economy and from each of the systems it's all moving in the same direction
that we have to help more people get further, uh, with limited resources and, and how do
you pull those together at the local level. And I think you're at the state and local
level and I think that's what you are hearing about.
>> MARY ALICE MCCARTHY: We have time for one more question.
>> AUDIENCE QUESTION: JANE VENOHR: Uh, thank you. Thank you. I'm Jane Venohr, I'm a Center
for Policy Research in Denver and I also teach at a community college, Colorado Mountain
College, so I'm real excited to hear about this, um, pathways, um, research. In any event
at, um, CPR we do a lot of, uh, research on non-custodial parents and it just struck me
when you said the mothers, and, um, has there been any movement in any of your states or
any of the places where you've been studying these career pathways to expand these programs
to non-custodial parents, particular using TANF funds, you know, that can be used if
the, um, child is eligible, the non-custodial parent's child is eligible for, um, TANF,
and so expanding them, expanding the programs?
>> MARY ALICE MCCARTHY: An excellent, something for us all to chew on and think about , uh,
I think. I will say that, uh, at OVAE we are thinking about, um, uh, career pathway models
also and sort of, um, as they apply to incarcerated individuals and thinking about them as re-entry
models. And we have a, we have a grant out there right now we're working with, I think
it's three sites who are, uh, testing a re-entry model that has all of the major components
of a career pathways model. So, thinking about different, and we're also thinking about this
in terms of, um, immigrant populations a, a lot. So, I think thinking about the different
subpopulations, the nice thing about career pathways when you look at the key elements,
they can work for lots of different populations, uh, adults, dislocated workers, disconnected
youth. So, thinking about, it's really about folks who need, you know, support, getting
through education, uh, and into the workplace. So, I think that as an approach it should
work for lots of different, different populations. So, with that I think we're going to wrap,
I have, wrap up here.
I have one announcement that I want to make that should be of interest, um, I believe
will be of interest to the, to the research and evaluators in the, um, in the audience
and to everyone working with adults. Uh, the OECDs program of International Assessment
of Adult Competencies will be issuing its report, its international study, it's, uh,
um, on October 8th. Um, this is an international study that assesses adult, um, skills or adult
competencies across all of the OECD. And you're probably familiar with the OECD rankings because
we're always hearing about where our country is in terms of postsecondary lately in the
OECD rankings. This is going to look at where we are in terms of adult competencies.
Um, at the, at my office and the Department of Education we're seeing this as a major
opportunity to galvanize discussion around the needs, uh, for more [word] in adult education
and we really encourage you to keep an eye out for that. Again, it's the OECDs PIAAC
Study, P-I-A-A-C as pro- um, that's program of, uh, International Assessments of Adult
Competencies and it's also going, in addition to releasing these international comparisons,
there will be a U.S. country report and there will be, all of the data will be available
to researchers, um, and it's going to be a very rich data set. So, we encourage you to
stay tuned to that. So, with that I want to thank, uh, the panelists today. Those were
excellent presentations. I know I learned a lot, I hope you all did too, and thanks
to all of you.