Adult Education and Family Literacy Act Program

The PRDE Adult Education Program will develop the following permissible Leadership Activities under section 223 of WIOA:

• Development of Career Pathways (Phase 2-3) to provide access to employment and training services for individuals in adult education and literacy activities

The PRDE is committed to improve, expand and create adult education programs that include adult education Career Pathways and transitioning opportunities to postsecondary programs. The PRDE is aware that a substantial gap exists between the skills of the labor force and the needs of employers in many high-growth industries, including healthcare, technology and manufacturing. This gap results in unemployment while well-paying jobs go unfilled and, at the same time, many low-skilled adults persist in low-wage work with little opportunity for advancement. Career Pathways programs aim to address the economy’s vital need for skilled workers while offering low-wage workers the opportunity to obtain education and training they need to succeed in the labor market.

In order to achieve these goals, our Career Pathways approach offer low-skilled adults well articulated training and employment steps targeted to locally in-demand jobs combined with promising instruction approaches and supportive services. This approach presupposes that post-secondary education and training should be organized as a series of manageable steps leading to successively better credentials and employment opportunities in growing occupations. Each step is designed to prepare participants for the next level of employment and education and also to provide a credential with labor market value. To effectively engage, retain, and facilitate learning, the program will integrate the following four core elements:

• Comprehensive assessment

• Promising approaches to basic and occupational skills

• Academic and non-academic supports

• Strategies for connecting participants to employers

Individual programs vary in terms of emphasis placed on each core component, although all are comprehensive in nature to address the learning and life challenges facing adult participants. The PRDE’s Career Pathways program will include partnerships with multiple providers, including community based organizations, community and technical colleges, human services and workforce agencies, and employers and their representatives. The PRDE’s Career Pathways program will be designed to allow entries, exits, and re-entries at each stage, depending on skill levels and prior training, employment prospects, and changing personal situations.

The Career Pathways program will have the following main components:

• For those participants with skill levels too low to meet entry requirements, basic and occupational skills instruction will be delivered concurrently to support accelerated entry into college-level occupational training programs and credentials.

• Instructors overlap, at least fifty percent of the time, integrated basic skills and occupational training instruction, allowing participants to build knowledge about the industry while increasing their basic skills.

• Participants will be exposed to work environments through a diversity of instructional tools including but not limited to labs, internships and clinical placements.

• A range of academic and non-academic supportive services will be made available to help participants persist in their programs, such as: guidance and assistance to apply for available financial resources; access to standard college support services such as tutoring and the career center; and employment connections to local industry and access to college career centers.

The PRDE is aware of the challenges associated with the development of connections to Career Pathways and the establishment of partnerships; the significant investment of time and effort necessary for the design and implementation of key ABE pathways components for the recruitment of participants; the development of basic skills courses and high quality professional development programs needed; and the collection and analysis of data. Therefore, considers the development of Career Pathways to be an endeavor, which will have to be tackle in phases during the course of the four school years comprised by the Unified State Plan for the PRDE to be successful.

• High quality professional development programs to improve the instruction provided.

Aware of the importance that greater understanding and knowledge of Adult Career Pathways is crucial to a successful implementation, the PRDE is committed to develop high quality instructional content, professional development activities, and support services needed for the design and implementation of the Adult Career Pathways, which will help teachers/instructors better understand the career pathways systems and expand their professional knowledge.

Areas and themes related to the development and delivery of career pathways systems that would help low-skilled adults transition into postsecondary education and employment, include the following:

• Design of Contextualized Instruction

• Integration of Employability Skills into the Classroom

• Training of Adult Education program faculty in Curricula Content Standards associated Indicators, Suggested Classroom Activities and lessons guides, Assessment Rubrics and the Evaluation Guides for all academic themes

• Integration of Career Pathways into the Adult Education program curriculum-framework

• Integration of Career Counseling and Planning into Adult Education

• Focusing participants on Career Pathways

• Provision of technical assistance to eligible providers of adult education and literacy activities receiving funds under this title

The assistance will include the following topics:

• Technical assistance in the new curriculum thematic areas

• Academic supervision to offer mentoring and coaching in both contents and Andragogy process.

• Training and technical assistance in the integration of digital literacy skills into all adult education and literacy activities

It is imperative that Adult Education program providers are integrated in the PRDE’s efforts in designing and implementing the Career Pathways systems, and to be provided with concise information, definitions, historical perspectives, and practical ideas about how Career Pathways can be used to improve student achievement.

• Monitoring and Evaluation of the quality of, and the improvement in Adult Education and Literacy Activities.

Ongoing data collection and analysis are essential in supporting the design, implementation, and evaluation of Adult Basic Education Career Pathways, including the following activities:

• In the planning stages, the program will conduct an analysis of labor market data, which will help our Adult Basic Education program identify local workforce needs and select an occupational focus for the pathway.

• During the instruction period, program and participant data will provide immediate feedback on how well course objectives are being met and suggest areas for improvement, if necessary.

• Finally, data are needed at the conclusion of instruction to evaluate the effectiveness of the basic skills training and assess participant skills gains.

We realize that while some of these outcomes are measured after completion of basic skills training, other might take longer to assess as participants’ progress through the pathway (attainment of certificates or degrees and job promotion or advancement). Keeping this in mind, the PRDE will develop plans to measure participant outcomes at all future educational and employment steps along the pathway, as well as the selection of appropriate assessment tools, which will provide information about the pathway program’s effectiveness and to make any improvements needed to better serve pathway participants.