n December, 2006 the Illinois Community College Board (ICCB) was awarded a $1 million Shifting Gears Grant from the Joyce Foundation, with a $500,000 match from the state of Illinois’ Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity (DCEO). The Joyce Foundation’s goals for Shifting Gears are to improve the education and skills training of the Midwest workforce and promote regional economic growth. Illinois is among five Midwestern states including Indiana, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Ohio to receive the Shifting Gears grant. In addressing the goals of the Shifting Gears initiative, the ICCB partnered with DCEO, Women Employed, Illinois Council of Public Community College Presidents, Chicago Workforce Board, Center on Tax and Budget Accountability, Illinois Coalition on Immigrant and Refugee Rights, Chicago Jobs Council, and the Sargent Shriver National Center on Poverty and Law. Workforce Enterprise Systems (WES) and the Office of Community College Research and Leadership (OCCRL) were contracted to evaluate Illinois’ Shifting Gears initiative.

To support economic growth, the Shifting Gears initiative intends to enhance educational and work opportunities for low-skilled and low-wage workers by creating bridge programs that connect Adult Basic Education (ABE), English as a Second Language (ESL), General Educational Development (GED), and developmental education courses with certificate training and associate degree programs in three industry sectors identified as having critical skills shortages: manufacturing, healthcare, and transportation/distribution/logistics. Bridge programs prepare individuals, particularly with literacy levels below the ninth grade, for entrance into postsecondary education and training by using contextualized learning within a career framework. Success in bridge programs ultimately leads to career-path employment.

The ICCB solicited proposals from Illinois community colleges interested in developing these programs and in July, 2007, eight colleges were selected. They are Black Hawk College, City Colleges of Chicago (Malcolm X and Wilbur Wright), College of DuPage, College of Lake County, John A Logan College, Lewis and Clark Community College, McHenry College, and Oakton Community College. Lavon Nelson is the Director for Workforce Systems at the Illinois Community College Board (ICCB) in the Workforce Development division and the Project Manager for Illinois’ Shifting Gears initiative. In October, OCCRL graduate research assistant, Jason Taylor interviewed Ms. Nelson for UPDATE.

UPDATE: First, would you share why the ICCB (and other partners) pursued the Joyce Foundation’s Shifting Gears grant? What special opportunities did Shifting Gears offer the state?

Ms. Nelson: I think that we chose to pursue it for two reasons. One, to be quite honest, funding is always an issue with trying new initiatives. Shifting Gears was an opportunity to explore some funding and offer incentives to the [community] colleges and other partners to focus on bridge programs. Two, Shifting Gears was an opportunity to do something that was collaborative, to bring all of the partners together focused around a couple of major issues that impact low-income and low-skilled people’s abilities to move into postsecondary education and careers. So, the Shifting Gears initiative offered that opportunity to explore other models for working with low-income, low-skilled individuals and to incent colleges and other partners to focus on bridge programs.

UPDATE: Your proposal to the Joyce Foundation focuses specifically on three industries: healthcare, manufacturing, and transportation/distribution/logistics. How were these industry sectors determined?

Ms. Nelson: Three or four years ago the state established the ten economic development regions, and out of that came the Critical Skills Shortage Initiative (CSSI). Through the CSSI regional work, those three industry sectors emerged across the state. During that same time, the three state partners – Workforce Investment Act (WIA) Title I, WIA Title II, and postsecondary Perkins – began to receive WIA incentive funds in the amount about 3 million dollars. The money was split among the agencies, DCEO, ICCB, and ISBE with most of it coming to [ICCB] since we house adult education and postsecondary Perkins. Prior to receiving the Shifting Gears grant from the Joyce Foundation, we were already taking an industry sector approach by focusing over the recent years on healthcare, then transportation, and recently manufacturing with the WIA incentive funds. It made sense to continue to follow that industry sector approach with the Shifting Gears award so that we align initiatives around the sectors for which we know the state has the most need.

UPDATE: Are there specific adult student populations targeted for inclusion in the Shifting Gears initiative?

Ms. Nelson: Basically, we focused on low-skilled, low-income adults with a lowest placement level of 6th grade or an equivalent ESL. We have two pilot concepts. The first is creating pre-vocational, blended remediation and occupational courses. Eligible students must be persons 18 years of age or older who are interested in enrolling in one of the targeted occupational fields. Their performance on standard placement tests must correspond to the 6th through 9th grade level or the 9th grade level and above. The second concept involves aligning adult education program content with occupational program entry criteria. Eligible students for that concept must be persons 18 years of age and older who want to obtain their GED or those who have limited English speaking skills and who have the goal of entering post-secondary occupational training in one of the targeted sectors. Adult basic skill levels must correspond to the 6th through 8th grade and/or ESL at the low intermediate level, or their adult basic skill level must correspond to 9th grade and above and/or ESL at the high intermediate or advanced levels.

In 2004, there were 103,542 students in Illinois community colleges who did not have the basic skills needed for college work and were enrolled in remediation; these students are not able to move up the educational ladder. Many of them exhaust their Pell Grants while they are in remediation, do not finish remediation, and drop out. In adult education, once students complete their exit criteria, they take the college entrance exam like COMPASS^TM or ACCUPLACER^TM and often end up in remediation at the community college. The remediation issue is huge in Illinois, as it is nationally, and it is a drain on resources. The point is that a GED received from an adult education program or even a high school diploma does not guarantee college readiness; the systems do not align.

UPDATE: Shifting Gears encourages career bridges and career pathways. What do these terms mean, and why are these types of educational options important?

Ms. Nelson: First of all, bridge programs are important because they are the entry point to any kind of pathway for many adults, and it is one way for adults to get into the system. The Bridges to Careers: A Program Development Guide created by Women Employed describes a bridge program as “training to prepare adults with reading levels below the 9th grade who lack the basic skills to enter and succeed in postsecondary education and training leading to career pathway employment.” Our Bridge Task Force of the Illinois [Community College] President’s Council took that and created an occupational bridge definition in spring of 2006. A few elements of the President’s Council definition include: blending workplace competencies, career exploration, and basic literacy and math skills in an occupational context; training held at times and places convenient to working adults, including the workplace; offering academic and personal support services to help balance work, family, and school responsibilities; and designing programs to serve those with the ability to benefit.

In 2004, the Illinois Workforce Investment Board (IWIB) created Healthcare, Manufacturing, and Transportation/Distribution/Logistics task forces, and the task forces strongly support the efforts of bridge programs as a component to regional career pathway systems. So, the ICCB is focusing on issues such as bridge programs and their importance to student transitions to the community colleges.

UPDATE: What key strategies are the community college pilot sites considering to help adults transition to the certificate or degree programs in the targeted occupations?

Ms. Nelson: That is going to depend, of course, on whether they are pursuing pilot concept one or two. In concept two for example, we are asking adult education sites to align their exit criteria with the entry criteria of the community colleges for a particular sector or program. The goal is to get students out of adult education and straight into credit-bearing courses at community colleges as opposed to completing adult education and ending up in remediation. So, we are also asking sites to create, purchase, or modify to develop enriched, contextualized curricula for adult students. In pilot concept one, our strategy is to contextualize remediation courses within the community colleges.

UPDATE: Other recent initiatives like Breaking Through with Jobs for the Future (JFF) and the National Council on Workforce Education (NCWE) and a recent study conducted by OCCRL researchers Debra Bragg, Catherine Kirby and colleagues associated with the National Center for Career and Technical Education (NCCTE) have provided insight into this adult student population, the curricular innovations, and support services that enable student transition and success. What do you hope Shifting Gears pilot sites will contribute to this growing body of knowledge?

Ms. Nelson: What I am hoping we do is identify some key areas where there can be policy changes. The Joyce Foundation is interested in policy change. There are several things within institutions that can be changed that would be considered policy. We have issues around getting curriculum moved [more quickly] through the committees within colleges. Another is how do we build in sustainability, and in order to do that, what policies need to be changed? Also, what needs to change in the institutional program approval process? These are examples of policy changes. One discovery we have made from previous bridge program pilots is the importance of a coordinator or transition person. That is an expense that is not budgeted for in many colleges. So, what we would hope to contribute is information about what works and what does not work.

UPDATE: As you mentioned, The Joyce Foundation is interested in affecting policy change and you spoke about changes at the institutional level. What policy areas might be needed to accommodate these programs at the state level?

Ms. Nelson: There are some unique regulations with adult education at the state level. For example, how much money can adult education providers spend on these types of courses? How much time can they invest in vocational education? So, a policy example at the state level would be building in some sort of encouragement or letting adult education providers know they can do this enriched course; we want to provide adult education with the tools they need. Another example at the state level would be our program approval process. Do we need to modify it? And then there’s funding for innovative remedial courses. For example, if we contextualize remedial education or ESL courses, what kind of course do they become related to how the college is reimbursed? Do we need to develop and approve a new type of course, a blended course that would be funded at a different rate? Remedial courses have the lowest reimbursement rates of any type of course offered at community colleges. They get the lowest reimbursements yet they have high enrollment numbers. Eventually we want to take what we learn from the bridge pilots and combine that with other efforts and develop a long term policy agenda with a legislative component. We will not get this done by the time the pilots are over, but we want to put the foundation in place and make policy changes along the way.

We are also having a “tipping point” discussion to determine in Illinois what it might take for someone to get enough education and training to obtain a job that provides a family-living wage. Washington State¹ created something like this and used it to inform their legislature. So, we are beginning this conversation in Illinois about a tipping point.

UPDATE: For accountability purposes, program and student outcome measures will have to be tracked over time. What opportunities and challenges do you foresee the state facing in identifying and aligning the multiple data systems to track student and program outcomes?

Ms. Nelson: I do not think we are going to have much trouble with multiple data systems because ICCB is the fiscal agent for Illinois’ Shifting Gears initiative. All the data come to us already or we have existing relationships with other entities. For example, all community college data, with the exception of some individual demographic data that the colleges are going to have to collect, we already get. We will then flag those people coming through the programs; this is true for adult education as well. And, we have existing relationships with the Illinois Department of Employment Security to obtain unemployment data. We have not yet determined how long these students will be tracked, but since we have flagged them, we can follow them for as long as we need to. Our senior director for policy and research is involved in all of the discussions. We have as our evaluation team Debra Bragg and Cathy Kirby at OCCRL and Tim Harmon [from Workforce Enterprise Services] who has worked with us on projects in the past.

UPDATE: How will you share the knowledge gained from the eight sites selected for demonstration grants with other community colleges and partner organizations interested in developing career bridge and career pathway programs?

Ms. Nelson: Recently, we have been working in learning communities. Our first two learning communities have been primarily with the pilot sites, but as we move on we will be inviting other colleges and adult education providers to attend so that we can share information with others. I have been doing a lot of traveling to conferences and meetings talking about the project, so we will continue to bring people together, share the data, and disseminate policy information.

There is also some discussion with the Joyce Foundation about continuation of the Shifting Gears Initiative. The conversation is in its earliest stage, but if there is continuation of the project, we have a foundation in place for disseminating information, and we will expand those strategies.

UPDATE: By the end of the grant period, what do you hope the Shifting Gears pilot demonstration sites will have accomplished so that programs such as these can continue to be created and support Illinois’ workforce needs?

Ms. Nelson: We hope we will have clarified what works and what does not work for bridge programs for this population and addressed corresponding policy issues. Like the Joyce Foundation has said, it is just as important to find out what does work as what does not work. Out of that, what we really want the sites to identify are some key policies that need to change. There are many solutions for people, but a bridge program is one way for people to get into career pathways. In Illinois, we do not have direct career pathways in place, but with the new federal Perkins IV requirements we are going to be developing programs of study in some of the 16 career clusters. What we learn from Shifting Gears sites will help us feed the adult community into those pathways, aiding their transition to the community college and on to more rewarding careers.

¹For details, see Prince, D., & Jenkins, D. (2005). Building pathways to success: Lessons for community college policy and practice form a longitudinal student tracking study (CCRC Brief, No. 25). New York: Community College Research Center, Columbia University, Teachers College.

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Lavon Nelson is the Director for Workforce Systems at the Illinois Community College Board (ICCB) in the Workforce Development division and the Project Manager for Illinois’ Shifting Gears initiative. Ms. Nelson is an Illinois native and holds a Master’s in Public Administration. She has a strong background in employment and training programs and community colleges and can be reached at lavon.nelson@illinois.gov.

Jason Taylor is a graduate research assistant for OCCRL at UIUC and can be reached at taylor26@uiuc.edu.