The Accelerating Opportunity initiative helps our nation's lowest-skilled adults earn college credentials and enter higher-wage jobs faster by combining the Adult Basic Education and career and technical training they need into one integrated curriculum. Based on four years of designing and managing Accelerating Opportunity, Jobs for the Future…

Adult students, whether new or returning to higher education, experience a unique set of transition challenges. This chapter highlights the barriers facing adult students and offers ways to overcome them. For many adult students, returning to college and fulfilling their goals is much like building a house of cards. In order to be successful, each…

Educational interventions that are currently in vogue in higher education settings are based upon constructivist approaches, whereby students learn content within the context of authentic activities and problem-based scenarios. Certainly these approaches have value, but proponents of these approaches have been somewhat successful in convincing…

This annual newsletter contains updates on the latest CCRC research, new publications and details of upcoming presentations at major conferences. The feature article in this issue, "Addressing the Needs of Underprepared Students," by Thomas Bailey, summarizes the discussion found in the paper "Challenge and Opportunity: Rethinking…

The Virginia STEPS (Student/Teacher Education Planning System) was developed to enable adult basic education (ABE) students to become independent learners responsible for planning, carrying out, evaluating, and making adjustments in their education. ABE instructors at Blackhawk Technical College in Wisconsin have adapted the STEPS model to make…

Tacoma Community College (TCC) is a comprehensive institution serving 7,000 students per quarter out of the 200,000 residents of Tacoma-Pierce County. Statistics show that 20% of the student population have not graduated from high school; 21% are from minority groups; and an estimated 60% are academically, educationally, or socially disadvantaged.…

State and local policymakers increasingly see the need to adapt workforce and education policies to the economic changes in their states and communities. The new economy is organized around skills, flexibility, and the willingness of all workers and employees to adapt to changing circumstances. For workers, this demands an increased investment in…

The Testing and Assessment Department of Dawson Technical Institute (Illinois) determined that approximately 25-30 percent of the students taking the entrance Test of Adult Basic Education do not meet the academic level required to start a training program. A competency-based adult reading and math program was developed, and the decision was made…

This three-part report describes the Bridging Program at San Diego Mesa College (SDMC), a basic skills program to prepare students functioning at the 7th grade level or below and to thus provide a bridge between developmental education and adult basic education (ABE). Part I begins with a review of the program's background and a list of its…