The Pathways to Advancement initiative was launched by the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices (NGA Center) to help governors and their policy advisors examine options and develop strategies for expanding working adults' access to and completion of postsecondary education. In September 2003, the NGA Center issued a request for proposals for states that wanted to participate in an action learning academy to change their policies and practices related to higher education financing, program and accreditation requirements, and student aid to enable greater numbers of adults to earn postsecondary education credentials. It indicated that the states selected to participate would receive technical support from the NGA Center, FutureWorks, Inc., and experts in education, economic development, and related fields at the Pathways to Advancement policy academy, as well as a $50,000 grant for travel to the policy academy meetings, for peer-review sessions in partner states, and to help support state-specific research, evaluation, and consensus-building activities related to improving postsecondary education for working adults. Nine states were selected to participate in the Pathways to Advancement project: Arkansas, Hawaii, Kansas, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Ohio, Oregon, and Pennsylvania. In all nine participating states, being involved in the project helped to: (1) raise the level of visibility and importance of adult postsecondary education and workforce education among policymakers and the public; and (2) catalyze significant policy changes in participating states, leading many of them to modify their processes for addressing key issues of postsecondary education and economic advancement to include a focus on the adult workforce in the state. The experiences of the nine Pathways to Advancement states offer valuable lessons for governors and state policymakers in other states that want to improve the skills and economic competitiveness of their adult workforce. Appended to this document are: (A) Adult Learning in the States: A Policy Review Framework for State Policy Makers & Educators; and (B) Policy Review Framework. (Contains 28 endnotes.