BRENDA DANN-MESSIER: Thank you very much, Debra. Good morning, everybody. It’s really an honor for me to be here, really speaking before such a fantastic group of adult educators, teachers, administrators, and policy makers. The work you do every day is invaluable, not only to the state of California and, of course, to the Department of Education, but most importantly the work you do is so important to the students you serve each and every day. California has a strong, a long and very impressive history of delivering adult education services over a hundred years. That’s very impressive, and that history has helped California lead our country in providing high-quality educational services to low-skilled adults.
First off, let me thank CALPRO and Mariann Fedele for organizing this outstanding summit. I’ve known Mariann for quite a few years and have always respected her leadership and her work and so thank you very much for organizing this very important summit for folks in California. I also want to recognize Debra Jones and her exemplary leadership. I’ve only met her today but I knew her by reputation. You are all very lucky to have her leading your efforts in California,and so I ask you to join me in thanking Mariann and Debra for their outstanding work.
As Larry mentioned, we have a very unique opportunity in this new administration to truly reform adult education and to ensure that adult learners from all backgrounds and skill levels have the opportunity to not only attend and complete college, but to pursue a better quality of living through expanded educational opportunities.
I’m very excited about the work before us and proud to have in both SecretaryArnie Duncan and President Obama two tireless advocates for lifelong learning. President Obama has set the bar high for education achievement nationwide. Not only has he set a new goal for college completion, but he has challenged the United States to again lead the world in the number of college graduates by the year 2020.
As leaders in adult education, you and I both know that really in order to achieve that very ambitious goal, we must ensure that more adults are entering and completing college. The State Higher Education Executive Offices, or the “SHEEOs”, as they are called, recently published data showing that only 30% of the gap in degree attainment will be closed by traditional aged students. This means that in order for us to reach the President’s goal by 2020, 70% of new students attaining degrees will be our students, our adult students. That’s why your work this week and beyond is so very important, not only for your students but really for the nation.
As you know, there are currently 93 million adults in America that are at the basic level of literacy or below. In order to accomplish the President’s goal we must improve transitions from basic education to college for those 93 million adults and the way that Debra described it is absolutely correct. It can’t be a linear fashion anymore. That’s why again, it’s so important for you to be here.
I will tell you, I have been the Assistant Secretary of the Office of Vocational and Adult Education for two weeks. So please excuse me if I am reading my remarks, but I wanted to tell you a story. On my first day at work, I was able to meet with Secretary Arnie Duncan, and I had received a briefing paper from the transition team, and they said really nobody cares about the work of OVAEat the Department. That was the opening statement, so I opened my interview with Secretary Duncan and said to him, “Secretary Duncan, this is what I read for the transition team, and I’m here to tell you why that’s not true, why we are absolutely central to our work in the Department and to the President’s agenda.” And I believe that very strongly, that the work that all of you do, the work that all of us do together is very important and this is our time.
This is our time to really make sure that we skill up our students, that we create the infrastructure to really support our student’s quest for job opportunities that will allow them to support their families. I’ve spent the majority of my professional career as an adult educator and administrator of adult education programs. Prior to coming to the United States Department of Education, I directed two trio programs: the educational opportunity center and an educational talent search program. I left those programs. Those were the Community College of Rhode Island. I left the Community College of Rhode Island to work for the Clinton Administration as the Department of Education’s Regional Representative for New England, but for the past decade I had served as the President of Dorcas Place Adult and Family Learning Center, located in Providence.
The mission of Dorcas Place is to assist low-income adults and realizing their full potential through literacy, employment, advocacy and community involvement. We are committed to expanding (I still talk about “we”as if I was there. It’s hard to make the break.) committed to expanding educational and career opportunities for low-income and low-skilled adults: those who had the lowest literacy and language levels because we know what you know, improving education for adultsimproves the quality of life not only for them but for their families and children.
When I arrived at Dorcas Place, more than a decade ago, we were serving 100 women only in our adult basic education program. When I left, we were serving over 1,000 low-income adults in five major programs. We had a functional literacy program, which is our ABE, ESOL, GED program, our civics education/financial literacy program, and we have a college preparatory program. In fact, that was the first program I established nine years ago when I went to Dorcas Place because I wanted our students to aspire to more than the GED.
As Larry was mentioning, that’s what Debra -- you will hear common themesthis morning. That really is just the beginning and when we created that program nine years ago we built an aspirational model that now has changed, and I’ll talk a little about that. We also have a workforce education program because all of our students want to work and have to work. But if you can’t read or write or speak English, it’s impossible to find a job, so we have a workforce education program that was tied to sectors to prepare our students for work. We also have a family literacy program and was one of ten programagencies selected to receive a federal grant for a full service community school’s grant.
We also are one of seven Welcome Back Centers across the country many of you may be familiar with the Welcome Back Centers. They started right here in California, in San Francisco, and it’s a program to help immigrant professionals go back to work in their careers.
Having recognized a need to provide intensive academic and personalsupport to help low- income adults, as I mentioned, we have a college preparatory program that originally was an aspirational model, andfor the last year and a half we opened our own developmental education institute in reading and math because we knew aspirations were not enough to make sure that our students succeed. They needed the academic program as well, and that program has been very successful.
I was really pleased to work with a very dedicated staff at Dorcas Place, who worked hard to create innovative programs to meet the challenging needs of the diversified communities we serve. In manyways, the lessons learned at Dorcas Place are repeated all across the country in community colleges and community-based organizations and adult schools, those of you serving adult learners, really your work.
We know the nation needs to increase its focus on assisting adults who have no first degree or credential to enter and succeed at postsecondary education. We know the reasons and they’ve been mentioned here, but I’ll repeat them again. For each educational achievement, inattainment that adult increases,you reduce family poverty rates. They have an ability to secure a higher paying job. There’s stronger labor force attachment. And, most importantly,there’s greater personal and civic responsibility and involvement in our community, and Debra also mentioned the research. It is clear. We do know but you also need to be able to cite it and encourage and use that in pushing your work in helping your students to move forward.
But what do we know about what it takes to help these adults? In 2003 OVAE- - now I'm going to talk to you about the work we're doing at OVAE, the Office of Vocational and Adult Education -- in 2003 OVAE commissioned to study to identify programs, practices, strategies that appear to facilitate successful transitions from ABE programs to credit-bearing community college programs. Case studies in four states and 16 local ABE programs suggest a few prominent practices that appear to make a difference, and they won’t surprise you. Larry mentioned them, Debra mentioned them, and I’m also going to talk about them, and many of them are being highlighted during the summit.
Information about program structure and organization suggests (these are some of my wonderful students who graduated from college at Dorcas Place. OK I'm on board, I'm on track…) Information about program structure and organization suggests that in addition to other administrative relationships the ABE program’s close proximity in relationship with the local community college campus that give students a chance to acclimate college and grow is very important. At Dorcas Place college preparatory program, we have a very strong partnership in relationship with the Community College of Rhode Island. It was vital and there is some research that was done quite a few years ago by Brookfield that suggests that adult students who go to college feel as if they don’t belong, that they’re waiting for someone to come and tap them on the shoulder and ask them, “What are you doing here?” So it’s really important for us to make sure that students know they do belong on college campus and part of our college preparatory program at Dorcas Place was every summer we took our students on college tours so that they could see that there were students that looked like them, that spoke like them and that they could, in fact, feel comfortable that belong on campus and that’s very important and why it’s important to have a close proximity to college campuses, so students have a chance to acclimate.
Additionally, the enrollment links between the college and ABE programs help connect basic skills instruction to career interests and postsecondary content. These links include integrate instruction co-enrollment and blended courses. Furthermore, the quality and nature of instruction appeared to be a key factor in successful transition,including helping students prepare for college assessments,aligning the curriculum developmental and postsecondary courses, and encouraging students at intake to set educational and career goals and develop action plans to meet those goals.
The availability of support services appears to enable ABE students to address personal barriers, such as lack of child care or transportation. I can tell you from my experience at Dorcas Place that having support services was absolutely one of the most important central ingredients for our student’s success. In our college preparatory program we had case managers who with our students when they went onto the college campus. If they missed a class, we were there the next day to say, “Oh, I’m sorry you missed class. Have you made arrangements to make notes? What’s the matter? Do you need some kind of support services?” And, of course, they would tell us, "My car broke down.I don’t have transportation," and we would help to facilitate carpooling with other students. Whatever instance came up, the case manager’s job was to make sure our students had a goal. They wanted to go to college, they want to succeed in college and the case manager’s job is to make sure they reach that goal and that any obstacles or barriers that may be in their way would overcome.
Support services are also provided by referring students by the network of support services available through the local colleges, or maybe it was referring them to human services or workforce agencies. And, no surprise to many of you in the room, many of them relied on the faculty, our ABE faculty, to provide them with personal encouragement and support.
Staff interviewed for the study also believed that their program’s personal and organizational collaboration again with the postsecondary institution provided students with important information about college, the application process, and educational career goals. We always made sure we reached out to the college advising offices at the Community College of Rhode Island. In addition to that, we reached out to the trio programs and I urge you if you don’t already have a relationship to reach out to them, the educational opportunity center and student support services. They provide very intensive information on financial aid; they’ll sit down with our students one on one doing financial aid application assistance. You don’t have to necessarily build up that expertise in your program because they are the experts. They know all the changes in financial aid regulations and so you can use those programs as well.
Inviting postsecondary faculty and counselors to make presentations to the ABE class, providing students with application materials which strategies identify helping adults successfully transition. Again, I’ll speak to you a little about Dorcas Place. When we would take our students who are aspiring college, and co-enrolled in college preparatory program right on campus and invite all the key officers--the Director of Financial Aid, the Director of Admissions, the Bursar office--and so that they could see one on one those individuals and meet those individuals and I would always go to lunch.
We would have a lunch and I would tell those folks in introduction how important these offices were and then they, one by one, would come up and say students, I’m the director of Financial Aid at Community College of Rhode Island. Please make sure if you have any problems with your financial aid you come and see me.
I’d say, "This is the Director of Financial Aid. You will more than likely have problems with financial aid. She has just offered you her private extension and phone number. Take it down. Make sure you call her up if you have any problems." People are very – they want our students to succeed just as you as you want your students to succeed. Moreover, we know that the challenges that are unique to adult students time is often a barrier, and that’s really what I commend CALPRO for offering even their own professional development online, and we need to be providing more opportunities for our students as well so they can advance academically. Our faculty also need to learn new information and implement new practice and to coordinate across community services.
Finances will always be an issue for our students, and we need to make sure that we at the federal level and certainly at the local level promote additional resources. In Rhode Island I worked very hard,very closely, with our guaranteed student agency to establish the Rhode Island Adult Education Grant Program for students who had additional expenses that were not covered by the federal financial aid for housing, transportation and child care. It allowed students who were enrolled less than part time to really have the necessary funds for them to complete. And as I talk further on about some of the legislationthat’s ongoing, we’re hoping to make sure that there are additional opportunities for adult students. Also, state level policy work is going to be very important, and it’s very important that Debra is here and other key policy makers are here from the community college, so that they can really hear what some of the obstacles in state policy that relate to access and completion for adults in higher education because there are barriers.
Extensive advising of counseling, of course, are needed to increase the availability of educational career counseling services to help learners determine their skills, interests and identify career areas. I’m really thrilled that my friends from the National College Transition Network are here and that they are going to be talking about their career awareness program. It’s an absolutely wonderful program, and I encourage you to find more about it. Dorcas Place, luckily, was selected to be one of the programs participating in this effort. It’s an extremely important initiative for our students who lack the ability to have never really have the experiences of developing career goals and career awareness, so I want to thank my friends at NCTN for their good work.