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Mazzeo, Christopher; Rab, Sara Y.; Alssid, Julian L.Building Bridges to College and Careers: Contextualized BasicSkills Programs at Community Colleges.Workforce Strategy Center, Brooklyn, NY.Annie E. Casey Foundation, Greenwich, CT.2003-01-0027p.

For full text: http://www.workforcestrategy.org/publications/Contextualized_basic_ed_report.pdf.Reports Descriptive (141)

EDRS Price MF01/PCO2 Plus Postage.*Adult Basic Education; Basic Skills; *Community Colleges;Context Effect; *Cultural Context; *Developmental StudiesPrograms; *Job Training; Language Skills; Literacy Education;Mathematics Skills; Minimum Competencies; *Skill Development;Two Year Colleges; Writing Skills

State and local policymakers increasingly see the need toadapt workforce and education policies to the economic changes in theirstates and communities. The new economy is organized around skills,flexibility, and the willingness of all workers and employees to adapt tochanging circumstances. For workers, this demands an increased investment ineducation; for policymakers, these economic realities have put in starkrelief the limitations of current workforce, welfare, and education policies.This study identifies and draws lessons from several community colleges andcommunity college programs that have reconsidered their developmental and/oradult education offerings and are actively creating bridges to college andcareers for disadvantaged students. This paper presents case studies ofprograms at Cabrillo College, Santa Cruz, California; Westside TechnicalInstitute at Daley Community College, Chicago, Illinois; Henry Ford CommunityCollege, Dearborn, Michigan; Portland Community College, Portland, Oregon;and Community College of Denver, Denver, Colorado. For each case study, thepaper presents the key initiative of the program(s), and analyzessustainability, facilitating factors, and continuing challenges. Each of theprograms presented here has moved beyond the traditional model of adult basiceducation, while focusing on teaching and learning as well as outcomes.(Contains 44 references.) (NB)

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WHO WE ARE.\\...rWORKFORCE STRATEGY CENTER

A NONPROFIT MANAGEMENT CONSULTING FIRM

The Workforce Strategy Center is a nonprofit management consulting group that works throughout the United Statesto help create public systems that promote career pathways leading people to high wage, high demand employment.Current projects include national research and consulting on how to put community colleges at the center of region-al workforce development systems and partnerships with public and private sector leaders in California and NewYork to develop pathways to information technology careers for unemployed and underemployed individuals. Formore information, visit our web site at www.workforcestrategy.org or contact us at 718-434-4790.

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Building Bridges toCollege and Careers:

Contextualized Basic Skills Programsat Community Colleges

JANUARY 2003

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The Workforce Strategy Center would like to thank The James Irvine Foundation, The Ford Foundation, TheWilliam and Flora Hewlett Foundation, and The Annie E. Casey Foundation for their support of our research intoeffective practices in developing career pathways in a number of states and regions around the country. This report,funded by the Casey foundation, is the second in a series of three reports that are part of this project. We are alsograteful to the community colleges that gave us their time and energies in making this work possible, and weacknowledge Davis Jenkins for his integral contributions to the framing and analysis of this report.

Co-Authors: Editors: Cover Photo:Christopher Mazzeo Julian L.Alssid Courtesy of West Side

Sara Y. Rab David Gruber Technical Institute, a DivisionJulian L.Alssid Designer:

of Richard J. Daley College

Julia Reich

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BUILDING BRIDGES TO COLLEGE AND CAREERS:Contextualized Basic Skills Programs at Community Colleges

TABLE OF CONTENTS

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 1

INTRODUCTION 2

CASE STUDIES 5

Cabrillo College, Santa Cruz, California 5

Westside Technical Institute at Daley Community College, Chicago, Illinois 7

Henry Ford Community College, Dearborn, Michigan 9

Portland Community College, Portland, Oregon 11

Community College of Denver, Denver, Colorado 13

SUMMARY OF KEY FINDINGS 15

REFERENCES 20


EXECUTIVESUMMARY

New economic realities have created a need forworkforce and education policies that better meetemployer demands for skilled workers and the needsof workers for economic self-sufficiency. To addressthese demands, there is growing evidence that work-force and education systems should be reorganizedaround "career pathways" that integrate education,training and work and are targeted to high wage, highdemand employment. Central to the career pathwaysmodel is the development of clear connections, orbridges, between basic skills development and entry-level work or training in high wage, high demandcareer sectors.

In this study, we examine and draw lessons from fivecommunity colleges that have created such bridges inan effort to teach basic skills to disadvantaged adults:Cabrillo College, Aptos, California; West Side TechnicalInstitute at Richard Daley College, Chicago, Illinois;Henry Ford College, Dearborn, Michigan; PortlandCommunity College, Portland,Oregon; and CommunityCollege of Denver, Denver, Colorado.

These colleges are committed to contextualizedteaching and learning strategies as part of basicskills instruction and career pathways program-ming. Research suggests that contextualized basicskills instruction is often more successful thantraditional models of adult education in engagingdisadvantaged individuals and linking them towork. In developing their bridge programs, thesefive colleges went beyond existing adult educationprograms by:

Integrating developmental and academic content

Developing new curricular materials and providinginstructional support and professional develop-ment to help faculty learn to teach in a new way

Maintaining active links with employers andindustry associations

Finding resources to fund these programs, at leastin the short-term

Producing promising program outcomes, especiallyin terms of job placement and earnings

The five colleges also face a number of challenges insustaining and expanding these innovative programefforts, including:

Balancing relevance and content in classroominstruction

Promoting effective instructional leadership

Enrolling and engaging lower-skilled students

Providing evidence of long-term program impact

Serving more than a small portion of the potentialstudent population

Community colleges around the country are mak-ing significant strides in rethinking their approach tobasic skills education in the context of a larger effortto better connect students to college credentials andrewarding careers. While none of the colleges pro-filed in this study have been able to serve more than20% of their developmental, English as a SecondLanguage (ESL) and adult education population, theyall seek the resources and capacity to go to scale. Thegoal for funders and policy makers is to developstrategies for moving these efforts to scale and help-ing to catalyze similar changes in other communitycolleges. Reaching such a goal will require changes ininstitutional practice and public policy. In particular,policy makers and foundations should consider thefollowing three steps to support the expansion ofbridge programming:

Provide resources for professional development

Cultivate instructional leadership

Fund evaluations and additional research

Taking these steps can help states and institu-tions improve the relevance of adult anddevelopmental education to adults seeking careertraining and economic advancement, and facilitatemore direct links between student and high wage jobsand employers.

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INTRODUCTIONState and local policymakers increasingly recognize

the need to adapt workforce and education policies tothe reality of economic change in their states andcommunities. The "new economy"is organized aroundskills, flexibility and the willingness of all workers andemployers to adapt to changing circumstances. Forworkers, the new economy demands increased invest-ment in education with higher wages increasinglylinked to some form of post-secondary education. Foremployers, the new economy demands, among otherthings, workers with a wider array of basic skills,including reading and writing oral communications,mathematical reasoning, critical thinking and reason-ing, problem solving, teamwork, interpersonal skillsand an ability to learn continuously (Murnane & Levy,1996; Comings, Reder & Sum, 2001).

For policymakers, these economic realities have putin stark relief the limitations of current workforce,welfare and education policies. While "work-first"pol -icy efforts have brought more people into the labormarket, they have not helped most of them escapepoverty. Nor have employers been especially helpedby the current workforce development system. Inmany high-skill sectors, such as information technol-ogy, nursing, and allied health, employers report con-tinuing difficulty in finding and keeping entry-leveland skilled workers.

In a recent report to the James Irvine and FordFoundation,the Workforce Strategy Center called for areorganization of this workforce development systemto better meet employer demands for skilled workersand the needs of the workforce for economic self-suf-ficiency. To address these needs, the report recom-mended our workforce and education systems beorganized around long-term, comprehensive "careerpathways" integrating education, training and workand targeted to high-wage high-demand employment.For individuals lacking skills and resources, careerpathways can provide an introduction to educationand career opportunities and the basic skills needed tosucceed in post-secondary career training. Indeed,there is growing evidence that community college-centered career pathway programs are a successfulway to bridge disadvantaged individuals out of pover-ty and into self-sufficiency (Alssid et al, 2002).

Central to the career pathways model is the devel-opment of clear connections, or bridges, between basicskills development and entry-level work or training inhigh-wage, high-demand career sectors. In practice,however, these connections are often rarely realizedlocally, regionally or nationally. Even within individualcommunity colleges, the critical elements of careerpathwaysbasic skills, academic, and vocational edu-cationare frequently perceived and organized asseparate divisions with distinct missions, program-ming,faculty and students (Bailey & Averianova,1999;Jenkins, 2002). While colleges that serve a largely eco-nomically disadvantaged population report that amajority of their students lack the basic skills neces-sary to do college level work,few have made consciousefforts to link developmental, adult education andEnglish as a Second Language (ESL) offerings tocareer specific vocational training and advanced edu-cation. Yet many of these traditional developmentaland adult education offerings have high dropout ratesand show limited evidence of success (McCabe, 2000;Abell Foundation, 2002).

The Purpose of this StudyIn this study we identify and draw lessons from sever-

al community colleges and community college programsthat have rethought their developmental and/or adulteducation offerings and are actively creating bridges tocollege and careers for disadvantaged students.Developing these connections requires making remedialeducation more relevant to adults seeking career trainingand economic advancement as well as facilitating directlinks to higher-level community college courses. Thus,we searched for programs and colleges that:

Serve welfare recipients, dislocated workers orother adults with identified basic skills deficiencies

Teach developmental, adult education or ESLclasses in the context of students' lives and thework-specific skills they need for employment inparticular industries and sectors

Seek to "bridge" these students to work oradvanced training in high-wage, high-growthemployment sectors with clear opportunities forcareer advancement

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In particular, we were interested in those collegesand programs committed to contextualized teachingand learning strategies as part of basic skills instruc-tion. In this type of approach, courses such asremedial English, reading and math are modified toincorporate materials from specific fields into theactual course content. Programs that promote contex-tual teaching and learning make heavy use of projects,laboratories, simulations and other experiences thatenable students to learn by doing (Jenkins, 2002). Byintegrating instruction in basic skills with instructionin technical content, contextualized teaching andlearning also enables academically unprepared stu-dents to obtain career training at the same time asthey enroll in basic education.

In our review of the literature and informal discus-sions with workforce development professionals andcommunity college experts, we identified eight com-munity colleges that had programs and college-wideinitiatives that fit our three criteria. The eight col-leges are: Cabrillo College, Aptos, California; WestSide Technical Institute at Richard Daley College,Chicago, Illinois; Henry Ford College, Dearborn,Michigan; Portland Community College, Portland,Oregon; Community College of Denver, Denver,Colorado; Shoreline Community College, Shoreline,Washington; Guilford Technical Community College,Greensboro, North Carolina; and Mission College,Santa Clara, California.

Documents and electronic materials were reviewedfrom each of the colleges and followed up by phoneand email. Site visits and interviews were also con-ducted at five of the eight colleges. For each of the sitevisits, we interviewed senior college administratorsand key faculty and staff involved in basic skills andcontextualized learning initiatives. We also observedclasses whenever possible. This report summarizesour findings from all eight colleges, with a particularfocus on the five we intensively studied: Henry Ford,Westside Technical,Cabrillo, Portland and CommunityCollege of Denver. Case studies of these five collegesare included in this report.

Beyond Traditional Adult Basic EducationDespite evidence of the growing need for adult lit-

eracy and skills remediation and the strong linksbetween literacy and earnings (Comings, Reder &

Sum, 2001), adult basic education (ABE) and otherskill-building strategies have been de-emphasized inrecent years by welfare and workforce policymakersin favor of immediate workforce attachment strategies(Strawn,1998;Savner, 1999). This shift was precipitat-ed by a generation of research and evaluation findingsshowing that adult basic education programs wereoften of low quality and had little economic or educa-tional impact (see Pauly & DeMeo, 1996; D'Amico,1997). In her summary of this literature, Strawn (1998)found that fewer that half of the adult education pro-grams for welfare recipients she surveyed eitherincreased employment or average yearly earnings.The majority of enrollees did not even earn a GED,and few of the programs raised student test scores(see also Beder, 1999).

Researchers and others have sought to explainthese findings by invoking student characteristicssuch as low motivation or learning disabilities.Student factors might also account for the highdropout levels and low levels of attendance that aregenerally the norm in ABE programs. Yet there is alsoevidence that program-specific factors matter as well.A study of Greater Avenues to Independence (GAIN)programs in two California counties showed that adultbasic education programs that paid attention toprogram quality produced small but statisticallysignificant test score increases (Martinson &Friedlander, 1994). Fein et al (2000) report similarresults in an initial evaluation of the New Visionsprogram at Riverside Community College.

These findings have led researchers to more close-ly examine the nature of "program quality" in adulteducation. What works in teaching basic skills? Toanswer this question,we conducted a thorough reviewof the literature as part of this project. Based on thisreview, we found that successful basic skills programs:

Link students to advanced educational opportunities

Link students to specific employers and workopportunities

Have a strong focus on curriculum,instruction andstudent learning

Links to Advanced EducationTraditionally, adult basic education and ESL pro-

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grams have weak or non-existent links with advancedcertificate and degree programs. Yet these links arecrucial to producing positive student outcomes. In thetwo aforementioned GAIN programs, clients who suc-cessfully completed basic education went on to jobsearch rather than further education. For this reason,test score increases did not translate into any signifi-cant earnings increases in the San Diego GAINprogram (Martinson & Friedlander, 1994). Similarfindings were reported in the evaluation of NewChance, a MDRC national demonstration project thatcombined education, vocational training and collegeclasses. While there were no positive earnings effectsof the program for women receiving a GED alone,women who earned a post-secondary training certifi-cate increased their average monthly earnings.Evaluators concluded that "participants should bemade aware that basic education has little value byitself and should be strongly induced to pursue post-GED training and credentials." (Bos, 1996:16)'

Links to Employment and WorkResearch also suggests that a strong connection

between adult basic education and employmentincreases earnings, at least in the short term. Programswith stronger links to employers have higher placementrates, thus increasing the average earnings of students.When tied to an explicit strategy of retention and wageprogression, such employer links have shown potentialto increase earnings over the long term (Grubb, 1996;Jenkins & Fitzgerald,1998).

A lesser-known virtue of strong links with employ-ers and work is that they enhance student learning ofbasic skills. Both Grubb et al (1999) and Murphy &Johnson (1998) found that one essential characteristicof effective programs is "a focus on employment-relat-ed goals through instruction that integrated basic andoccupational skills training with work-based learning."(Imel, 2000:2) There is also an extensive literature ineducation and cognitive science showing the importantrole context plays in shaping student learning (Rogoft1990; Lave, 1991; Wenger, 1998). One important "con-text" for adult learning is the world of work itself and

the specific tools, practices and social relationsembedded in the work setting (Greeno et al, 1999).Basic skills programs that link skill development tothese real-world contexts enable learning by clarify-ing the relevance of skills to the setting they areapplied in. Basic skills education that is contextual-ized also enhances student motivation to learn andcan reduce high levels of attrition in these programs(Hu 11,1997; Strawn & Martinson, 2000).

Focus on Curriculum and InstructionOne of the major ongoing studies in this area is the

Evaluation of Effective Adult Education Programsand Practices being conducted by Abt Associates forthe U.S. Department of Education (see Alamprese,1998;Alamprese, Labaree & Voight, 1998;Alamprese,2001). This study is among the first that attempts todetail program-level factors in adult education andtheir relation to student outcomes. As part of thisstudy, case studies were conducted of nine exempla-ry ABE programs to identify key dimensions ofprogram quality. According to their review, exempla-ry ABE instructional programs possess the followingfive features:

Effective program management and instructionalleadership

A commitment to staff development

Conscious attention to appropriate instructionalstrategies

A focus on learner assessment

Extensive supports for learning,especially for stu-dents with low levels of literacy proficiency(Alamprese, 1998: 5-8)

Alamprese and associates have yet to report on theinteraction of these five components and how theyspecifically work together to produce better studentoutcomes. However, research on elementary and sec-ondary school reform suggests that a combination of

' More recently, Comings, Reder and Sum (2001) have shown that earnings rise with increases in literacy levels, even for individ-uals holding the same credentials.

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effective leadership, sustained staff development, anda strong professional community focused on teachingand learning are essential features of efforts toimprove student academic achievement (Louis &Kruse, 1995; Newmann, King & Youngs, 2000; Sebring

Bryk, 2000; Elmore, 2002).

How This Report is OrganizedWe use these three features of effective basic skills

programs as an organizing principle for the five corn-munity college case studies to follow. For each college,we describe the history and current status of theirefforts to "bridge" basic skill students to advanced edu-cation opportunities and career path employment. Wediscuss the organization of teaching and learning(instructional leadership, staff development, classroominstruction) at each of the programs/colleges profiled.We also focus on the sustainability of community col-lege bridge efforts and the potential for "scaling up"promising programs and practices to serve a greatermajority of the developmental and adult education pop-ulations at each of the colleges. After the case studies,we conclude with a summary of our overall findingsand recommendations for policy makers and funders.

CASE STUDIESCabrillo College, Santa Cruz, California

Cabrillo College is actively working to promote careerpathways that link low-income individuals to job lad-ders, partly through the use of contextualized learningin several key initiatives. In addition, the college hasseveral programs, including the Fast Track to Work (seeAlssid et al, 2002 for details) and Ladders projects,whose explicit mission it is to move students into workand to provide opportunities for career advancement toemployment that pay a living wage. This is a difficulttask in part because the cost of living is exceptionally

high in Santa Cruz and because Cabrillo serves multi-ple communities, including Watsonville, an agriculturalarea with a population that is 70% Latino.

Key Initiative: Ladders Project. The Ladders project,a creation of the Santa Cruz County Coalition forWorkforce Preparation (in which Cabrillo is a part-ner), strives to "build a comprehensive, integratedworkforce development system that is responsive tothe needs of underrepresented and low-income popu-lations, to provide the ability to move through theseinstitutions and move into the workforce," according tothe Dean of Career Education. Ladders is funded inlarge part by the Packard Foundation, with the restprovided by Cabrillo College and the HumanResources Agency (HRA).

In 1998-99, the Ladders project staff identified sixcareer ladders to focus the program around (alliedhealth,public safety, office systems, computer technol-ogy, childcare and retail), based on local labor marketinformation and local employers' needs, which speci-fied occupational paths and training for local jobs.Together, these six ladders include 42 occupationaltracks encompassing over 150 job titles. The laddersstart quite low, such as a childcare aide, and top outaround management levels. "One of the things welearned is not to try and map out every way that some-one can advance up a career ladder. That's a trap wefell into," said the Ladders director. "You have to keepit simple."' Staff identified three critical aspects thatcrosscut all six ladders computer proficiency,work-based learning, and English proficiencyanddeveloped projects in each of these areas. The com-puter proficiency pilot involves working with localtraining partners to improve computer courses to bet-ter match the needs of local employers. In addition, aWork-Based Learning Resource Center was developedat Cabrillo to connect classroom learning to workthrough internships, mock interviewing, job shadow-ing, and other similar activities.

The Ladders project includes an ESL pilot program,the Partnership for Integrated Language andOccupational Training, designed to ensure access to

Details about the Ladders project can be found at wwwcareerladdershet

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the career ladder model for economically disadvan-taged adults with limited English proficiency. Theprogram is vocational ESL (VESL), which means thatEnglish is taught in the context of work. After the stu-dents participate in an initial assessment, they beginby learning English associated with work in a "world ofwork" class that focuses on hands-on, work-basedlearning. After passing a series of competencies, theymove on to one of three career module courses:Medical Careers, Careers with Children, orConstruction.In these courses, English is taught in thecontext of a specific occupational category

This ESL pilot has served approximately 350 stu-dents thus far in the "world of work" curriculum andthree next-step modules. About fifty have advanced toa higher-level training program, and about 10% areworking in entry-level jobs.

Key Initiative: Early Childhood Education Program:Spanish-to-English. One goal of the Early ChildhoodEducation (ECE) program at Cabrillo is to bring low-income individuals into the field as both teachers andadvocates, and to help them advance along a careerpath to higher earnings (usually available whendirecting or owning a day care center). The majority ofthe students in this program are women, most areMexican or Mexican-American,and about a third havevery limited reading and writing skills (far below 9thgrade). In an effort to reach this large population ofSpanish-speaking women working in the agriculturalfields in the southern part of the county, the ECESpanish-to-English Program was developed at theWatsonville Center. The program's goal is to move stu-dents along a specific career path (an associate'sdegree in Early Childhood Education) while at thesame time teaching them English.

The students enrolled in the program have a widerange of proficiencies in English, and thus they areencouraged to take courses in a sequence that bestsuits their needs and is appropriate for them. The corecurriculum is provided in Spanish. According to aprogram instructor:

The decision to offer the four core courses inSpanish was natural, because of the effort toget people to the first significant step in theladder. If we did not do that, did not providethat in Spanish, if we were going to wait until

people had enough English to be able to takethese classes, we wouldn't have three-fourthsof the enrollment that we have.

As students advance to higher-level courses, lessSpanish and more English is used in the classroom asstudents learn English in the context of EarlyChildhood Education. This approach to contextuallanguage learning focuses on reading to learn andinvolves a great deal of hands-on learning. Materialsare related to the course goals, and advancement isbased on competence. Students are also taught basicstudy skills such as note taking.

Sustainability: Promising Practices andContinuing Challenges. The issue of how tosustain these innovative programs at Cabrillo ispotentially a significant one, and this is recognizedby the administrators. However, one of the coredesign principles for the Ladders Project has beento use the college's resources for capacity develop-ment. Cabrillo does not fund training programs,but rather funds the development of training pro-grams that can be sustained using the collectiveresources of Cabrillo and its partners. All of theclasses taught in Ladders are supported by ADAand FTEs, and Ladders' resources are used forcurriculum development, staff development,recruitment of students, coordination and articula-tion between agencies and evaluation.

In addition, the Dean of Career Education has beenfairly successful in his grant-writing effortstheLadders program has received a great deal of supportfrom the Packard Foundation since its inception.Cabrillo's partnerships with agencies such as HRAhave also generated additional funds. Indeed, theDean reports that Cabrillo is confident that Ladderswill continue to be funded, whether additional softmoney is received or not. He believes that "the chal-lenge for us isn't sustaining what we develop, butfinding the resources to continue improving the cur-riculum, broadening the scope to include more careerpaths, and doing further staff development."

Going to Scale: Fad Mating Factors and ContinuingChallenges. Cabrillo is far ahead of many communitycolleges in its efforts to create career pathways andintroduce contextualized learning into the curriculum.

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Numerous programs and pilots are in place, and it isquite possible that more than a thousand individualshave already benefited from the work of Cabrillo'sinnovative programs.

Cabrillo administrators developed extensive andremarkably successful partnerships with a variety ofother agencies and institutions in Santa Cruz County.Collaboration with other educational providers in thearea is essential to the success of the Ladders pro-gram. Faculty from both the Adult School and theRegional Occupational Program (ROP) do most of theteaching in the vocational ESL component of Ladders.Perhaps the most unusual partnership Cabrillo has iswith the local welfare agency, the Human ResourcesAgency, which has given a great deal of support toCabrillo's efforts to educate and train disadvantagedindividuals. Strong leadership by the Dean of CareerEducation, along with the support of the administra-tors who oversee him, has enabled these programs togrow. Increasingly, faculty from Cabrillo, as well asfrom the Adult School and ROI! have become involvedin teaching in a contextualized manner. And theattention paid by the media and researchers to theseefforts have enhanced visibility throughout the collegeand the community.

The Vice President of Instruction notes that inspite of the existence of these programs, Cabrillo"isn't very far along" in its efforts. In order to furtherintegrate career ladders and contextualized learninginto the curriculum at the college, it will benecessary to involve more faculty members andadministrators and hire qualified bilingual instruc-tors. Cabrillo is led by a faculty Senate, which needsto be brought on board and educated about theseprograms and about contextualized learning. Inaddition, those faculty members currently involvedin the workforce development programs needfurther professional development opportunities todiscuss and think about curriculum developmentand how to best assist students.

Recruitment and assessment issues also need tobe carefully considered in order to ensure the suc-cess and stability of these programs. Students willbe most likely to succeed when they are able to par-ticipate fully in curricula that they are capable oftaking. And efforts to recruit students of all back-grounds should be expanded. The VESL program isfortunate to have a staff member who actively

recruits students from the nearby Kmart parking lot.Such techniques need to be discussed and put intouse more widely.

Westside Technical Institute at DaleyCommunity College, Chicago, Illinois

Westside Technical Institute (WSTI), a satellitecampus of Richard J. Daley College, is located in thePilsen/Little Village neighborhood on Chicago'sSouthside, a heavily Latino community. WSTI, alongwith Instituto del Progreso Latino (Instituto),has builtcontextualized learning into a career pathways modelknown as the Manufacturing Bridge, a trainingprogram designed to prepare low-income communityresidents for careers in manufacturing. To serve stu-dents with weaker entry-level skills than required bythe Manufacturing Bridge, Instituto has developed a"pre-bridge" two-semester VESL sequence and begunoffering a Bilingual Manufacturing Bridge program(Bilingual Bridge) for students with weaker Englishskills who can meet the other demands of the manu-facturing curriculum. Similarly, WSTI has developedthe Career Bridge Program for students who cannotmeet minimum skill requirements for theManufacturing Bridge or the schoolO's college-leveltechnical programs. These innovative efforts areanimated by a strong belief in the power of contextu-alized teaching and learning and a resolute focus onskills development, preparing students for the work-place and advanced educational pathways.

Key Initiative: Manufacturing Technology BridgeProgram. The goal of the Manufacturing Bridge is toprepare students without a high school diploma or GEDfor entry-level skilled jobs in area manufacturing com-panies and possible advanced career path training atWSTI and Daley College. The Bridge does this by "inte-grating communication and math fundamentals withhands-on introductions to technical manufacturingskills: according to one instructor. The curriculum con-tains both technical literacy and technical specialtycomponents. Within technical literacy, students takeclasses in Workplace Mathematics, WorkplaceCommunications, Applied Physics, and IndustrialComputer Applications. After seven weeks, studentsalso begin a paid internship with one of the program's

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partner firms. Though the program is designed forimmediate job placement, students also earn five cred-its towards an AAS degree at Daley College.

Through the National Science Foundation (NSF)grant, the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) com-missioned the Academy for Educational Developmentto conduct an evaluation of the first five years of theManufacturing Bridge program, during which time 351students participated in the Bridge and 64% graduat-ed. Using Unemployment Insurance wage data fromthe Illinois Department of Employment Security(IDES), the evaluators compared participant employ-ment outcomes for one year prior and roughly twoyears after program enrollment. ManufacturingBridge had an immediate and longer-term impact onthe proportion of graduates employed at a livablewage ($8.00 per hour). Similarly, the average annualincome of graduates dropped from $19,516 to $14,732for the year prior to enrollment and then rose back to$20,116 one year after enrollment. Bridge participantsalso showed higher rates of employment than amatched comparison of Job Training Partnership Actparticipants. In particular, Hispanic males with a sta-ble work history showed strong employment andearnings after enrolling in Manufacturing Bridge.

The dean of WSTI,the program director at Instituto,and a researcher at UIC developed the Bridge.Funding comes primarily from a NSF grant and issupplemented by a grant from the John D. andCatherine T. MacArthur Foundation, as well as fund-ing from the Illinois Department of Commerce andCommunity Affairs (DCCA) and federalEmpowerment Zone funding.

Key Initiative: VESL and Bilingual Bridge.Manufacturing Bridge requires Test of Adult BasicEducation (TABE) scores of 8.0 in reading and math tobe admitted into the program, which limits access forotherwise strong applicants. For those students withlimited English proficiency, WSTI and Instituto creat-ed VESL and Bilingual Bridge programs.

The VESL program, which served 180 students in2001, uses contextualized teaching in order to connectlanguage learning to meaningful aspects of students'lives and work interests. The 16-week curriculum,taught by four full-time instructors, includes hoursspent not only in VESL instruction but also time in acomputer lab and a workplace math class. The cur-

riculum is designed to offer a structured progressionof grammar and workplace English. Upon enrollment,students are assessed using Basic English Skills Testor another assessment suitable for language learnersand then placed in a skills-appropriate cohort withwhom they take two terms of VESL. Upon completion,some students enroll in the Manufacturing Bridge,while those with lower entry-level skills in English goon to the Bilingual Manufacturing Bridge.

In the Bilingual Bridge program, technical specialtyand computer classes are taught primarily in Spanish(although the materials are in English), while workplacemathematics classes are taught in English (a bilingualtutor is made available during class time). In lieu of theworkplace communications component, studentsreceive additional VESL instruction. Bilingual Bridge isa new program and has not yet been evaluated.

Key Initiative: Career Bridge Program. Like theVESL program, Career Bridge was designed for stu-dents scoring below the minimum threshold on TABErequired for admissions to vocational programs atWSTI. The goal of Career Bridge is to better preparestudents for these programs and more generally orientthem to college and careers. Using a version of a"learning communities" approach, the ten-weekprogram offers an integrated set of courses inReading/Employment Skills, Mathematics, and TABETest-Taking Strategies.

Career Bridge was developed because the majorityof individuals who came to WSTI seeking job trainingcould not qualify for the college-level technical train-ing programs. Also, there was no connection to theInstitute's job training programs for the more than2,000 students a year who came to WSTI seeking tolearn English. The philosophy of the Career Bridge issimplemake classes engaging and meaningful sostudents learn the skills they need for advancement.This is done through the following four strategies:

Making employment and careers the context forreading instruction

Designing instruction so native and non-nativespeakers learn together

Teaching math in a hands-on and applied fashion

Teaching test-taking strategies explicitly so other

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classes can focus on skills

In addition, all students are given a comprehensiveorientation to Career Bridge that explains the programand orients them to college work and futureadvanced-degree opportunities. The purpose of this isto both bond cohorts with faculty and staff and createa sense of "urgency" around student success. CareerBridge has shown some level of success. During 2001,90% of 250 TABE tests taken by students showedimprovement,and 43% achieved scores high enough toenroll in a Daley vocational program. Of the 500 stu-dents who enrolled in Career Bridge from fall 1999 tosummer 2000, nearly three-fifths went on to enroll inone of the college's advanced certificate programs.

Sustainability: Promising Practices and ContinuingChallenges. While most of Instituto's programs arebuilt on a soft money foundation, the organization hasstrong relationships with funders and a track record ofsuccess that will likely sustain it. Thus far, they havebeen able to fund a Training Director, four full-timeVESL faculty, and a cadre of quality adjuncts, as wellas a case manager and two job developers. Even withlower salaries than most colleges, this is an impressiveaccomplishment and helps them put together a highquality program. In addition,now that the Bridge pro -gram is certified by the state for Workforce InvestmentAct (WIA) funds, Instituto is likely to rely increasinglyon WIA individual training account (ITA) vouchers tofund the program.

Going to Scale: Facilitating Factors and ContinuingChallenges. The dean at WSTI wants to increaseenrollment in vocational certificate and degree pro-grams by making the VESL and Career Bridge modelthe default option for students in need of basic skillsdevelopment. Other adult education programs at thecollege have little contextualized content and havetypical problems with retention and student advance-ment. Currently, just under half of WSTI's TABEtest-takers are enrolled in Career Bridge. While someof these students go straight into advanced certificateprograms, the rest currently have no option other thantraditional ESL. Under the proposed revision, thosestudents would be placed in a new VESL sequence,modeled after the Instituto program. Eventually, thedean would like to see all adult learners, Spanish-

speaking or otherwise, served by pre-bridge andbridge programs at WSTI. However, the challenge ofgoing to scale, as in most colleges, rests in the detailsof program operation and classroom practice. To

achieve this vision,WSTI will need an infusion of newteachers who are knowledgeable about contextualizedteaching and learning and will need to retrain itscurrent ESL faculty. This will require extensiveprofessional development and a sustained effort topromote a different curricular and instructionalphilosophy at a school with few resources for profes-sional development. Staff will need time and supportto become instructional leaders, time that will have tocome from reduced teaching and administrative loadsIf the dean's vision is to be realized, a collaborativeculture of teaching and learning must be created andsustained in Career Bridge and the VESL program.

Henry Ford Community College,Dearborn, Michigan

Henry Ford Community College (HFCC), a mid-sized community college located in the heart of theautomotive industry, is striving to link low-incomeindividuals to the world of work. Contextualizedlearning is part of several educational and trainingprograms at HFCC where creative faculty memberswork with staff at the college's Corporate TrainingDivision to create unique programs that blend aca-demic and vocational instruction with contextualizedbasic skills. These programs include a ManufacturingBridge pilot and a pathways program involving a localhigh school.

Key Initiatives: The Detroit Manufacturing Bridge.The Detroit Bridge, a three-year pilot program thatended in 2001, emphasized training in applied basicskills, soft skills and technical skills in an effort tomove low-income adults into career paths in technol-ogy fields. It was also an NSF pilot program similar tothe Bridge at WSTI and was constructed by some ofthe same individuals. The primary partners in theDetroit Bridge were HFCC's Corporate TrainingDivision and the Detroit Hispanic DevelopmentCorporation, a community based organization (CBO)in southwest Detroit.

An interdisciplinary team of both academic and career

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faculty at HFCC were involved in the development of theBridge curriculum, which uses a hands-on contextualizedapproach to learning. According to the Bridge director, it

was extremely important to involve experienced full-timefaculty who were open to operating in a more flexibleenvironment. "It's not about having a defined set of tools,

or a toolbox to use in the classroomit's about having aframework in which faculty work. Maybe it's a three-dimensional toolbox," he said. The curriculum was builtaround a series of instructional modules that interwoveacademic and vocational instruction (available on the web

at http://ctweb.hfcc.net/dmb). Developmental educationand remediation were fundamental to the Bridgeprogram, and a community-based educator providedindividual mentoring throughout the program. The

Bridge faculty used several innovative approaches toteaching,including:

Working collaboratively on both developing a newcontextualized curriculum and implementing it inthe classroom

Taking risks in class by using innovative teachingtechniques, such as "tag team" lectures, where oneteacher builds off what another teacher said

Encouraging group work that respected students'multiple intelligences and various cultural back-grounds

Giving the students a voice in the classroom,usingactivities such as journaling and student-ledreview sessions

The Bridge students were mostly Latino andAfrican-American adults, ranging in age from 18 to40, who were recruited by the CBO. Most studentsspoke English, and had math skills between the 6th-and 9th-grade levels. The entry-level requirementsfor the program were minimal, based not on testscores but on functional skills. Over the course ofthree Bridge pilots, lasting 16 weeks each, nearlyfifty students began the program, and about thirtyfinished. The Bridge program's purpose was to linkstudents to both jobs and further education. "Notonly is the Bridge a bridge to employment opportu-nities, but it is a bridge to further educational oppor-tunities," said one instructor. Of the thirty studentswho completed the Bridge, about a third went on to

jobs or further education. The director attributesthat relatively low success rate to poor initial assess-ment of students who were not screened well forbarriers to career path employment or continuationof higher education.

Key Initiative: A High School Bridge. HFCC is cur-rently working on developing a relationship with theDetroit Community High School (DCHS), a four-year-old charter school located approximately ten minutesfrom HFCC within the city boundaries of Detroit.Most of the students are African-American and onfree or reduced lunch. Many of the students could notsucceed in the public schools, having skills three tofive grades below grade level, and thus they came toDCHS. The Bridge director and the co-founder ofDCHS are rethinking learning appropriate for moti-vating and preparing inner-city youth to go on toHFCC. DCHS has a hands-on "world of work"curricu-lum that focuses on craftwork within the context of acollege preparatory framework. This links up wellwith HFCC, which has a history of apprenticeship andvocational education. "The community college is theideal connection for the 11th and 12th graders to learnskills and find out what the world is about," said theco-founder of DCHS.

As a first step to building the high school Bridgeprogram, a 10-week technology-driven course forthe DCHS 11th graders on "Exploration of Casting"was created. To supplement class, students visitedlocal businesses that use casting in order to practicetheir observational, report writing, communicationsand math skills. The goal of the program is toprovide in-depth experience with a particular tech-nology and industry. The leaders hope that as aresult, students will take advantage of availableapprenticeships over the summer. The Bridgedirector views this as a potential pathway for stu-dents to become employed in one of the manyadvanced technology jobs available in the area. Thecourse is the first step in developing a larger highschool Bridge project.

Sustainability: Promising Practices and ContinuingChallenges. After the Manufacturing Bridge pilotended in 2001, HFCC began working to create anAllied Health Bridge, but the details are still beinghammered out. For example, while they have secured

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funding, they are still working on creating relevantmodules, adapting the curriculum to the new field anddealing with institutional politics. The ManufacturingBridge has not yet been repeated, in part because ofthe substantial costs associated with bridge programsthat require small faculty-student ratios. HFCC isconsidering applying for additional NSF funding forthe high school bridge.

Going to Scale: Facilitating Factors and ContinuingChallenges. The Bridge program was successful inpart because it drew on existing efforts used byHFCC's Corporate Training Division in customizedwork to promote contextualized, hands-on instruc-tion. The integration of the academic and careersides of the college also enabled the Bridge programto take place at HFCC. The participation of both full-time academic and vocational faculty members incorporate training activities such as the Bridge is evi-dence of the administration's successful attempt todiminish traditional academic/vocational divisions,as well as the strength and leadership of the union-ized faculty. The learning modules and teachingmethods from the Manufacturing Bridge are nowused in other corporate training programs and in theclassrooms of the academic faculty who ran theBridge. But in order for career pathways models andcontextualized learning to become part of the largerinstitution, more faculty members need to becomeinvolved. Since HFCC is a faculty-led institution, it isessential to bring large numbers of faculty on boardin order to create support for new ideas such ascontextualized learning. Yet expanding the role offaculty will no doubt increase the need for profes-sional development and raise the overall cost of theBridge program model. In addition, faculty at thehigh school must be brought on board and trained inthe kind of teaching the model presupposes in orderfor that partnership to succeed.

Continuing to develop close collaboration with localemployers is also essential to the success of bridge-type programs. The Corporate Training Division doesa good deal of contract training, and it strives to getmore faculty out into industry in order to gain valu-able experiences and insights that they can thenimpart to students. Better collaboration with the CBOwould also have made the Manufacturing Bridgemore successful.

Portland Community College, Portland, Oregon

Portland Community College (PCC) offers a goodexample of an institution that is strongly committed tothe career pathways model and backs that commitmentwith resources, capacity building and partnershipswith external agencies and organizations. Currently,PCC is working to institutionalize a career pathwaysapproach throughout its occupational programs. Aspart of these efforts, the college is strongly committedto bridge programming that links basic skills studentsto degrees. Contextualized teaching and learning is asignificant part of these efforts. Most promising arerelatively newer initiatives at PCC to better serve dis-located workers and WIA clients (for example, TheRegional Workforce Training Team) and the college'sABE, ESL and developmental education students.These latter efforts, though still in their early stages,offer important lessons in program design andresource development for other colleges seeking tocreate a career pathways model inclusive of lower-skilled adults and English language learners.Contextualized basic skill development is also fullydeveloped in PCC's long-standing programs for out-of-school and at-risk youth (PCC Prep) and current andpast welfare recipients (Steps to Success).

The key leadership driving the career pathwaysmodel at PCC is the Dean of Adult and ContinuingEducation for the PCC district. She is also the Dean ofInstruction at the "Open Campus" where she overseesmany of the college's workforce programs and its com-munity sites, including the two colleges' managedOne-Stop Career Centers. Career pathways efforts atPCC have the active support of the new president.

Key Initiative: The Regional Workforce TrainingTeam (RWTT). The RWTT is a partnership amongWorksystems (the local workforce investment board),PCC and Mount Hood Community College that wascreated in 2001 to serve "as a conduit between localOne-Stop Providers, businesses and College trainingprograms." The emphasis is on short-term trainingfor dislocated workers, which prepares them for newjobs. The RWTT also has a strong focus on servingstudents with limited English proficiency and lowbasic skills. For students with stronger English lan-guage skills, "the training team works with collegedepartments to reorganize and repackage preexisting

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curriculum into short-term trainings." Training mod-ules are offered in four fields: Accounting/Bookkeeping, Criminal Justice, Metals Manufacturingand Phlebotomy. Since full-time training is offeredfor one term, students can earn preliminary certifi-cates and enter jobs in these fields. Because theseshort-term modules are part of existing college pro-grams, students are eligible for both federal financialaid and WIA funding. RWTT encourages employedstudents to continue toward advanced credentials.

For English language learners, the RWTT offers ESLtraining in three career clusters: Health Care, FoodServices and Office Skills. Students are taught in aVESL format enhanced by strong links with employersand a mandatory internship. Classroom trainingemphasizes computers, communication, customer serv-ice, job readiness and industry-specific knowledge. Thehealth care duster has successfully worked with a num-ber of area employers and hospitals, and in its threeyears of existence it has placed over 90% of its studentsin jobs paying living wages, with high retention rates.

All language and basic skills instruction in the ESLclusters is strongly contextualized within the specificcareer areas. This necessarily puts tremendousdemands upon instructors to continually link skilldevelopment and language learning. According to atraining coordinator who focuses on immigrant andrefugee students, the RWTT seeks "culturallycompetent" ESL instructors who are paired upasneededwith vocational instructors within thecluster. Professional development for programinstructors is limited,however. To compensate for thisthe RWTT has created highly prescriptive course out-lines and curriculum guides.

Key Initiative: Adult Basic Education. The DivisionDean for Adult Education has forged collaborationswith a number Professional Technical (PT) programsat PCC in order to craft a comprehensive "bridgecurriculum." The effort targets students who meetminimum thresholds on the college's placement test inreading and writing (admittedly excluding studentswith very limited English or very low basic skills).Students are placed in field-specific learning commu -nities where they spend three terms in a cohort takingreading and writing, mathematics, PT content coursesand a sequence of college survival and career guid-ance courses. Upon completion,students are ready for

regular departmental offerings. Currently, the modelis being piloted in Computer Applications and OfficeSystems with other fields to follow. According to thedean, of the 17,000 adult education/developmentalstudents in PCC's professional and technical pro-grams, almost half meet the skill thresholds to beserved through the bridge curriculum.

To make the bridge approach work, PCC hasrestructured its support services for PT students. Inorder to do so, PCC is experimenting with usingPerkins (VATEA) monies in order to see if theapproach improves outcomes and retention. Some PTstudents at the college now have a "Technical SkillsLearning Specialist" assigned to them who will monitorstudent progress and provide general career guidanceand support. The goal is to meet the new Perkinsbenchmark of 50% of students successfully completingprofessional and technical programs

Sustainabiliiy: Promising Practices and ContinuingChallenges. PCC has built its contextualized learningefforts on a stable funding base that ensures theirlonger-term survival. The RWTT uses WIA trainingdollars extensively and has a strong partnership withWorksystems. Dislocated workers served by theRWTT earn state per capita education funds (FTE) forthe college since they are in credit-bearing classes.These students are also eligible for federal financialaid, which helps PCC retain them. Efforts to reformABE/ESL and developmental education for profes-sional technical students is enabled by state policythat allows PCC to earn FTE's for most of its workforcetraining programs.

However, the Dean of Adult and ContinuingEducation admits that PCC has had little success inconvincing employers to make greater investments inworkforce development to serve both entry-level andincumbent workers. Area employers seem to want torely on federal categorical revenue streams and thecollege's own FTE dollars to train lower-skill students.New partnerships with Oregon Health & ScienceUniversity (OHSU) and PacificCorp offer promise of amore active employer role in financing entry-level andupgrade skills training.

Going to Scale: Facilitating Factors andContinuing Challenges. PCC's potential for goingto scale starts with strong administrative leader-

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ship. PCC's efforts to create comprehensive careerpathways are also aided by state community collegesystem control over the ABE/ESL program. Thepresence of ABE/ESL students on the campus inlarge numbers provides a kind of subtle pressureon staff to better serve this population and hashelped develop expertise among faculty and staff inhow to best do this. The bridge curriculum is anexample of how senior staffers have creativelyresponded to the significant numbers of basic skillstudents on campus. The college also has a strongbase for scaling up contextualized learning effortsbecause it captures full FTE support for allProfessional Technical programs, and there are nocaps on enrollment for most of the programs (thereis a cap for the Allied Health programs since theyare not open enrollment).

But PCC faces three persistent challenges in itsefforts to scale up its career pathways program. First,like most colleges around the country PCC mustimprove its retention rates among its ABE and ESLstudent population. The bridge curriculum targetsthe highest-skilled of this population, and PCC hasfew efforts in place to address the needs of studentswith low basic skills or those with literacy gaps inEnglish and Spanish. The second challenge involvesintegrating the workforce development and academicsides of the college. Short-term training for secondlanguage learners is non-credit, which makes it hard-er for students to transition to advanced certificateand degree programs. Further, the "remediation"done in these programs appears to be more focusedon preparing students for work than for the next levelof education. The third persistent challenge is theneed for professional development in order to trainteachers to better serve lower-skilled students.Though the PCC staff is clearly committed to profes-sional development, the college has a long way to goto make teacher learning a part of the everyday pro-gram culture. In short, the focus on creating modelbridge curricula and developing comprehensivecareer pathways would be well served by a comple-mentary focus on the instructional practice necessaryto get there.

Community College of Denver,Denver, Colorado

Community College of Denver (CCD) has had a longhistory of providing access to low-income and low-skilled adults, and recently the administration hasworked with the Mayor's Office for WorkforceDevelopment (MOWD) to promote a model of wageprogression and career advancement for low-incomeadults. One program they have created, Quick Start,isdesigned to publicize a set of CCD high-wage shorter-term training opportunities to dislocated workers andformer welfare recipients (for more on Quick Start,seeAlssid et al, 2002). CCD is also home to the EssentialSkills Program (ESP),a nationally recognized welfare-to-work program that employs a career ladder modelbuilt explicitly on a contextualized learning curricu-lum and program philosophy. ESP is one of fourwinners of the 2002 American Association ofCommunity Colleges/U.S. Department of LaborAACC/DOL award which recognizes community col-lege leadership and partnership in local workforcedevelopment systems as well as one or more of thecolleges' exemplary services for at-risk populations.

Key Initiative: The Essential Skills Program. TheEssential Skills Program (ESP) is a bridge programthat provides entry-level skills training in specificemployment "tracks." Current tracks includeInformation Technology (IT), Early ChildhoodEducation (ECE), Financial Services/Accounting (FS),and Community Health Worker (CHW).3 Pathways tocareers and further education are mapped out mostfully in ECE and FS.

ESP was designed to conform to the work-first ori-entation of welfare reform as implemented inColorado. Students take 1 month of full-time classesfollowed by a 3-month internship that is combinedwith 15 hours of class time. All students take coreclasses in reading, writing, speaking, communicationsfor the workplace, and computer literacy. They alsotake courses specific to each of the tracks. All coursesteach basic skills in the context of problems andvocabulary specific to each of the industry tracks. The

' Tracks have varied in the program with labor market demand. For example, the IT track was suspended for the upcoming yearbecause of weak labor market demand for graduates.

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working theory of the program is that students needan integrated combination of work and school to besuccessful. Employer connections are strong,facilitat -ed by a full-time job developer on staff. Internshipsare used to connect students to the world of work andprepare them for the future demands of balancingwork and school. "Students are interested in the pro-gram because it provides them an identity as collegestudents and a real connection to work," notes thedirector of ESP.

The IT and CHW tracks require a minimum of 9th-grade reading and math on TABE or ComprehensiveAdult Student Assessment System (CASAS). Studentsin the other tracks only need a minimum 7th-gradeTABE or CASAS score. Students with lower levels ofEnglish language proficiency are placed in a VESLprogram that is not connected to the four tracks.

Students are recruited at Denver Housing Authority,through local CBOs and MOWD and via a strong wordof mouth network. ESP also has a full-time recruiterwho is housed at the DHS office. About 70% of the stu-dents are Temporary Assistance for Needy Families(TANF) recipients and half are Work and FamilyAssistance (WAFA). Some of the students in the ITtrack were WIA clients, but ESP no longer has a WIAcontract. Overall, ESP is funded through a combina-tion of TANF (40%), WtW (50%) and WIA (10%) monies

with the overall budget at around $750,000. The collegecontributes around $15,000 for general operations.

The program has many strengths and innovativefeatures. Intensive support services are built into theESP curriculum. There is also a clear program cultureof student support and even "handholding" that keepsstudents engaged. A full-time "transitions coordina-tor" works with students to address personal barriersin transitioning to work and teaches a class where stu-dents confront and give voice to their fear, shame,regret, and frustration. While students are motivatedby the idea of going to college, this does not alwaystransfer to commitment or knowledge of how to suc-ceed, notes the transitions coordinator. As she put it,students must first "accept their weak abilities andrecognize the possibility that they can change."

One of ESP's enduring strengths is the presence of astrong leadership team. In addition to the transitionscoordinator, recruiter and job developer positions,there are four "track coordinators" who, in addition toteaching, are in charge of scheduling, student support

services and working with employers on internshipplacements and pathways development. The heavypresence of full-time staff has allowed for a fairlystrong program culture to develop around classinstruction, program delivery, and student issues andsupport. Classroom instruction is grounded in con-crete skills and knowledge that students need for theiroccupations, and many faculty members use a combi-nation of group work and individual assignments.Basic skills instruction, especially reading comprehen-sion, is infused throughout classes. By any standards,the workload, expectations and analytic content ofmany of the classes is highly rigorous and demanding.

ESP tracks how many students complete a certificateand keeps data on employment, student wages and jobretention for one year after students complete the pro-gram. Since 1998, 290 students have enrolled in ESP,with 219 finishing the program. Nearly 80% of gradu-ates from the first two years are still employed. Theaverage wage has risen by 11.5%, though averagewages still hover between $8.40 and $9.00 per hour, rel-atively low for the high-cost Denver area. Over 50% ofstudents left the TANF rolls and a smaller subset(around 25%) of students actually completed the ESPcertificate. The program does not compare wages ofcompleters with non-completers nor track how manystudents continue their education at CCD or elsewhere.

Sustainability: Promising Practices and ContinuingChallenges. ESP's long-term viability lies in thestrengths of the program, namely the strong teamwork,professional community and commitment to enhanc-ing student skills and employment opportunities. Theprogram does a remarkable job at a kind of balancingact for its studentsbetween work and school,between the academic and the personal, betweenaffirming what students know and can do and teachingthem skills they will need in the future. Much of thecurriculum is rigorous and thoughtful. Administratorswere quite articulate about their desire to empowerstudents with a strong "professional identity," one thatacculturates students to the workplace while offeringthem a vision beyond a first job.

However, the program confronts several futurechallenges, most notably funding. Nearly half of pro-gram funds come from WtW, which is scheduled to endin 2003. While CCD and MOWD have a good workingrelationship, it is clear to MOWD officials that ESP has

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a higher cost per student and may be difficult to fullyfund as the TANF surplus shrinks and if the regionaleconomy continues to contract. One potential sourceof dollars is CCD itself, given the FTEs the programgenerates for the college. While the administrationprovides basic administrative support and overhead,itis less clear whether they are willing to take on pro-gram salaries if other sources of money disappear orare reduced.

Going to Scale: Facilitating Factors and ContinuingChallenges. ESP leaders hope to serve additional stu-dents and realize that the program needs to engagemore of the full-time CCD faculty if it wishes to do so.Currently, about half of the classes are taught by full-time faculty. The Community Health Worker track isbeing designed in strong collaboration with theNursing and Health faculty, who will also teach in theprogram. If this is successful, it offers a model forbringing other departmental faculty into ESP class-rooms, which both serves to integrate the program intothe mainstream college and to provide full-timeinstructional staff with salaries supported by FTE's.CCD's president is a strong supporter of engagingfull-time faculty with ESP and the college's otherworkforce programs. Support for this agenda, sheadmits, varies from department to department.

But ESP is, by design, a small program. The cohortstructure and the level of student support and person-alization of services all make extensive expansiondifficult, if not inconsistent with the premise andphilosophy of the program. ESP might serve more stu-dents within its existing structure by finding ways tomore successfully serve students with weak basic skills.Minimum entry requirements are both employer- andcollege-driven. As of fall 2001, CCD has set up basicminimum test scores on Accuplacer to get into certainprograms/classes, including its workforce programsWhile ESP asked for and received an exemption, theprogram has been under some pressure to raise itsbasic skill minimums. Students who cannot meet thesethresholds are referred to the Learning Lab, whichworks individually with those students.

A second challenge in scaling up is to strengthen thelinkages between ESP and the CCD's advanced degreeprograms. A rough estimate is around 25% of ESP grad-uates go onto other CCD programs. One intervieweebelieves that part of the problem is that ESP is still seen

by many faculty members as the "welfare" program.Some faculty and deans are apparently not sold on themerits of having ESP students in programs with more"typical" students. Another barrier may be organiza-tionalunlike Portland, Cabrillo, and other colleges,CCD does not have a Dean for Workforce Developmentor a Dean of Instruction with cross-cutting responsibil-ity for workforce, contract and occupation programsand departments who can drive integration ofprogrammatic efforts.

A final challenge is one that all five colleges face:that of supporting quality instruction throughout allits programs and classrooms. Professional develop-ment opportunities are minimal at CCD, especially forpart-time faculty. Part of the problem is that whileinstructors appear to be open to more supervision andinstructional leadership, it is less clear that they seethe track coordinators as sufficiently expert to do this.This speaks to the difficulty of promoting instruction-al improvement in a program environment wheremanagement is expected to have many different skills,few of which are necessarily connected to teachingand learning. This is one challenge all workforcedevelopment programs in community colleges face tosome degree.

SUMMMARY OFKEY FINDINGS

The five community colleges profiled in this reporthave made tremendous strides in developing bridges to

college and careers for disadvantaged students. Inmoving beyond the traditional, and less successful,model of adult basic education, each of the colleges are:

Integrating developmental and academic contentand teaching this integrated content in a contextu-alized fashion

Maintaining active links with employers andindustry associations

Developing or adapting new curricular materials

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and providing instructional support and profes-sional development to help faculty learn to teachin a new way

Finding ways to sustain these efforts financiallyat least in the short-term

Producing promising program outcomes, especial-ly in terms of job placement and earnings

While there is much to celebrate across the fiveschools, there are innumerable issues that these andother colleges face in creating bridge programs fordevelopmental and adult education students. In theconcluding section, we highlight for practitioners,policy makers and funders five key policy and pro-grammatic issues that emerged from our research:balancing relevance and content in instruction;promoting instructional leadership; serving lower-skilled students; identifying program outcomes; andgoing to scale. We end with a set of recommendationsfor addressing these issues.

Balancing Relevance and Contentin Instruction

The concept of contextualized learning means dif-ferent things to different people, and it is often notprecisely defined even in the minds of communitycollege leaders and faculty. Is "contextualized" basiceducation simply education that draws materials andcurricular content from functional experiences likethe workplace that have relevance to students' futurelives (see Sticht, 1995, 1997)? Or should we also beconcerned with the nature of pedagogy in basic skillseducation and the degree to which instruction usesconstructivist and student-centered instructionalapproaches to engage and motivate learners (seeGrubb & Kalman, 1994; Grubb, 2001)? While thesephilosophiescontent relevance and student engage-mentare complimentary dimensions of good adulteducation programs (Purcell-Gates, Degener &Jacobsen, 1998), the five colleges continually struggledto balance them in practice. In some of the programsand classes we observed, materials and pedagogy,while relevant, were not particularly engaging. Inother settings we found the opposite problemengag-ing teaching and curricular materials were used but

there was little evidence of actual content being taught.Since our observations of classroom teaching were

limited, these findings should be viewed as tentative.Nevertheless, those wishing to promote contextualizedteaching and learning should find ways to help practi-tioners and program operators engage in regularconversations about instructional philosophy andpractice. Staff and faculty should be encouraged toask hard questions about whether a program'sinstructional approach both engages students andgives them the basic skills to advance to work orfurther education. This after all is the true test of asuccessful bridge program.

Promoting Instructional LeadershipA strong focus on teaching and learning drives

successful program development. At each of thefive colleges we found similar problems: facultyunwilling or unable to teach basic skills in a newway; limited professional development opportuni-ties for instructors; and few opportunities forsustained dialogue about students, classroominstruction or other problems of practice. Yet at allof the sites we saw an effort by senior administra-tors and program directors to provide leadershiparound teaching and learning issueswhat we call"instructional leadership:" Like good principals whodrive instructional improvement and student per-formance in K-12 schools, many of the communitycollege administrators at our five sites sought tohire quality staff, observe classroom instruction,model good teaching practice,. create opportunitiesfor dialogue around teaching and learning and buildstrong professional communities focused oninstructional quality and student success (seeSebring & Bryk, 2000; Elmore, 2000).

Yet more often than not,community college admin-istrators have little time to be instructional leaders,nor are their jobs designed as such. The culture ofworkforce development at community colleges is onethat values entrepreneurialism,program developmentskills and responsiveness to employers and funders,not necessarily teaching and learning Staff are usual-ly part-time and low paid, and there is little fundingavailable for professional development. One byprod-uct of this culture is a strong reliance on highlyprescriptive curriculum materials or guides to drive



practice. While curriculum materials can be veryuseful, most research suggests that curriculum itselfcannot promote instructional change without a com-plementary investment in professional development(Ball & Cohen, 1999; Elmore, 2002).

Serving Lower-Skilled StudentsAll of the colleges we visited focused their energies

on a relatively high-skilled portion of the potentialdevelopmental and adult education student pool. Wesaw few efforts to serve students who tested well beloweight-grade level on TABE, or had lower levels ofEnglish proficiency (exceptions were the programs atWestside Technical Institute and the bilingual bridgeprogram at Cabrillo College). Given increasingdemands for program accountability and the limitedresources available to support bridge programs, it isnot surprising that colleges minimize risk by servinghigher-skilled students. Policy makers and others whoare committed to contextualized basic skills trainingneed to create incentives for colleges to serve thelower-skilled adults. States and institutions also needto look more closely at the needs of this population.What portion of lower-skilled adults, for example, arelearning disabled and how might community collegesor other providers provide educational programs forthese students? How viable are bilingual bridge pro-grams and in what specific industries, regions andpolitical contexts?'

Identifying Program OutcomesData from the Manufacturing Bridge program at

West Side Technical Institute and from the EssentialSkills Program at the Community College of Denver

suggest that these innovative programs had an impacton the proportion of graduates employed and workingat a living wage.' Despite these promising findings,there is still a lack of systematic data on bridgeprograms that is both useful for practitioners and per-suasive to policy makers Because of the connection toworkforce development, earnings were the most com-mon outcome measure the colleges use. Earnings aregenerally measured as gains over time (so called "pre-post" designs) on in comparison to a group of similar-ly situated individuals who did not participate in theprogram ("experimental" designs). In both instances,students partake of a program and effects are meas-ured after a short duration of time (1-3 years). Manyresearchers and program operators now argue thatmeasures such as long-term wage gains, job retentionand career progression are crucially important inassessing education program impacts (Clymer,

Roberts and Strawn, 2001). While supportive of theidea, none of the colleges we visited have plans for along-term evaluation (5+ years) of their bridge andcareer pathway programs.

To better understand how programs produce out-comes, measures of learning and student growth arerequired. All five colleges used standardized assess-ments such as CASAS and TABE to diagnose the basicskill levels of incoming students. Yet none of the fiveexamine CASAS or TABE gains over time or in com-parison with scores of non-participants.' Whateverthe limits of CASAS, TABE or standardized tests ingeneral (see Grubb, 2001),such data is crucial for test-ing the basic premise of contextualized job-trainingprogramsthat greater content relevance and studentengagement will ultimately lead to long-term gains inincome and self- sufficiency. Towards this end, test

' Supporters of contextualized teaching and learning also need to examine whether their preferred pedagogy serves all membersof the low-skilled student population equally well. Alamprese (2001),for example, offers such cautions in her summary of a qual-itative study of reading instruction in ABE programs. When working with "first level learners"-native English speakers scoring atLevel 1 of the National Adult Literacy Survey (NALS)-contextual strategies, she argues, may work less well than more directinstruction in phonemic awareness, phonics and comprehension. Both observations of lessons and interviews with participantsconfirmed the effectiveness of direct instructional strategies in teaching these adults to read.

The Manufacturing Bridge had an immediate and longer-term impact on the proportion of graduates employed at a livable wage($8.00 per hour),according to UI wage data. The average annual income of Bridge graduates dropped from $19,516 to $14,732 forthe year prior to enrollment and then rose back to $20,116 one year after enrollment. Since 1998, 290 students have enrolled inDenver's ESP program, with 219 finishing the program. Nearly 80% of graduates from the first two years are still employed. Theaverage wage has risen by 11.5%;though average wages still hover between $8.40 and $9.00 per hour, relatively low for the high-cost Denver area.

The College Bridge program at Westside Technical Institute indirectly measures TABE gains by comparing the percentage of stu-dents each semester who reach 8.6 on TABE after going through the program.

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scores can and should be supplemented with inter-view and survey data from faculty and students.

One important outcome measure that needs greaterattention at community colleges is what might becalled "educational persistence." There is near unani-mous agreement among researchers that earningsincrease with years in school and degree progression.Yet it is equally well known among practitioners andresearchers that adult education dropout rates arevery high (Strawn, 1998; Morris, 2000) and studentsrarely make it out of ABE classes to higher levels ofeducation.' To address this issue, administrators andpolicy makers must make sure that student-level datacan be tracked over time, even beyond the confines ofan individual program or college. Bridge programsmight be usefully compared with traditional develop-mental and adult education efforts to examinewhether students are more likely to persist in coher-ent career-path programs with a more certainlong-term economic payoff.

Going to ScaleThe colleges we visited serve only a small portion of

their developmental, ESL and adult education studentsthrough bridge programming.' While there was com-mitment at all five colleges to scale up these efforts,and emerging efforts to do so at three of the colleges,the challenge of going to scale are quite formidable.The bridge programs we saw began in individualdepartments, welfare and workforce development pro-grams, or in the cases of Ford, Cabrillo and Portland,through continuing and occupational education divi-sion-led efforts. Linkages with regular full-timecollege faculty were weak overall, yet these are animportant part of institutionalizing the bridge modelcollege-wide. Further, none of the programs we visitedhad particularly strong linkages with developmentaland adult education divisions within the college, thoughthese linkages are being developed and strengthened atsome of the colleges. In some cases these linkages are

being made with agencies and providers outside thecommunity college system (see Alssid et al, 2002).

Involving college faculty and developing partner-ships with adult and developmental educators areonly first steps. Efforts to institutionalize a bridgemodel require additional resources to provide at scalethe kinds of teaching and learning environments andsupports that bridge programs typically offer. Bridgeprograms may cost as much as $5,000 per student,when the additional costs of recruitment, curriculumdevelopment, case management and job placementare added to the costs of instruction (Jenkins, 2002).Yet most adult education and developmental programsreceive only a fraction of this amount per student.

Going to scale will require extensive professionaldevelopment for all faculty, who need greater expo-sure to occupational specialties and industry norms,strategies for teaching students with skills weakness-es in reading, writing and even math, and instructionon how to integrate content and skills developmentand teach students in more collaborative ways. Yetwhile college administrators recognize these needs,few resources are currently dedicated by communitycolleges and college systems to support professionaldevelopment and instructional improvement.'

Recommendations and Next StepsA key finding of this study is that community col-

leges around the country are making significantstrides in rethinking their approach to basic skillseducation in the context of a larger effort to betterconnect students to college credentials and rewardingcareers. The goal for funders and policy makers is tofind ways to support these efforts, move them to scaleand help catalyze similar changes in other communitycolleges. Reaching such a goal will require changes ininstitutional practice and public policy. In particular,policy makers and foundations should consider thefollowing three steps to support the expansion ofbridge programming.

' One 1999 study at Miami-Dade Community College (Morris, 2000) found that over 80% of ABE and 70% of Vocational English as aSecond Language (VESOL) students were no longer enrolled in the college one year later.

Based on our research, the five colleges served fewer than 20% of their developmental and adult education students in bridgeprograms during Fall 2002. Three of the colleges serve fewer than 5% of the potential pool of bridge students.

The resources that are available are almost exclusively targeted to full-time faculty, again underscoring the need for regularfaculty involvement in bridge programming.

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I) Provide resources for professional developmentOne enduring lesson of this study is that bridge pro-

grams require extensive expertise in teaching andlearning to be developed and delivered effectively.Commitment, while essential,is not sufficient to drivechanges in teaching that lead to student success.Program faculty and administrators need to be giventime and resources to expand their knowledge of howto successfully bridge basic skill students to collegeand careers. For new programs in colleges, thisprocess requires more than adopting a program modeland implementing a new curriculum. Instead, itrequires policy makers and foundations to supportprofessional learning and faculty collaboration acrosstraditional college divisions (transfer, occupational,developmental, adult education/ESL), and at times,across agencies and organizations. How such profes -sional development should be funded is an openquestion. Many of the programs we visited relystrongly on federal dollars (TAN): WM, WIA) or foun-dation grants with few discretionary dollars availablefor capacity building. Cases where bridge programsearn FTE revenue may be more promising, but wefound no significant use of these dollars for sustainedprofessional development around the bridge model.

2) Cultivate instructional leadershipProfessional development will only be successful to

the extent key program and college leadership is com-mitted to the task of instructional improvement, andhas the skills to lead such change. This is an impor-tant finding from this study, and one that confirms thelessons learned from the K-12 school reform literature

cited earlier (see Louis & Kruse, 1995;Newmann,King& Youngs, 2000; Sebring & Bryk, 2000; Elmore, 2002).Though program directors, coordinators and othersthemselves need professional development, however,this will not be enough to cultivate instructional lead-ership. Job expectations, performance standards andthe messages sent by division deans and college pres-idents all need to signal that teaching and learning isa college priority, and that the time and resources forreal instructional leadership will be made available toprogram staff. The Essential Skills Program at theCommunity College of Denver and the Bridge atHenry Ford offer useful models for what such leader-ship looks like in community colleges.

3) Fund evaluations and additional researchWe still know remarkable little about the effective-

ness of bridge programs in meeting a range ofoutcome goals. Do students learn basic skills moreeffectively this way? Are rates of persistence andcertificate/degree attainment higher in these pro-grams compared to traditional developmental andadult education? Which program models are partic-ularly effective? How much do bridge programs costand what monies are available to pay for them?What are the benefits of bridge programming relativeto their costs? Policy makers and foundations cansupport research to help answer these questions. Inaddition, "process° studies are needed to examineefforts to expand bridge programming to a greaterportion of basic skills students. How have theseefforts fared? What are the obstacles and what arethe lessons?

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