Achieving Ambitious Goals: Case Studies of Scaling-Up Programs for Advancing Low-Skilled Adults

“As Breaking Through proceeded, Jobs for the Future and the National Council for Workforce Education recognized that a small number of community colleges within the initiative had many program elements in place to effectively advance low-skilled adults toward credentials…. In 2009, five community colleges received $40,000 grants from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to scale up their Breaking Through programs…. The case studies illustrated how Breaking Through promoted scale and impact along a number of fronts, using data to stimulate institutional change and ensure that students progress along their pathways toward credentials or degrees” (p.v). (Abstractor: Author)

“Achieving Ambitious Goals highlights the many successful models and strategies employed by innovative community colleges within the Breaking Through initiative to scale up their efforts to help low-skilled adults prepare for and succeed in attaining technical and occupational credentials. These five colleges have demonstrated practices that fundamentally change the way we structure foundational learning and pathways toward credentials for Adult Basic Skills and other noncredit-bound students… [T]hese case studies illustrate how Breaking Through works to ensure scale and impact in a number of ways, including using data to promote institutional change to help students progress along pathways toward credentials or degrees…. Because the colleges are engaged in the research and design of innovative models and practices, a strong measurement component is embedded within each college’s data plan. The colleges all commit to measuring and evaluating their various interventions and to codifying practices that work (and identifying those that do not). In this way, the colleges and the field both benefit from knowing what seem to be the most effective strategies and components” (p.4-5).(Abstractor: Author)

• Last Updated:
• Created:
• Resource Publication Date: 2011
• Author(s): Endel, Barbara; Anderson, Nate; Kelley, Jeremy
• Organizational Author(s): Jobs for the Future
• Funding Source: Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
• Resource Availability: Publicly available
• Posted by: Wesley Peterson
• Posted in: Workforce System Strategies