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Breaking Through Publications
nal report provides detailed in

• Breaking Through 2004 Report
  Around the country, innovative community colleges are playing a larger role in helping low-skilled adults gain the valuable skills and credentials that are the gateway to family-supporting careers. Breaking Through looks at whether--and how--these institutions can significantly improve the odds that low-income, low-skilled adults earn the college-level occupational and technical credentials that remain elusive for many Americans. The study focuses on low-skill, low-literacy adults and how they can move to college and get what they need to succeed in good jobs. It defines "success" to include both educational and economic advancement. And it identifies a set of powerful, transferable strategies rather than describing several effective schools/programs whose complete program design may not seem replicable.
   
• Better Together: Realigning Pre-College Skills Development Programs to Achieve Greater Academic Success for Adult Learners
  How can states help working adults bolster pre-collegiate skills that restrain them from taking full advantage of college credit-level career and technical programs? Better Together offers examples of a better way to meet this challenge through the alignment of two distinct systems for strengthening pre-collegiate skills: adult education and developmental education.
  
  Better Together is part of a series of state policy reports from Breaking Through, a multiyear initiative of Jobs for the Future and the National Council for Workforce Education. Breaking Through is helping community colleges identify and develop institutional strategies that can enable low-skilled adult students to enter into and succeed in occupational and technical degree programs at community colleges.

• Breaking Through: The Initiative After One Year
  In the fall of 2005, Jobs for the Future and the National Council for Workforce Education launched Breaking Through: helping Low-Skilled Adults enter and succeed in college and careers, with funding from the C.S. Mott Foundation. The goal of this multi- year, college-based initiative is to increase the number of low-skill adults who enter and succeed in community college-based occupational/technical certificate and degree programs. The primary approach to achieving this goal is to strengthen and expand practices in community colleges that support low-skill adults through demonstration grants to institutions, coupled with extensive peer learning activities among the grantees.
  

• Breaking Through Fact Sheet

• Breaking Through: What Trustees Should Know 

 "What Trustees Should Know" is a PowerPoint presentation that was presented at The Association of Community College Trustees Conference held in San Diego September, 2007.

Breaking Through Policy Reports

• Overcoming Obstacles, Optimizing Opportunities:  State Policies to Increase Postsecondary Attainment for Low-Skilled Adults
  Breaking Through seeks to help low-literacy adults prepare for and succeed in college, with JFF coordinating research on state policies that can support institutional strategies.  The policy series overview, prepared by the Center for Law and Social Policy, is now available.  In the coming months, JFF will release reports on student financial aid policy, academic remediation policy, and state institutional funding policies. 

• Pushing the Envelope: State Policy Innovations in Financing Higher Education for Workers Who Study
  Pushing the Envelope, part of a series of Breaking Through policy reports, profiles 12 states that have amended or created student aid programs to better serve adult students. States typically have done so based on the proposition that investing in the education and skills of the workforce produces a return not only to individuals but also to businesses and the state. These states are leading innovators that have begun to push the policy envelope by expanding, changing, or creating programs that work for working adults.

Breaking Through Tools

• Advancing Adults into Community College Programs: Data Tools from Breaking Through
  The goal of Breaking Through, a collaboration of JFF and the National Council for Workforce Education, is to demonstrate that community colleges can restructure themselves to create clear pathways for low-skill adults into professional/technical certificate and degree programs. Colleges participating in the initiative have found that incompatible data and data systems represent a significant barrier to creating pathways into college for adult students. Peter Ewell of the National Center for Higher Education Management Systems has worked with the colleges to provide insight into solutions that would be useful to any college seeking to serve low-skilled adults.

• Advisor Training

• A Framework for Effective Recruiting for Breaking Through Colleges 

• Help Students Advance with Free Curriculum

Peer Learning Materials

• Peer Learning Materials 2009
  
• Peer Learning Materials 2008
• Peer Learning Materials 2007
• Peer Learning Materials 2006
  
   

And from the Jobs for the Future website

Public Policy

• Access to Community College for Undocumented Immigrants: A Guide for State Policymakers 

• State Policy and Advocacy for Student Success
  

• Making Performance Accountability Work: English Lessons for U.S. Community Colleges

• Building Skills, Increasing Economic Vitality: A Handbook of Innovative State Policies
   
• State Data Systems and Privacy Concerns: Strategies for Balancing Public Interests 

Effective Practices

• The Landscape of Noncredit Workforce Education:  State Policies & Community College Practices
   
• Adult Learners in Higher Education: Barriers to Success and Strategies to Improve Results   

• Improving Workplace Opportunities for Limited English Speaking Workers 

• A Survey of Selected Work Readiness Certificates

• Strategies for Success: Promising Practices from the 2004 Winners of the MetLife Foundation Community College Excellence Award

• Walking the Talk: Community Colleges Where Everyone Wins

• Changing Courses: Instructional Innovations That Help Low-Income Students Succeed in Community College

• Driving Change in Community Colleges

And from the National Council for Workforce Educators

• Income Equity and Workforce Development: A New Issue for American Community Colleges

Additional Resources

Adult Learning

• Returning to Learning: Adults' Success in College is Key to America's Future 
  

• Review of Adult Learning and Literacy, Volume 7  

• Building Blocks for Building Skills: An Inventory of Adult Learning Models and Innovations 
  

• Persistence Among Adult Education Students

Community College Leaders

• Shaping Organizational Futures Through Generative Leadership

Immigrants

• The Integration of Immigrants in the Workplace

Career Pathways

• Career Pathways Toolkit: Innovative Strategies and Tools for Career Pathways
  

• Jobs Aren’t Enough: Toward a New Economic Mobility for Low-Income Families

State Policies

• The Landscape of Noncredit Workforce Education:  State Policies & Community College Practices 

Other

• ACTE's January 2008 Techniques Feature Article:  Develop, Link, Foster, and Encourage
    "Expanding Opportunities:  Postsecondary Career and Technical Education and Preparing Tomorrow's Workforce."
  

• Education Pays: Second Update 

• Innovative Employment Approaches and Programs for Low-Income Families