Career Pathways Professional Development

LaGuardia Community College, in partnership with the National College Transition Network and the New England Professional Development Network, is pleased to offer an exciting professional development opportunity for adult educators.

In this five-month, multi-platform course, GED and high level ESOL instructor participants will explore best practices in career-focused basic skills instruction and develop their own contextualized lessons. This course will be taught by faculty from LaGuardia’s GED Bridge program who have served over 600 students. Course components include webinars, face-to-face workshops, phone consultations, and a virtual community of practice that will bring the participants together through chats, discussion boards, posts of lessons and other curriculum materials. Registration deadline April 30, 2012.

For more information, http://bit.ly/JyVQn1

DOE-DOL Career Pathways: Joint Commitment

Dear  Colleagues:     

This  letter  highlights  the  joint  commitment  of  the  U.S.  Departments  of  Education,  Health  and   Human  Services,  and  Labor  to  promote  the  use  of  career  pathways  approaches  as  a  promising   strategy  to  help  adults  acquire  marketable  skills  and  industry-­recognized  credentials  through   better  alignment  of  education,  training  and  employment,  and  human  and  social  services  among   public  agencies  and  with  employers.    The  Departments  encourage  states  to  align  state  resources   to  support  integrated  service  delivery  across  Federal  and  state  funding  streams  and  to  ensure  that   interested  partners  and  agencies  –  whether  focused  on  education,  workforce  development  or   human  and  social  services  –  are  aware  of  this  joint  commitment  for  improved  collaboration  and   coordination  across  programs  and  funding  sources.  Read letter - JointDOLDOECareerPathlttr.pdf

Online Healthcare Career Exploration

Online Healthcare Career Exploration Portal Launched Today
 
Today, at Goodwill Industries' International Spring Advocacy conference, the Department of Labor (DOL) Assistant Secretary Jane Oates announced the launch of the Virtual Career Network (VCN), an online portal for career exploration and training for healthcare occupations.

The National Association of Workforce Boards (NAWB) and other organizations partnered with the American Association of Community Colleges (AACC), which had received a grant from DOL to develop the VCN. NAWB conducted research on healthcare occupations and education and training programs to populate the site, and partnered with Jobs for the Future to develop and deliver training on its use.

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Basic Skills Dialogue

Invitation from NYATEP: Basic Skills Dialogue: How the Workforce and Education Systems Can Work Better Together

We invite you to join us at the NYATEP Spring Conference, for a pre-conference Basic Skills Dialogue to explore how the workforce and education system can work better together to ensure more New Yorkers have basic skills.  This event is scheduled for May 7, 2012 from 1:00 p.m. – 4:30 p.m. We have invited thought leaders and experts, and have designed the Dialogue to tap into your best ideas and concerns. You will leave at the end of the day with insight about what works, ideas that you can implement, and a plan that we can collectively put into action around this very serious issue.

Together, we think we can figure it out.  Join us in Albany! It will be 3.5 hours well spent.

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A Stronger Nation Through Higher Education

Lumina Foundation Report

This report tracks the nation’s progress toward what we at Lumina Foundation call the Big Goal. Simply stated, that goal is this:

By 2025, 60 percent of Americans will hold a high-quality postsecondary degree or credential.

“Stronger Nation” offers detailed data arrays that describe degree attainment at the national, state and county levels. Also this year, the report provides degree-attainment data for each of the nation’s 100 most populous metropolitan areas. We hope that having all of this data available in this interactive format will assist you in your efforts to make the Big Goal a reality

Adult Career Pathways Solicits Instructional Resources

The Designing Instruction for Career Pathways online collection of instructional resources is growing, but we need your help to expand further. Special emphasis is being placed on identifying high-quality bridge courses that teach basic skills content through contextualized instruction. If you have a course that fits these criteria, let us know!

To submit a course for consideration, log in to the Adult Career Pathways Support Center website with your user account. (If you don’t yet have an account, now is the time to create one!) Once logged in, click on the Resource Center box and then the “Submit a Resource” heading. The online instructions will guide you through the submission process. You can choose to submit an actual file of the course or just provide a link to its online location.

We are looking forward to hearing from you soon!

Designing Instruction for Career Pathways

The Designing Instruction for Career Pathways project is providing free customized professional development and training to adult education practitioners through several mediums, one of which is regional workshops. The workshops are tailored to meet the specific requests of practitioner groups from across the country. How do you make a request? Just visit the Adult Career Pathways Support Center website  and click on the "ACP Training" box in the left-hand menu navigation. Then, select "Training Request." An interactive online form will appear asking you for details about the type of workshop you envision. It’s that easy!

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Chap. 2 Assessment Guide for Adult Educators

Forty-three hundred individuals have already downloaded Chapter 1 of The Assessment Guide for Educators and almost 500 participated in last week's webinar.  And as promised, Chapter 2 of the Guide is now available. You won't want to miss the in-depth discussion of the assessment targets (for each content area) and the description of cognitive levels (Depth of Knowledge) that is contained in the document.

This release is the second of the three installments—designed to make it easier to digest the material. Like the first installment, Chapter 2 is available immediately at www.GEDtestingservice.com/assessment. All you have to do is register to download the second chapter. Once you register and opt-in for notifications, you will also receive an invitation to attend one of the upcoming Chapter 2 webinars. Besides the webinars, additional resources will be available in the coming weeks and months on our website and you will have plenty of opportunities to hear more and engage with us at key national and local conferences this spring and summer.

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Career Pathways Toolkit

Six Key Elements of Career Pathways

There are Six Key Elements of Career Pathways that help to guide local and state teams through the key steps neces- sary for developing a comprehensive career pathways system.

Career Pathways Toolkit has a chapter devoted to each of the six. Download Career Pathways Toolkit or CareerPathwaysToolkit2011.pdf.

Funding Opportunity: 2nd Round Trade Adjustment Act

Second Round TAACCCT Grants Competition Announced

Applications are due by 4 p.m. May 24, 2012. Partners may include adult education agencies, CTE agencies and postsecondary education agencies.

On Feb 24, 2012, Vice President Joe Biden, Dr. Jill Biden and Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis announced the second round of the Trade Adjustment Act Community College and Career Training Grants (TAACCCT) program. The announcement was made at the last stop of Dr. Biden and Secretary Solis’ Community College to Careers Bus Tour at Davidson County Community College (N.C.), one of nine community colleges in a funded TAACCCT consortium. TAACCCT funding of $500 million from the Department of Labor will help institutions deliver education and career training programs that can be completed in two years or less and are suited to workers eligible for training under the Trade Adjustment Assistance for Workers Program. Grants of $2.5–3 million will be awarded to individual institutions, with grants of $5–15 million available for consortia of institutions.

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