In attendance: Kermit Dunkelberg, Maria Grace, Todd Lee, Judith Lorei, Connie Nelson, David Rosen, Jane Shea, Laurie Sheridan, Lisa Soricone, Jude Travers, Rob Vitello, Gloria Watanabe.

Summary of Recommendations from 3/26/08 SABES WFD Advisory meeting
SABES should consider the following:

• Compile and maintain a list of workplace education providers (SABES or CommCorp)
• Provide workplace ed teacher training: continue to build capacity to do workplace ed
• Work with programs that want to become good entrepreneurs in creating workplace education programs
• Develop a brochure for business on how to select a workplace education provider
• Continue to offer SABES' "Introduction to Workforce Development for ABE Practitioners"
• Provide ABE/ESOL teachers with information on what kinds of jobs/careers are (and will be) available for adult learners, and steps to get there.
• Supply a list of employers providing opportunities for training or education.
• Integrate planning for higher education and careers into counseling and curriculum.
• Develop a competitive model for professional development for workplace education, to help prepare practitioners and provide professional development.
• Make SABES recommendations for the next DOE workplace ed RFP.
• Include holding onto requiring the workplace needs analysis for workplace ed programs, keeping a strong role for the education provider in the workplace ed partnership, thinking through guidelines for quality programming, how to build partnerships.
• Play a strong role in capturing, compiling, and presenting successful models/best practices in workplace education and finding practitioners to share them.
• Encourage private sector investment: companies providing funding on their own for workplace ed, smaller companies "tuitioning" workers into community-based programs.
• Provide professional development for programs and teachers on partnering with business.
• Create distance learning options for workers who cannot go to face-to-face classes in community-based programs, SABES should.
• SABES should ask career centers to hold at least one career fair after 5 P.M. A requirement should come as part of the state's RFP.
• Respond to employer interest in blended online and face-to-face workplace basic skills models.
• Develop a professional development program for teachers on how to teach on-line, integrate technology into the classroom.
• Use more Community Planning funding for workplace development/education.
• Strike a balance between SABES workshops and technical assistance, and provide more ongoing TA to programs than before.
• Help build program capacity, connect SABES activities to a set of steps programs can take, do more training on-site.
• Advocate for programs really to integrate workforce development into their ongoing work, but with significant funding and a dedicated, funded position.
• Workforce development should be strongly reflected in the next 5- year DOE ABE RFP. It should ask, "What do you see yourself doing with workforce development-and how?"
• Replicate, update and validate the (2001) workplace ed teacher training course including teacher competencies. Include entrepreneurial skills, include job placement. Pilot in Massachusetts, then offer New England-wide through NELRC.
• Market SABES and workplace ABE programs to employers as a resource. Some companies are tuitioning their employees into community-based ABE and ESOL programs.

Announcements:

• April 15 ACLS (DOE) conference on Integrated Curriculum.
• MWIB ABE-ESOL subcommittee (Laurie distributed copies of subcommittee recommendations to the MWIB and the Governor, available on the MWIB web site).
• English Works: MIRA/English for New Bostonians' (ultimately statewide) initiative to promote public and private investment in workplace ESOL

Laurie provided a brief overview of the SABES Workforce Development Advisory.
It was formed in 2004 following SABES' hiring 5 DOE-funded regional Workforce Development Coordinators and a statewide Coordinator based at World Education/SABES Central Resource Center. Handout: PowerPoint presentation on SABES involvement with workforce development.

Whom does the SABES WFD Advisory advise?
The SABES WFD Coordinator staff team reports to the SABES Directors. The Advisory has input into SABES' workplan for WFD, negotiated each year with ACLS by the SABES Directors. Laurie, the Coordinator at SABES Central Resource Center, and the regional coordinators, report to the SABES Directors. A rough draft workplan was recently submitted to ACLS, and feedback received. Both are summarized in the list provided in the agenda for this meeting, which includes:

1. Transitions for ABE Learners to employment and higher education
2. Presenting the "Integrating Career Awareness" curriculum to teachers and providing TA to programs on using the curriculum
3. Developing the "Introduction to Workforce Development" workshop as an on-line course
4. Approaching businesses for partnership with ABE programs
5. Building and implementing planning and evaluation teams in workplace ed programs
6. There has also been discussion by the coordinators of additional activities, e.g.,
• Worker rights
• Immigrant workplace rights and issues
• Kinds of jobs available to ABE learners-and their career ladders

The Advisory lacks and needs a sense of its impact over time, and would like regular reports from SABES about the impact the Advisory has and has had on SABES' activities and workplan.

Workplace Education
SABES has been trying to bring workplace ed teachers together via videoconference to share issues and materials statewide. They are very isolated. It's difficult to get a "critical mass" via videoconference, given travel requirements and schedules. Roundtable (Jenny Utech) has a curriculum working group which has met four times. Teachers bring in materials from their workplaces. It meets at ALRI. Also, ACLS is having its curriculum conference on April 15.

We need a clear sense of where we are with workplace ed teachers. How many teachers are there? In addition to the workplace ed programs funded through DOE, there are a number of entrepreneurs: teachers and programs who have found a way to market themselves to employers. How can teachers learn how to work with employers? How can employers find out who they are? We need grounding in data in order to build recommendations for this very diverse group. Some are funded by DOE, some by employers directly, others by other funding sources (e.g., Workforce Training Fund). Some connect with employers through a WIB, but that is uncommon and varies a lot. The principal selling point of ABE teachers to employers is the low cost. In workplace ed, there is no professional development, no prep time, a quick time frame, and little job security. There is no good system. There is no connection between the WTF and DOE.

How do workplace education providers and employers find and partner with each other?
The Workforce Training Fund tries to link companies with providers. The Applicant Assistance Program (for the WTF) cannot make recommendations, but there is no longer even a good list. The lack of an adequate list of competent workplace education providers is a problem. CommCorp used to be funded to maintain a good database of ed. providers, but it's no longer funded. It is hard to maintain the list. Employers don't have an easy path to finding a good provider in their region. It varies among regions. Some WIB's have info. about providers in their area, but most do not.

We need a good provider database.
What about Training Pro? You can become an approved vendor and get into that database. But lots of ABE programs are not on the list. (It's at www.mass.gov. detma.org/provider). World Ed has the ESOL hotline that maintains and updates a searchable database. It's geared for ESOL learners and volunteers, but it's a good resource. SABES should look at Training Pro (Laurie will do this).

The MetroSouthWest Chamber of Commerce held an information session on the Workforce Training Fund. The community colleges have different types of workplace ed programs. The next administration in Washington is going to pass some kind of Immigration Act and there will be a high priority placed on workplace ESOL-funding, programs. We should be ready for that.

DOE has held a session on workplace education on March 5, and plans another. It went quite well, and DOE is open to some flexibility around workplace education programming that is more employer-friendly. There are some important strengths in the DOE model that we hope to retain, including the workplace needs analysis. It's also on the CommCorp agenda: there has been significant learning from ECCLI, and the Workforce Competitiveness Trust Fund.

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What can SABES do in this regard?

• It's important to expose practitioners to the information SABES has been offering in its "Introduction to Workforce Development for ABE practitioners" workshop.
• SABES needs to develop a competitive model for professional development for workplace education, to help prepare practitioners and provide professional development.
• SABES should make recommendations for the next DOE workplace ed RFP.
• There is a strong role for SABES in capturing, compiling, and presenting successful models/best practices in workplace education and finding practitioners to share them.
• Companies provide funding on their own for workplace ed, too. We should encourage private sector investment.

How Do Workplace Education Program sustain themselves and continue?
It's not uncommon for a workplace ESOL student to transition to an in-house occupational skills training program and advance from there. The SkillWorks-funded Boston Health Care and Research Training Institute (BHCRTI) recently moved to Jewish Vocational Services (JVS). This makes sense. Employers are interested in continuing ESOL, may contract it out or do it on their own. DOE requirements for workplace education programs ensure high quality. DOE intends workplace ed programs to be sustained by the employer after an initial period. Some do continue-about half, according to Connie's doctoral research. And a lot can go on without grants. Employers often have fears about initiating an ESOL program. It can feel like a bottomless pit-that once they plunge in, it's all-consuming. Workplace education is usually short-term. Employees who have been out of school for a long time typically have a positive learning experience in workplace education and go on from there. It's hard for teachers to find stable employment or programs to find stable funding. For some workers, it's not possible to go to face-to-face classes in community-based programs. Distance learning may be an option.

How about ABE programs working with career centers?
In the SE, there has been some good coordination and relationship-building going on. They tell our program they are mainly looking for basic customer service skills, overall. In Boston, a task force bringing together ABE programs, career centers, and skills training programs has held successful forums and events. The International Institute works closely with The Workplace and Job Net. The SABES WFD Coordinators have facilitated joint meetings of ABE programs and career centers in each region. Also, SABES co-teaches the "Intro. to WFD" workshops for ABE practitioners with a career center staff person, and this opens the channel between ABE program participants and a career center. The career center Employer Services staff are a good resource for ABE programs. With the career centers, there is the issue of evening hours. Career fairs often end at 5:00 P.M.! Working adults can't attend. Employers don't want to be there after 5. But, SABES should ask them to hold a career fair after 5. That message should come from the state, as part of their RFP.

We recommend the following:

1. Workplace ed or workforce development? We need both. SABES needs to be specific about our priorities, break it down. We need a database of workplace ed programs and teachers. This could be done by SABES, or by CommCorp. It would require funding, and ongoing maintenance and updating. We could first list the public ones (including teachers). In the second or third year, include the company-sponsored programs.
2. Teacher training: continue to build capacity to do workplace ed. It's different, requires a different set of skills, even a different personality.
3. Work with programs that want to become good entrepreneurs in creating workplace ed programs.

We need to market ourselves to employers as a resource.
And we need a link between systems. Some companies are tuitioning their employees into community-based ABE and ESOL programs. This can work for smaller employers without a "critical mass" for a workplace ed program. Bob Bickerton approved this-as long as they pay the state rate, which is a very competitive rate. They have to be able to "jump the wait list." And, enter data into SMARTT!

Maybe SABES could prepare and publish a guide for employers on how to select a good education provider. This is a great idea. We should look at the Workforce Training Fund web site for criteria. Mary Jayne Fay at DOE does a great training on being a good consumer of education, for individuals. We could create something similar-for employers. The career centers' employer specialists have a good read on this.

We need to reinforce the importance of the partnership with the education provider. Too often, including in WTF, this is not strong enough. We have learned to distinguish the HR and production parts of the company-a business is not monolithic. I want to emphasize the importance of the needs analysis. HR often has its own ideas, but they may not "fly on the floor." We need to think through guidelines for quality programming, how to build partnerships.

Add to the list of recommended items for SABES: employer interest in blended models for workplace basic skills
— online and face-to-face. McDonald's is now doing a 5-hr./week ESOL program, where employees work on the computer at the back of the shop, one hour asynchronous and one hour/week practice. This nine-month-old program has 100% retention, 80% completion, is 100% on work time! DOE does a distance learning program, funds workplace ed programs-but they are not connected. I recommend that distance learning providers work with workplaces! We are finding even work readiness requires computer skills-just to apply for a job. There are significant obstacles to teachers which SABES can help with. We could develop a professional development program for teachers on how to teach on-line, integrate technology into the classroom. A longitudinal study in Portland, OR, determined that a high % of learners do self-study. The Learner Web is being piloted in October in Boston (and elsewhere).

SABES is talking about integrating pathways to post-secondary education into its workforce development offerings, and has developed modules on transitions to PSE to be added to the "Integrating Career Awareness" curriculum. It's important for ABE/ESOL teachers to have information on what kinds of jobs/careers are available for adult learners, and steps to get there.

Integrating planning for higher education and careers is a good idea; they can be mutually supportive. Jerry Rubin spoke about this at the Dec. 13 ACLS Workforce Development conference. It will help if SABES helps "sell" this to ABE teachers (the need to transition to higher education, not finish with a GED), and help motivate people to keep learning.

It's important to share basic labor market information with ABE teachers so they can be helpful to learners. The City of Boston's program with laid-off PowerOne and Federal Mogul workers found we needed to provide a reality check, e.g., a student might not become a doctor right away, but there are many other health care career options. We need to help them learn to talk to people about careers in a realistic but supportive way (though the 1199 education program in Philadelphia had an orderly who is now a doctor!) But not too much labor market information. And don't call it "labor market information!" CommCorp recently published a chart book on jobs in health care, and is about to produce one on manufacturing.

Career Ladders
It's also important for them to know what jobs are likely to be available in the future. Students need to plan for jobs 5 years down the road. I used to be cynical about workforce development, because training programs often provide just enough skills for a student's current job. Students need to prepare for career ladders. DOE needs to incorporate this into the counseling piece. So far, most programs and funding resources have focused on large sectors and employee pools, like ECCLI. In Western Mass., most employers have fewer than 100 workers, and most ABE programs are small. The Workforce Training Fund might be a good option for them. I would like to see closer integration with career centers. The most proactive career center in our area reports seeing a majority of those with low English proficiency or non-white clients rarely progress beyond entry-level workshops. We need to look closely at the types of services the customer seeks out, and help them to change their thinking.

We often refer people to jobs, and would like to be able to supply a list of employers providing opportunities for training or education. IIB does provide this for our organization, but it would be good to have this on a broader basis. There is now available from the state of New Jersey a series of over 400 short (1-minute) videos on many jobs, providing a good look at what these jobs involve. The "Integrating Career Awareness" course has an activity where people go out and do informational interviews. This has been successful. In general, it's a good practice to encourage students to interview people in a possible job or field; this puts the initiative on the student, provides good project-based learning.

We see the workplan drafts and the list of current SABES activities. What is the strategy for SABES in workforce development? Sequence activities and workshops, build on learning, provide time between workshops to apply and practice learning, come together to share experiences. Try to provide ongoing learning and TA, including program-wide learning and TA, around the ICA curriculum over time. Focus on programs that want to incorporate it program-wide, provide on-site training for staff as SABES staff resources permit.

Has DOE incorporated countable outcomes around careers?
No. Programs enter student goals including employment, and achievement of goals, but it is not part of the countable outcomes process. We need to make career awareness real for students. For programs really to integrate workforce development into their ongoing work, there has to be significant funding. You can't do this without a dedicated, funded position. The Boston ABE/WFD task force has talked among other things about joint funding for small programs jointly to hire a job developer or career counselor to do this. It requires a specific skill set, relationships, and dedicated staff, but they could be shared.

What about using Community Planning funding more for workplace?
What is the future of DOE-funded Community Planning? Preliminary results of the current CP survey of ABE programs show strong interest in SABES assistance building relationships with local employers. Not surprising.

How can SABES help build program capacity?
Programs have limited capacity for counseling. A lot of workforce development work should and does go on within counseling. There is little time to fit workforce development into a class or curriculum! How much staff time is there for workforce development in the SABES workplan,? How much on-site TA can SABES coordinators provide to programs, e.g., around the ICA curriculum? SABES WFD Coordinators are between 30% and 50% on workforce development. They can provide TA to a few targeted programs in their regions wishing to implement the curriculum program-wide. The Advisory would like to see the SABES WFD staff and workplan strike a balance between workshops and TA-providing more TA than before. In a managers' meeting in SE, they discussed spending more SABES funding on mentoring programs. Program development and staff development overlap. SABES should help build program capacity. We should connect SABES activities to a set of steps programs can take, do more training on-site. Other states are more advanced, with more site-based training than we do in Mass. How about developing study circles on the NCSALL model, focusing on workforce development? We should say, "This year, our goal for study circles is workforce development," develop a manual like the one for health literacy.

Workforce development should be strongly reflected in the next DOE ABE RFP.
It should ask, "What do you see yourself doing with workforce development-and how?" There are downsides to this, but it will help sharpen what SABES can do. We should look into being more entrepreneurial, sequence offerings, help make the case for where the funding is likely to go. SABES needs to provide professional development for programs and teachers to partner with business. CommCorp developed competencies for workplace ESOL several years ago (in 2000, piloted in 2001). Teachers were trained for five days, mentored. It comprised several modules-Connie was a part of it. Rob has a copy of the competencies. The material is there, could be validated. Sue Follansbee came from Canada and taught the course, observed teachers in the classroom, wrote it up. The deliverable would be a critique of recent efforts to do professional development over the last 10 years. There would be value to a certificate for the ABE system to market itself to employers. Make the case that instructors teach ABE and understand the workforce. Offer teachers release time, stipends, train X# of workplace educators in the next two years. Roundtable has a Workplace Educators' manual which some programs have used in training their teachers, and some have developed their own training within their programs. There are also other resources, in Nova Scotia, and other curricula.

Some would like to see entrepreneurial skills added to the offerings.
Some teachers could earn more money, and we should encourage this. It could be an NELRC course if we developed and piloted it in Massachusetts and made it available to other states (which have no professional development at all). People would travel to obtain this training. One problem is that people may finish the course and then not find a job, so this must be part of the course. The Pennsylvania model is based on entrepreneurial education for teachers.

The SABES Workforce Development Advisory will meet again later in the spring to discuss development and progress in the SABES workplan, and focus on building/strengthening program capacity for workforce development and workplace education.

Next meeting:
Tuesday, May 20, 10:00 - 1:00, in Worcester (location TBD).

Send comments to: Laurie Sheridan

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