U.S. Department of Education

Session I (Morning)

Brenda Dann-Messier

Assistant Secretary for Vocational and Adult Education

U.S. Department of Education

November 23, 2009

Lewis & Clark Community College

Godfrey, Illinois

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Jennifer:Good morning everyone, and welcome. We know that some of you have had to drive from long distances this morning, but we really appreciate you taking out the time to come and inform our guests from the Office of Vocational and Adult Education about what you’re doing in your programs, and some of your strengths, and some of the challenges that you face. We appreciate your being here and we appreciate us working together as a part of this process. We wanted to just kind of start asking the President of Lewis & Clark if he had any words that he’d like to say in getting us all started.

Chapman:I just appreciate you hosting the event, and welcome to Lewis & Clark Community College. We’re an institution of about 13,500 head count academic students. In addition to those students, we have another roughly 13,000 workforce students, duplicating headcount, and then we have about 9,000 noncredit students, so we say we’re an institution of about 25,000 students when you add them all up.

The largest nursing program in the state of Illinois, 320 nurses in the fall, [still building] a $22 million nursing facility. We have a nurse managed clinic, the only nurse managed clinic at a community college in the nation funded by HRSA. We have a mobile unit, one of five Barack Obama earmarks. When he was a senator, he was against earmarks. [Laughter.] I can actually take you into an earmark.

We serve the region with a dental hygiene and nurse practitioner clinic, and going through that are 220,000 people in this part of the state. Doing sealants on kids’ teeth and doing immunizations and screenings, and so we’re very active when it comes to working with our families, our residents when there’s no insurance involved and there’s no choice, so we are the choice. We have lots of things to talk about, but I think that just a minute on the Adult Educator of the Year, we’re proud of that.

Brenda:Congratulations. [Applause.]

Chapman:And we’ll talk about our youth [built] program and things, I’m sure during the day, so welcome.

Brenda:Thank you very much.

Jennifer:Thank you, Dr. Chapman. I’d also to introduce Dr. Linda Chapman, is that correct?

Female:That’s correct.

Jennifer:And she’s the Vice President of Academic Affairs?

Female:That’s also correct.

Jennifer:Good. I can read your title from here.

Female:Wow, that’s impressive.

Female:You have good eyes. [Laughter.]

Jennifer:I also would like to recognize Marilyn Schmidt from ICCB. She is the Director for Adult Education. And again, welcome, and we look forward to what we are about to hear. Thank you.

Brenda:Thank you very much, Jennifer. Thank you very much, President Chapman, for having us, and Dr. [Lindeman], thank you very much for being here. I know you have very busy schedules, and if you can’t stay, we completely understand. I had no expectation that you would stay. Thank you, though, for hosting us on your absolutely beautiful campus, and for making it such a beautiful day outside as well. I want to thank Jennifer and Marilyn also for all your help in organizing our WIA Community Conversation, and I want to thank Val for hosting us here, and congratulations on being the Adult Educator of the Year.

Female:Oh, thank you. It’s my team.

Brenda:It’s an outstanding honor, really. I’m Brenda Dann-Messier, and I’m proud to be the Assistant Secretary for the Office of Vocational and Adult Education. I’ve been on the job for six weeks. And with me is my colleague Dan Miller, who is the Deputy Director of our Adult Education in the U.S. Department of Education.

Chapman:I want to compliment you on your judgment in being here in the first six weeks of your administration. [Laughter.]

Brenda:Well, what we’re doing is conducting these WIA community conversations all across the country. It started in California on my first week on the job, then to New York, New Jersey, and Nashville, here. We’re going to Chicago in December and we’re going to hit every region. We’re really hoping that the Workforce Investment Act will be reauthorized next year. The last time it was reauthorized was in 1998, and in 1998 the unemployment rate was 4.5%, our federal budget had a surplus, and the economy was humming.

It’s certainly a very different scenario today, and so we want to make sure that we’re hearing from folks on the ground, in the field, doing the work, what’s working in the Workforce Investment Act, what isn’t working, what needs to be changed, and then we’re going to ask you, at the end of our conversation, to really think boldly. What would you really like it to look like if you could start all over again, so that if, in fact, it does get reauthorized next year, we’re really prepared to talk about what’s important.

I most recently was the President of Dorcas Place, which is an adult training and learning center in Providence, and had been there for a decade, and had a very close partnership with the Community College of Rhode Island, and worked previous to that for 18 years with the Community College of Rhode Island, was a member of our Board of Governors for Higher Education, and the community college was one of the institutions that we were, in fact, in charge of, so I know and respect the work that adult educators do, that those of you who work in community colleges, how important your work is.

And in fact, I think our work is central to Secretary Duncan’s agenda, and most importantly, to President Obama’s agenda. That’s why it’s very important for Dan and I to really hear from folks and communities all across the country, and those of you who are working very directly with the students. I understand from someone here that you’re very candid, and that’s what we want. We want an open and honest dialogue. We are transcribing every comment, but you do not have to identify yourself by name.

But it would be wonderful if you could say what you do, if you work at a community college, if you’re an adult teacher, and where at the state you work, just so we have a sense, geographically, of the wide representation of voices that are here. But you do not have to identify yourself. What we’re doing is we’re putting all of the comments…right now we have an email account, WIA community conversations? WIA . So anybody, even if your colleagues couldn’t come today, if you go back and say, “I wish I had said…” you can still do that on this email address. And then we’re going to link it to our website, and so you can see what other folks are saying. And then we’re also… [Someone leaves?]

Thank you very much, again, for your hospitality, but more importantly, thank you for the outstanding work you’re doing for your students. Your leadership is very important. Thank you.

We’re not going to synthesize the conversations or even do an analysis. We want folks to really hear what you have to say in your own voice. The only thing that we will do will be to really put together themes so that we can share them in the Department, what are the most important themes that we’ve been hearing across the country. So please be very honest with us this morning. We can have a nice conversation.

Dan and I generally will not respond to your comments, “Well, are you thinking of doing such-and-such,” because while we’re having our own internal discussions, we have not decided on anything around WIA. I think you would be offended if I said, “Well, yes, this is what we want to do,” because then you’d say, “Why would you bring us here today if you already know what you want to do?”

So we’re really at the beginning stages of gathering information, feedback, and need to hear from you on what works and what doesn’t work. And I really hope our folks at the state office will please feel free to…we don’t expect you to not be part of this discussion. All we’re going to do is probe, maybe ask you some follow-up questions, but we’re not going to comment on your comments, and I hope that’s okay with you.

Before I turn it over to Dan, who’s going to pose the questions to you, I just really need to thank you. As a former community college and adult educator, the work that you do is extremely important for the students that you serve, and so on behalf of the students that you serve, thank you for your tremendous work. I know how important your work. I know how our students need services, and so thank you for all you do for your students, our students every day. It’s really a privilege to be here. Dan?

Dan:I get the easy part. As Brenda said, and again I want to echo a thank you for coming, we have put these meetings together on some pretty short notices sometimes, although we’re getting a little better as the time frame goes out. But I know that some of you had to probably make some adjustments in your schedules, and we certainly appreciate that. I’m also very happy to see the diversity here in the providers that came today.

As Brenda said, we certainly hope that the Workforce Investment Act [is reauthorized], the earlier next year the better for all of us. It’s just not working well in the field anymore. Adult education has certainly changed since 1998, and we really need to make some changes. We need to address the changes that we see not only in our student populations, but in our institutions, and just the way we do business. Ten years ago, think about it, goodness, there was hardly even an Internet ten years ago. And I think ten years ago, when I came to Lewis & Clark, there were all kinds of mobile classrooms out here, and now you’ve got this gorgeous campus, so thank you again for hosting us.

We have set this up so that it’s a very free-flowing, one-way dialogue. And Brenda and I really hope that you will overwhelm us with comments and information. We really want to know what is working with regard to the Workforce Investment Act, primarily Title II, which is what we administer, but the Title I program should be very closely connected to what you do. So don’t limit your comments just to Title II programs, but we’re very interested in knowing what’s working.

As we think through what the Administration’s proposals are for the Workforce Investment Act, we really want to carry forward the best prac-tices that are happening in the field. And what we’d like to do with that information is find ways to incent other people in the field to replicate those best practices and bring those things up to scale.

We also want to know what’s not working. And as Brenda said, be very candid with us. There’s no secrets about running these programs. We know that there are difficulties in working with Title I. We know that there are some parts of Title II that don’t work anymore. We’ve heard those, we’ve implemented those. All of us have worked in various capacities in adult education, so we want to hear that, too.

I probably will have to prompt people a little bit on this as we get into the conversation, because people are very good at what isn’t working and what is, but we’re really interested, as this bill moves forward, in talking to you about building career pathways for adult learners.

The President has set pretty ambitious goals for the year 2020 in terms of having people in postsecondary education or getting additional educational training at the postsecondary level, and we know that if we’re going to compete effectively in a global economy, that we have to address the adult learners who have to go through the pipeline. So we really want to know what’s working out there in terms of postsecondary education, transitioning people into postsecondary or education and training and in career pathways. And we also want to focus on better alignment between the job training program and the education programs.

As I said, I’ll probably give you a little prompt or probe to move in some of those directions, but the way we’ve just started this is somebody is brave enough to jump into the water, and then everybody goes after them. I know some of you in the group. I used to stand before you periodically, and I know that some of you will be more than happy to jump right in, especially with what’s working and what’s not working.

Brenda:And if I could just add when you talk about what’s not working, could you offer us some suggestions on how to make improvements, so it doesn’t just become a gripe session? We’d like to hear what you would suggest we could do to improve the situation. Who would like to begin?

Female:I can’t help but the first thing that pops in is funding, and the way that we’re funded. At the federal level, it’s a population, census-based way, correct?

Dan:Mm-hmm.

Brenda:So you have too much money, is that right?

Female:Yeah. [Laughter.] Probably, if there were more money, it wouldn’t matter as much. You guys could just take over on that. I started something, right?

Brenda:I just would say that I think you all understand that funding is a given, so if you can say “funding and,” if you can give us some other…

Female:It’s easier for me to talk about how, once it gets to the state, which you’re not really dealing with. But when we’re trying to be creative and transitioning students to college, the pressure to serve more and more numbers doesn’t promote creativity and experimenting with getting students transitioned.

Dan:Are you asking for maybe more flexibility at the state, maybe if we would give the states more flexibility in how to distribute money for innovation?

Female:That would be great. We talked about Shifting Gears a little bit, and it wasn’t a ton of money. It was $125,000 over two years. But it focused us on transitioning students, and not on how many you got, but what do you need to do and how do you need to get your…to have the content delivered, and what support services do you need. It was focused on successfully transitioning students, and not on how many. We don’t ever want to lose sight of, of course we want to transition as many as possible, but it’s just that we’re really always having to worry about numbers, and not quality.

Brenda:What have you learned from Shifting Gears, and how will you sustain this? If it’s only a two-year initiative, what are the practices that you’re going to try to sustain, and can you even do that?

Female:What we learned here, we brought in all of the college administration, and everyone looked at it together. We redesigned how we deliver math in a more contextualized way. And it’s going to benefit all students, but our students especially.

There’s kind of like three ways, I suppose. Our Shifting Gears was focused on manufacturing, so we have kind of a technical math course that takes them in that direction. And we’re going to now, with some extra funding, going to do that with health. But then in our regular curriculum, I think across the state we’re all looking at teaching math in context, and we did that before. But it’s just more. More directed to the career pathways, I think. It’s kind of like a funnel for students, right through their content.

Jennifer:I think more so is there are things that we were doing in adult ed in terms of contextualization that we knew we could do, but I think that the law doesn’t specifically state it that here’s what you can do, you can contextualize your instruction. And so what we’ve been able to accomplish through this last year, through Shifting Gears, is to look and examine those policies and help the locals to determine how they can use their existing funds to do certain things within adult ed.

So it frees up a little flexibility, I think, but I think what Val, just piggybacking on something that she said, it’s just allowing the law to make sure that it mentions that. And there may be other things that we can do as a part of the law, but it’s not really spelled out. So I think that piece, that’s definitely helpful. And what she was speaking of in terms of additional resources, we’ve used our WIA incentive dollars in order to start to put out development grants or implementation grants around career pathways and career clustered frameworks.

In Illinois we’ve mentioned, I think, health care, manufacturing and transportation are the three top areas that we’re focusing on here in Illinois, so all of those curriculum grants have been out there to develop around those three areas. And it’s been very beneficial. We have a lot of individuals that are working along those lines, so it has been very beneficial.

Female:But it costs more.

Jennifer:Yes, it does cost more.