Connecting Adult Education and Workforce Skills
Highlights
- Adult workforce coordination must improve at state and local levels
- Through the AECAP, Abt tested models for better coordination and planning
- Abt’s models and findings have been used in subsequent adult education projects
Coordination between local adult education and workforce agencies is vital to delivering effective services that can enable adults to develop basic skills and succeed in the workplace. How can states improve this coordination in local communities? This was one of the challenges that the Adult Education Coordination and Planning (AECAP) project intended to address.
As part of AECAP’s efforts, the U.S. Department of Education (ED) chose Abt Associates to conduct a demonstration project to test models for interagency coordination and strategic planning. The demonstration involved six states – Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Maryland, Missouri, and Washington – and 12 local adult basic education programs and their partners.
The project supported the development of coordinated services between adult basic education and One-Stop Career Center providers through a series of workshops and site visits. We assisted states in implementing research-based processes to develop partnerships We also helped them set up pilot projects to test local practices for transitioning adults to further education and employment.
We also collected and analyzed pilot sites’ outcome data as an initial evaluation of local practices and prepared a guide for state leaders.
The models and findings from the AECAP project have been used in subsequent ED-funded projects.