Breaking Through
<Link to the Initiative>
Initiative Description
Breaking Through is a demonstration project that aims at strengthening the efforts of community colleges to assist low-income and low-literacy adults prepare and succeed in occupational and technical degree programs. The first phase of Breaking Through used a framework of four high-leverage strategies built upon earlier research gathered. Originally, seven Leadership Colleges implemented full pathways to college-level professional/technical programs for low-skill adults. Currently, the initiative focuses on documenting best practices at participating community colleges, documenting evidence that those practices are effective, and scaling up the work being done at many of the sites.
Partners
Implementers
Breaking Through has seven Leadership Colleges committed to advancing low-skilled adults and twenty-five institutions designated as Learning Colleges. Each Leadership College has demonstrated a strong commitment to—and significant progress toward—the goal of advancing low-skilled adults. These colleges receive funding and technical support to expand and institutionalize their approaches. Leadership Colleges include: Central New Mexico Community College, Albuquerque; Community College of Denver; Cuyahoga Community College, Cleveland; Durham Technical Community College; Owensboro Community & Technical College; Portland Community College; and Southeast Arkansas College.
Twenty-five institutions are designated as Learning Colleges. These colleges have begun to restructure their offerings to support the advancement of low-literacy students to degree programs, and they have demonstrated their commitment to doing more. They benefit from opportunities to learn from one another and receive technical assistance from NCWE and JFF.
Partner Organizations
Breaking Through is a collaborative effort of Jobs for the Future (JFF) and the National Council for Workforce Education (NCWE). JFF is a leading innovator in strategies to accelerate education and career advancement for both young people and adults. NCWE committed to this project in order to help its members develop effective pipelines for low-literacy adults into good technical programs. The Ford Foundation supports Breaking Through’s state policy efforts. This work focuses on researching, documenting, and testing state policies that help more low-skilled adults succeed in college and careers. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation funds data collection, documentation, scale-up efforts for successful projects at five Breaking Through community colleges, and peer learning activities across the initiative.
Initiative Publications
Overcoming Obstacles, Optimizing Opportunities: State Policies to Increase Postsecondary Attainment for Low-Skilled Adults (March 2008).
This report, prepared for the Breaking Through initiative, offers state policymakers six specific policy recommendations to increase postsecondary attainment for low-skilled adults.
Better Together: Realigning Pre-College Skills Development Programs to Achieve Greater Academic Success for Adult Learners (November 2008).
As part of a series of state policy reports from Breaking Through, this report 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.
Breaking Through: Helping Low-skilled Adults Enter and Succed in College and Career (November 2004).
Based on a literature review, site visits to innovative colleges and programs, interviews with practitioners and researchers, special sessions at national conferences, this report discussed and reviewed preliminary research findings on the Breaking Through Project.
Transition Tools
Advancing Adults into Community College Programs: DataTools
This report begins with a toolkit describing various methods for capturing or collecting data. It then presents recommendations for collecting a common core of data; this core was originally developed for Breaking Through colleges, but it is directly relevant for any college seeking to track outcomes for precollege students.
A Framework for Effective Recruiting for Breaking Through Colleges
This report illustrates the framework Breaking Through organizers used for recruiting participant colleges and provides an effective way to think through methodologies to approach partners for a new policy initiative.
For more information about the initiative, please contact:
Judith Combes Taylor at JFF, jtaylor@jff.org, 617.728.4446
Jim Jacobs at NCWE, jacobsj@macomb.edu, 586.445.7987