Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

Accelerating Opportunity (AO) is a workforce development initiative designed to help low-skilled adults, particularly those without high school credentials, succeed in career and technical education at community and technical colleges. AO is an effort to scale the Integrated Basic Education and Skills Training (I-BEST) model, developed in Washington State, to additional states. In the AO model, students co-enroll in adult education classes and technical courses and receive support through coaching and team teaching – where a basic skills and a technical instructor jointly provide content in the classroom. The evaluation, led by the Urban Institute, involves four states – Illinois, Kansas, Kentucky, and Louisiana – each with at least eight participating colleges per state. The evaluation includes an implementation study, a non-experimental impact analysis, and a cost-benefit analysis. This paper will focus on the three-year implementation and the efforts by states to scale and sustain the model.

The states were tasked with scaling the AO model quickly. States worked with their initial eight colleges to develop at least two for-credit career pathway programs that had the requisite components, such as team teaching, supportive services, and employer engagement. States also had to examine and address state policy issues such as student financial aid, co-enrollment policies, and college entry and assessment processes. At the same time, AO college coordinators worked with career and technical faculty, adult education programs, college leadership, and local partners to develop buy-in for the model and to recruit eligible students to the programs. National policy was also changing during the grant with the loss of the Ability to Benefit rule for Pell grants and the new and more rigorous General Education Development test. During the first three years of the project, the four states enrolled 8,287 students in 54 colleges.

The implementation analysis, part of a rigorous, quasi-experimental evaluation of AO, addressed questions about scaling of the integrated college and career pathway programs; program designs and their implementation; and changes observed in the practices, policies, and systems. Addressing these research questions required the collection of primary data from the field. Addressing these research questions required the collection of primary data from the field. The evaluation team conducted two rounds of site visits to states and community colleges and three rounds of surveys of community colleges during the three-year grant. A survey of AO students was also fielded to capture program and labor market experiences. The data capture how the states and colleges initiated AO and how they continued to build and adapt the AO model for their policy and economic climate and for their students with low basic skills.

The proposed paper will describe the varying efforts states and colleges made to scale and sustain AO and the successes and challenges they experienced during the grant. It will update the promising findings from the second year and highlight implications for scaling and sustaining AO and other community college initiatives once the grant funding ends.