In late 2020, Congress passed the FAFSA Simplification Act, restoring access to federal Pell Grants for confined and incarcerated students for the first time since 1994. Following the reversal of this nearly 30-year ban, the U.S. Department of Education (ED) established a new application process for institutions of higher education seeking to…

Businesses throughout the United States are facing a tight labor market and a growing need for skilled workers. At the same time, millions of U.S. adults have foundational skills gaps in areas such as literacy or numeracy. This issue is especially acute among Americans with disabilities, who are twice as likely as their non-disabled peers to have…

The pandemic has caused a major economic shift for businesses and workers. Countless companies have had to quickly upskill their workers, equipping them with the skills they need to pivot to digital or remote services. As a result, the importance of efficiently and effectively training and onboarding workers with the right skills for the job has…

Work-based learning faces significant changes in delivery in the face of a global pandemic that has severely limited physical access to schools and businesses. These changes have forced school leaders and employers to acknowledge pre-existing inequities that perpetuate historical barriers and racial discrimination and keep marginalized learner…

The National American Indian Alaska Native Head Start Collaboration Office (NAIANHSCO), created under Public Law 110-134 ("Improving Head Start for School Readiness Act of 2007"), is directed "to facilitate collaboration among Head Start agencies (including Early Head Start agencies) and entities that carry out activities designed…

This toolkit is designed to help interagency state and local/regional career pathway partnerships identify and use federal resources to support career pathways for adults and youth; it will also be a helpful tool for partners to use when doing unified career pathway planning under the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA). Specifically,…

A confluence of social, economic, and demographic trends has left a generation of young Americans facing an uncertain future in the workforce. If we are to improve their prospects and prepare them for rewarding careers, disparate stakeholders--employers, educators, youth advocates, and others--must work in common purpose. This article suggests…

CHILDREN AT RISK, a nonprofit and nonpartisan research organization, undertook a year-long effort to study the subsidized child care system in Texas. This included an in-depth analysis of the system's local and state partners, as well as the promotion of the study's findings and key recommendations. This report is one of the products of this…

The Adult Education Coordination and Planning (AECAP) guide is designed to assist state adult education staff in forming partnerships at the state level and facilitating coordination at the local level as a lever for expanding and improving the quality of adult basic education (ABE) and workforce development services. Coordination plays a critical…

The community college has always played an integral role in job training but never more so than following the 1998 Workforce Investment Act (WIA) that significantly increased the community colleges' opportunity to join with others in the provision of job training services. With this, however, came demand for high levels of collaboration between…

This report presents a case study of the Automotive Manufacturing Technical Education Collaborative (AMTEC), which brings together auto manufacturers and community colleges across 12 states to identify and implement wide-ranging improvements in technical education for automotive manufacturing workers. A "Big Collaboration"--AMTEC…

Changes in the career landscape require commensurate revisions in career development (CD) to ensure it meets the needs of both employees and employers in this era of multidimensional career paths. Drawing on a model from the past, we propose building a strong career culture based on the relational approach to CD. Implementing a relational strategy…

This study uses data from a qualitative study of career pathway programs to investigate the incidence and type of organizational partnerships between employers, education and other agencies in workforce development. Findings demonstrate that education providers lead the partnerships, but that organizations divide into either peer to peer or…

Housatonic Community College (HCC) in Bridgeport, Connecticut, is of the opinion that an answer to the theme of Re-creating America's Community Colleges lies in forming better alliances with all possible partners. HCC has found in leveraging funds to foster Bridgeport's Manufacturers Education and Training Alliance (METAL) that the college could…

The "Annual Partnership Report" catalogs partnerships that Wyoming community colleges established and maintained for each fiscal year. Each community college maintains numerous partnerships for the development and provision of academic, occupational-technical, workforce development, and enrichment educational programs. These partnerships…