April 11, 2018
 






adultedwkIT'S ADULT EDUCATION WEEK - THE SPOTLIGHT IS ON YOU

Adult Education Week kicked off Monday. We want to thank you for the tremendous work you do as educators to help adults achieve their goals and step on the path to social mobility, contributing to a strong California workforce. 

This is your week in the spotlight, as you help build awareness within your community about the programs you offer. Vista Adult School, in the Education to Career Network of North San Diego County, received an Adult Education Week proclamation from Vista Mayor Judy Ritter last week - an event that received prior coverage in the local newspaper, helping to spread the word. 

The Sequoias Adult Education Consortium is taking a different approach by taking information about its programs on the road with the  2018 Velocity Tour 2.0 , the second such road tour. As part of the tour, consortium members will go out to a dozen locations within the community throughout the month to provide information to prospective learners. And East Region Adult Education's Grossmont Adult Education is hosting a street fair and open house on Saturday, promoting the  event  on its website and Twitter.

Thank you for the life-changing work that you do!

directionSTRATEGIC DIRECTION FOR AEBG



Throughout April, the AEBG Office and AEBG TAP will offer many key webinars that will help you focus on two major AEBG objectives - student data reporting and regional consortium planning. Also later this month, the AEBG Office will release more information from the Field Teams. Each of these will connect and together will move AEBG forward into the next phase of our program. 
 
This week, there will be two student-data reporting webinars and a three-year planning webinar focused on human-centered design (see webinar  schedule below). Next week, there will be a webinar on the use of MIS student data and the rollout of the Adult Education LaunchBoard. The final week in April, there will be a webinar about metric simplification - based on AEBG metrics - from the community college perspective.
 
All of these webinars and tools will help you jump start mission-critical student data collection/reporting and regional planning. If you would like to preview the items you will be responsible for in the regional planning, take a look at the AB104 legislation, section 84906 (a thru c). Trailer bill language for 2018-19 will extend the current three-year plan until June 30, 2019, with the new three-year plan going into effect July 1, 2019. The new three-year plan will be due in May or early June 2019. Start planning now!
 
Also, for more information on AEBG planning and student-data reporting, please refer to previous webinars about asset mapping (Feb. 21), TOPSpro data reporting (Feb. 28) and MIS data reporting (Oct. 27). You can access these webinars and related materials on the AEBG Webinars webpage (scroll to the bottom for the archive).


webinAEBG WEBINAR SCHEDULE 







Tuesday, April 17: Implementation and Data Collection for the AEBG MIS Data Elements - A Seminar for Practitioners and Researchers 

Time: 1 p.m.-2:30 p.m.








California Community Colleges Chancellor's Office Statewide Webinar
Monday, April 30: Metrics Simplification Initiative
 
Time: 10 a.m.-11 a.m.

Description: M any initiative/performance metrics are at play in the California Community Colleges (CCC). Understanding, tracking, responding to, and reporting these various metrics have been difficult at best.  In response to the metrics-related concerns expressed by our CCC colleagues, Chancellor Eloy Ortiz Oakley has initiated an effort to integrate, simplify and align these various metrics. The initiative, led by Visiting Vice Chancellor Omid Pourzanjani, will be conducted through a series of meetings with a representative advisory group to ensure that ample input from the colleges will guide the preparation and recommendation of a simplified set of metrics to the Chancellor's Office. This is the last in a  three-webinar series about the initiative and will be hosted via CCC Confer. 

To attend, simply  click on this link just prior to the event and complete the form to join.  You also can join  by phone at 1-913-312-3202 and enter the participant passcode: 781826.


regionalREGIONAL TRAININGS FOR APRIL - REGISTER NOW!

In addition to a full slate of webinar offerings, we also have in-person training opportunities scheduled this month, related to the TOPSpro system. Visit this page to register for these face-to-face workshops. 
TOPSpro Enterprise Basics
Friday, April 20 | 9 a.m.-2 p.m.
Lassen Community College
TOPSpro Enterprise (TE) tracks student assessment and program results and provides tools to communicate program effectiveness to all stakeholders. Join CASAS staff for this hands-on computer lab training to learn and use the many robust features of TE that improve data collection and provide greater opportunities to analyze and interpret solutions to improve performance outcomes. This workshop focuses on the basic features of TE, such as navigation, reviewing listers, scanning and report generation. This session is appropriate for administrators, program coordinators and database managers.

AEBG Outcomes and Report: The Next Steps 
Thursday April 26 | 9 a.m.-2 p.m.
Mt. Diablo Adult Education - Loma Vista Center 
                         & 
Tuesday, May 29 | 1 p.m.-4 p.m.
Sacramento County Office of Education
This workshop will provide an overview of the new TOPSpro Enterprise updates to the AEBG Summary and AEBG Data Integrity reports, as well as the new features that help AEBG consortium leads and data managers compare and contrast results with all member agencies. This in-person workshop takes a deeper dive into the AEBG webinars from Feb. 28 and March 7, providing more information about the detailed drill-down reports and consortium-level reports management, and it connects the TE data reports with the specific outcomes and services that comprise AEBG reporting, with specific examples that may trigger when each outcome/service should be reported.


EECAEDUCATE & ELEVATE: SUBMITTING AN OPINION PIECE

As the end of the school year nears, you're likely excited about your students' progress and are ready to celebrate with those nearing the finish line, whether it's graduation or the end of a program. You can help make their  achievements more visible to the community with an opinion piece or guest column published in your local newspaper or another online publication. 
 
Start by identifying a student who will graduate or complete a program at the end of the year and who has plans to continue his or her education, either by enrolling in college, entering the workforce or enrolling in another adult education program to gain even stronger footing on the path to social mobility. 
 
If the student is willing, sit with him or her and ask them to share their story with you: what brought them to adult education? What was their goal? How did the program they were enrolled in help them achieve that goal? What is the next step for them and what is their long-term goal? How do they see their life changing as a result of adult education? How do they see themselves contributing to a strong California workforce?
 
Ask the student to put the story to paper for your review, and, if needed, work with the student to revise the piece for submission to your local newspaper as an opinion piece or guest column. Keep it to between 600-750 words. In either case, you will want to include a call to action at the end, such as urging the legislature to continue state funding of the AEBG program (if the piece is submitted prior to the June 15 budget adoption deadline), with the student's story being an example of why funding should be continued.
 
For submission, visit your local newspaper's website, or call, to find out how to best submit the piece. In an email that includes your student's story, include a brief note that explains to the editor why the piece is timely and important: California is actively working to produce 1 million more middle-skill workers to address the skills gap, and adult education is one part of the solution, giving adults with less than a high school education the knowledge and skills they need to enter the workforce or move into higher-wage jobs - leading to stronger communities and a stronger economy.

Nearly 730,000 Californians are enrolled in adult basic education and secondary education programs  (see page 26 of this AEBG report), 413,000 in English as a second language programs and approximately 176,000 in career education programs. You also may work with your student to weave some of these or other numbers from the annual report into his or her piece.