The Administration for Children and Families published three new infographics illustrating participation and outcomes in HPOG. The infographics include details on programs and participants, training and services, and completions and employment outcomes.

The Year Up program is one of nine career pathways programs in the Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation’s Pathways for Advancing Careers and Education (PACE) study. Year Up’s sites had to increase recruitment by 50% to meet the study sample requirements. This blog post from the Administration for Children and Families highlights Year Up’s efforts and lessons learned while scaling up their services.

The Arkansas Career Pathways Initiative (CPI) uses TANF funds to provide support services to over 30,000 qualifying students enrolled in occupational programs at Arkansas community and technical colleges. This issue brief from the National Skills Coalition highlights key elements of the successful model, as well as challenges that may impact these types of career pathways programs.

This report presents findings from the Systems Change Analysis of the 27 non-tribal HPOG grantees funded in 2010, which operated 49 programs. This study addresses the major research question: What changes to the service delivery system are associated with program implementation? This report considers the following topics:

•  Inclusion of partners and stakeholders in HPOG networks;

•  Roles and responsibilities of partners and stakeholders;

•  Changes in collaboration within HPOG networks during the grant period;

•  HPOG networks, local labor markets, and employer perspectives;

•  Effectiveness and sustainability of programs and network relationships; and

•  Lessons and policy implications.

The Systems Change Analysis represents one of the first efforts to evaluate comprehensively the systems that can support career-pathways-based training programs for low-income adults. While this analysis is exploratory, it takes an initial step toward understanding systems change for training programs and offers some key lessons for future efforts as well as policy implications. (Author abstract)

This newly revised toolkit from the Department of Labor’s Employment and Training Administration now aligns with the new vision and requirements of the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA). Additionally, it incorporates promising practices in the career pathways field from throughout the past five years.

The Office of Family Assistance (OFA) published an Information Memorandum (IM) about opportunities for state and tribal TANF agencies to incorporate career pathways approaches, including how they can count toward the agency’s work participation rate requirement. The IM shares examples of TANF agencies that have partnered with community colleges and other stakeholders to provide TANF recipients with the education, training, and support they need to obtain careers in high-demand fields.

The most recent WIOA regulations described how education and workforce development partners can design and implement a key strategy in career pathways: Integrated Education and Training (IET). IET programs are designed to help participants seek goal-oriented, practical knowledge. This publication from CLASP provides examples of successful IET programs and includes resources for state and local leaders interested in utilizing IET promising practices in their communities.

This webinar, sponsored by the Pathways to Careers Network and presented by Women Employed and the Chicago Jobs Council, reviewed Career Foundations: Making Your Education Work for You. This new tool is designed to connect adult education with careers and increase the number of transitions to postsecondary education. This tool provides low-skilled adults connections to local occupational and academic programs to increase economic opportunity.

This Health Profession Opportunity Grants (HPOG) webinar, presented by the U.S. Department of Education and Abt Associates, presents findings from an international assessment of basic skills and provides promising instructional models for adult basic skills education and promising strategies for healthcare training programs.

Resources developed through the Adult Career Pathways Training and Support Center, part of the Designing Instruction for Career Pathways Initiative, are now available through the Literacy Information and Communication System (LINCS). The resources are designed to help state and local adult education providers deliver services that help low-skilled adults transition to postsecondary education and employment. Online courses, a resource center, issue briefs, webcasts, and newsletters can be found on the website.