Roles for the Workforce Investment System

Workforce 3One

Transcript of Webinar

Building Career Pathways: Roles for the Workforce Investment System

Date: Wednesday, March 28, 2012

Transcript by Federal News Service Washington, D.C.

BRIAN KEATING: All right. Without any further ado I'm going to turn things over to Andrala Walker. She is with the Office of Workforce Investment, Employment and Training Administration with the U.S. Department of Labor.

Andrala, take it away.

ANDRALA WALKER: Thanks, Brian. We'd like to welcome all of our participants from across the country.

And just to get started with our webinar on building effective career pathways, here's our first polling question.

MR. KEATING: All right. And the question is, "What are your learning goals for today's webinar?" You should see that coming up on your screen now.

You can select all that apply. So your choices are, A, to learn the basics about career pathways; B, to enhance your current efforts; C, to learn about new tools; or D, other. And if you choose "other," just go ahead and use the chat to let us know what that other denotes.

And I see those responses are coming in quickly. If you haven't had a chance to vote, go ahead and make your selections now. And we'll give you another few seconds to do that.

MS. WALKER: OK. Well, it looks like many of you are engaged in this very important work and you're here to enhance your current efforts and to learn about new tools.

Well, the goals of today's webinar I think will address that. We want to provide an overview for you of key roles that the workforce investment system can play in building career pathways. And we want to introduce you to some newly-designed tools and resources by ETA to help states, local areas and tribal communities implement career pathways. And then we have an amazing panel of presenters talk to you about effective strategies and proven approaches to implementing career pathways.

Just to give you the context for our work today, the federal departments of – the U.S. Departments of Labor, Education, and Health and Human Services have been working together for quite some time to promote career pathways as a promising strategy. A couple of years ago they initiated the career pathways initiative and funded nine states and two tribal communities to implement career pathways strategies in their own states and to give us an idea of strategies to help us increase credential attainment, close skills gaps, and further collaboration among the workforce systems.

You can find our more about that on our community of practice from DOL. We hope that if you aren't already a member of the community of practice, that you will join us.

Building Career Pathways: Roles for the Workforce Investment System Page 2 of 16 March 28, 2012 For the Office of Vocational and Adult Education, they also have a website, "Designing Instruction for Adult Career Pathways" that has the latest up-to-date information from our adult education community practitioners on designing instruction.

And our partner, HHS, is actually embarking on a long-term evaluation for career pathways under Project ISIS. So you can learn more about the more about the federal partnership and how we are moving career pathways forward.

Today we have a great group of presenters to talk about the roles for the workforce investment system. I'll introduce them as we go along. But our first presenter is the director of workforce development for Jobs for the Future, Mary Gardner Clagett. And she will actually be talking about roles that the workforce investment system can play in building effective career pathways.

So we'll get started with Mary. Welcome.

MARY GARDNER CLAGETT: Thank you. It's nice to be with you all today.

As you know, career pathways have emerged to help individuals of all skill levels, so particularly those who are low-skilled to pursue, progress through and complete the education and training they need to attain industry-recognized credentials and family-sustaining employment.

Career pathways do this by aligning adult education, postsecondary education and training, workforce development, supportive services and economic development in ways that not only meet the needs of students, jobseekers and workers, but also the skill requirements of employers in high-demand occupations and industries.

You know, when we started working on this project, we realized that there's been a lot written about the roles of adult education and postsecondary education in the development and implementation of career pathways. But what we soon found out was there wasn't a lot written about the role of workforce systems, even though most reauthorization efforts and reform discussions assume a central role for the workforce investment system.

So we decided that we would put together some information and a paper that will be ready, I think in April – later in April that will discuss the role of the workforce system specifically in the development of career pathway assistance.

For workforce systems, career pathways provide a valuable strategy for organizing and improving the effectiveness of education and training; for raising skill levels, credential attainment, employment and career advancement for all jobseekers, particularly for low-skilled individuals.

Career pathways also provide a valuable strategy for meeting the skill needs of employers in high-demand occupations and industry sectors, spurring productivity and economic growth; and for building a comprehensive, coherent workforce development system.

Building Career Pathways: Roles for the Workforce Investment System Page 3 of 16 March 28, 2012 Workforce boards can play a very central role in the development of career pathways. The design and implementation of effective career pathways systems requires the ongoing participation of all major partners. Workforce boards are ideally situated to pull system stakeholders together and ensure that pathways are geared to the needs of the labor market, of high-demand industry sectors and to employers who are important to state and regional economies.

Workforce systems can collect, analyze and share labor market information; provide skills assessments, career navigation and skills matching services; identify skill gaps where training is needed; provide counseling and support services; provide access to and funding for training; and provide job search assistance. So those are all services that the workforce system can provide as part of a career pathways network.

So from a strategic perspective, workforce investment boards can provide incredibly valuable services and roles with regard to the strategic development of career pathways systems and the kinds of change that you need to occur – systems change.

They can provide support for research, development and capacity building; convene or assist in the convening of key agency partners; again, use labor market information to identify high- demand employers and industry sectors in the state or region; facilitate or convene sector partnerships; work with partners to identify a common vision, mission and goals; share existing or participate in carrying out community asset audits to identify what resources are available in the community; compare the skills requirements of employers to the education and skills levels of the population and identify skills gaps; and collaborate with other partners to assess the region’s education and training capacity.

Furthermore, WIBs can coordinate with partners on career navigation and support services; help to identify and pursue leveraged funding and partnerships; and continuously reach out to community stakeholders, including employers, to build support for the career pathways systems and initiatives.

An increasing number of strategic workforce boards are already carrying out these roles and responsibilities. And you'll be hearing from systems in Arkansas and Wisconsin in a little bit to talk about what they've been doing.

Board members' expertise and stature should be utilized fully in the development of career pathways systems change and initiatives. Where workforce systems are full partners, system alignment, the leveraging of resources and the delivery of comprehensive education and training services that meet the skill needs of workers and employers are significantly enhanced.

The next slide will show of the six key elements that the Departments of Education, Labor and HHS have identified as necessary for partners in the establishment – to carry out – for partners to carry out – I'm sorry – in the establishment of a career pathways system. And in each of these, workforce systems should play a central role.

Building Career Pathways: Roles for the Workforce Investment System Page 4 of 16 March 28, 2012 Again – and it's somewhat duplicative of what I've just talked about – but number one is building cross-agency partnerships and clarifying roles and the value each bring to the table. Identifying sector industry – sectors that are important to the economy of regions and engaging employers. Designing the programs – providing input to education and training providers so that career pathways program designs meet the needs both of adults and of employers in the region; identifying funding and needed resources, aligning programs and policies, and measuring change in performance.

In addition to states such as I-BEST in Washington, Oregon's Career Pathways models – and of course, Arkansas and Wisconsin that you're going to hear from in a few minutes – there are some national initiatives that you may want to take a look at, including Breaking Through, that worked with over 40 community colleges around the country; Accelerating Opportunity, which is a new initiative that Jobs for the Future is working on, along with other partners that is working with four states right now.

Ten states received planning grants and four have received implementation grants to adopt something similar to the I-BEST model, which is a co-enrollment model. And then the Shifting Gears program, which was focused – from the Joyce Foundation, was focused on Great Lakes states. And all of these offer a lot of promise.

In addition to that, one final thing is the paper that I mentioned a few minutes ago, called "The Promise of Career Pathways Systems Change: What Role Should Workforce Investment Systems Play? What Benefits Will Result?" should be available in the community of practice in April of 2012, and that information is on this slide.

So at this point, I'll turn this over to Arkansas.

MS. WALKER: Thank you so much. And we'd like to just take a quick poll. Mary went through the role of WIBs, and we know that many of you are representing state workforce investment boards or local boards, and we wanted to try to get a sense of how many of your WIBs are actually helping develop career pathways, and what are some of the areas that you see your leadership most focused on?

And based on the responses, we see that many of you are convening your agency partners; you're facilitating industry sector partnerships; and many of you are providing support for research and LMI. So those are exactly the type of strategic direction that Mary is speaking of.

And so to kind of amplify and talk about state-level leadership and how WIA and TANF are integrated, we're very pleased to have the director of the Arkansas Department of Workforce Services, Artee Williams and the assistant director of TANF in Arkansas on the line with us today.

Artee?

Building Career Pathways: Roles for the Workforce Investment System Page 5 of 16 March 28, 2012 ARTEE WILLIAMS: Thank you, Andrala, and good afternoon to all on the call. We'll take just a few minutes to walk you through what we're doing in Arkansas and join you in the chat room a little bit later.

I think as Mary pointed out, the role of WIBs are very important and certainly play a role in how we develop the Arkansas career pathways initiative. And I refer to it often as CPI – career pathways initiative.

We started back in 2004 with a pilot down in the southern part of our state. And that pilot was so successful, several states agencies came together to look at ways to make that initiative a statewide project. The policymakers at the table included the state human services department, the department of higher education, the state workforce investment board, the state TANF board, and of course, the department of workforce services.

Early on we agreed that we'd need a funding source and that was very difficult, but concluded that we can actually fund the project with TANF dollars. That was a little easier for us because in Arkansas, uniquely, our department of workforce services is the TANF grant recipient and we control those dollars. So we've made a commitment to provide ongoing funding for Arkansas' CPI program.

I think uniquely, though, we move from just agency and board policy to legislative policy. Several legislators saw the benefit of the Arkansas CPI program. So in 1975 the legislature passed a law that actually codified the career pathways initiative into state legislation. And there are legislators who really support the program because it has obviously statewide implications.

The real purpose of the career pathways program is to provide a vehicle for those who are TANF-eligible to receive postsecondary training so they might move to self-sufficiency by obtaining higher ed credentials. We also use labor market information to identify those in- demand occupations and also to provide focus on industries that we should look to that would provide appropriate jobs and opportunities.

One of the things that we really talk a lot about is using this program to fill education gaps that low-income persons often have. And when we fill those education gaps, we also fill, then in the process, the economic gap – that is, people with credentials are more likely to find work in high- demand occupations.

Uniquely also in Arkansas – and this is with the help of the state workforce board and local workforce boards, we are aggressively locating workforce centers on two-year college campuses. And in those centers, you have a collection of workforce services employee, local workforce board staff, also college staff; and in many cases, adult ed staff who are there to help TANF clients with services and support.

That is a very aggressive program that's supported by the governor, and we have several more workforce centers that will be developed over time. But that's a very big part of our success in Arkansas with the CPI program. For example, a TANF client can enter the workforce center, be enrolled in college courses before they actually leave that workforce center.

Building Career Pathways: Roles for the Workforce Investment System Page 6 of 16 March 28, 2012 I think you all know well the eligibility requirements for the TANF program. We require the TANF recipient to request other federal funding before we use TANF funding. But we also provide enough monies to the two-year colleges to have staff that assist the TANF clients – obtain all the services and support they need on the college campuses. They are assisted with enrollment, with ensuring that tuitions are paid, books are attained; and if need be, support for childcare, transportation, et cetera. We're also able to buy special equipment for those individuals.

We have over 300 pathways that have been developed by our two-year colleges. We have approximately 25 two-year colleges across the state. They've developed those pathways that are, again, tied to high-wage, high-demand occupations; but also targeted industries in the service areas of those institutions. Again, very successfully, the tutoring and very intensive advising of those pathway students has been a real key to success, as well as employer engagement in those communities.

I think a real key to success is that since the program was implemented in 2005, we've actually enrolled over 24,000 TANF-eligible students in that program, and the colleges have issues a combined 21,000 certificates and degrees to those individuals. And that's, again, quite an accomplishment.

Our program has received quite a bit of recognition at the national level. And last fall, Secretary Sebelius was here to visit with our 25 two-year college presidents who actually implement the CPI program in Arkansas. And she heard firsthand the success of that program and we were delighted to have her here. And she noted this was the kind of program that we need in many places across the country to help feed the workforce pipeline.

So that's a quick synopsis of what the Arkansas CPI program is all about.

MS. WALKER: Thanks so much, Artee; again, an example of state-level leadership in the workforce investment system, creating over 300 career pathways in their state.

Here's our next polling question for you. "Does your WIB have an active partnership with its TANF agency?" So let's just try to get an idea of how many of you are actively working with your TANF partners.

And it appears that many of you are already engaged in that work. And if you're not, you see how important collaboration between those two entities can be.

So next we have another leader in career pathways to talk with us about how Wisconsin has leveraged a lot of the state and local workforce investment boards to move career pathways forward. Linda Preysz, who is working in the Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development in special assignments is with us today to share a little bit about what's going on in Wisconsin. Linda?

Building Career Pathways: Roles for the Workforce Investment System Page 7 of 16 March 28, 2012 LINDA PREYSZ: Thank you so much. Hello, everyone. I'm going to give you a brief overview about what the work has been done in Wisconsin to date.

We initiated our efforts through a Joyce Foundation Shifting Gears Grant early in 2007. I think it was mentioned earlier that the Shifting Gears was really focused on the Great Lakes states, and we were fortunate to be one of them.

Our partners included the Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development, the Wisconsin WI technical college system, workforce development boards through Wisconsin, and the Center on Wisconsin Strategy.

Our assignment out of this grant was really to focus on the first and the fifth of the six key elements – the first one being to build cross-agency partnerships, and the fifth one, to align policies and programs across agencies.

The department of workforce development and the technical college system were the leads in this grant. The workforce development boards were really instrumental in assuring that we had not only the workforce development boards at the table with the delivery system, but also their engagement with employers, which was instrumental in assuring that we were meeting the needs of employers in Wisconsin. The Center on Wisconsin Strategy was a partner in determining who our audience was. They've helped us develop our data pipeline and provided research into the issues that we were pursuing.

So the goal of Wisconsin's initiative really focuses on the first two bullet points here. We were looking to increase the number of adults who earn postsecondary credentials related to occupations in high-demand fields. These postsecondary credentials were supposed to be delivered in a way that was very predictable and reliable for the lower-skilled adults. And again, the really important piece was to have collaboration between employers and the other partners within the mix – the educators, workforce organizations, state agencies, et cetera.

Our challenge. In 2007 there were 710,000 low-skill working adults in Wisconsin, age ranges between 25 and 54, without a college credential, who earned less than the median wage. One of the reasons that we focused on the 25- to 54-year-olds were they had some work experience. They may have some postsecondary education. They may have some financial requirements that make it very difficult for them to go back to work.

Some of them are just, as a result unable to commit to long-term training or they just entered the workforce out of their high school period. They might need adult basic education instruction before they can even gain postsecondary education.

We also learned that some of these folks just don't have the confidence necessarily to go back to school, or they are unwilling to do the adult basic ed. They just really want to do the skills training piece of it. And somehow we needed to marry all of those issues and help people get into the postsecondary programs that we knew were going to make a difference. Plus, our employer community expressed an immediate need for skilled workers in almost every sector. So there was definitely a desire to get the 710,000 working in high-skill jobs.

Building Career Pathways: Roles for the Workforce Investment System Page 8 of 16 March 28, 2012 So the challenge. Now, today we're at 695,000. So I'm going to demonstrate this picture based on the numbers for today. So there's a little pink box here and it shows that there's the low- skilled jobs at the bottom and the skilled jobs at the top of any industry. But it's not really always clear how people get to that next level; how those low-skilled workers are supposed to move up.

What we've done is we've taken a look at the level of education from high school or less and the degree or diploma that might meet that skilled job and we've divided it out. We've broken it down into stackable credentials. Those stackable credentials then are supposed to lead up into that skilled employment sector. And the Bridge program takes the high school or less knowledge – like adult basic education or English as a second language – and marries it with occupational training so that workers can really link to that next step.

So again, here's the definitions that we used, that career pathways is a curriculum organized as a sequence of embedded credentials. But they have to be recognized by employers. And again, I can't stress this enough, that the employers are really instrumental in how we deliver our career pathways. We can break down anything. The technical college system is very good at defining new credentials. But unless it meets the employers' need, it really doesn't have the outcome that we're trying to find. So employers are really, really important in our career pathway definition.

The career pathways bridge, then, is coordinated basic field instruction and occupational instruction, either done concurrently where you have team teaching going on or those two teachers are working in tandem so that they are delivering instruction that meets both sides of those levels of education.

This is just another way of looking at the Wisconsin career pathways model. As you can see, the participant, or the person going through schooling, would go in and out of the system. So they're at the unskilled job in that first box. They're moving in through adult basic education and other occupational training, leading into the bridge, and coming back in and out.

If you notice, we have apprenticeship at the bottom. That's for a very good reason. Apprenticeship is pretty much the original career pathway model. It provides something that the employers need. They are heavily invested into the training. They make sure that the apprentice has a life within their organization. But they also have very clear demands on what that person is supposed to be doing. And so we see that there's a really – a partnership that really makes a difference and one that we would like to emulate within the career pathways model – employers and the worker coming together.

Here's just two examples of how the career pathways might look. From the Western Technical College, the CNC program, there's three six-credit-stacked certificates, including three years of ABE support. So you can see how those stackable credentials help the participant move along up until a one-year and a two-year degree. The other one is the Fox Valley Technical College accounting program. And again, that bridge program helps the participant link into higher education.

Building Career Pathways: Roles for the Workforce Investment System Page 9 of 16 March 28, 2012 I should also note that when they've completed the bridge program, college credit is given to them. It's an automatic link to the next part of those stackable credentials. They don't have to jump through any more hoops.

Another important part of the work that we were doing is related to our policy drivers. One of the first things that we did was we incorporated career pathway guidelines into the WIA state and local planning guidelines. And this is really important. Again, the workforce development boards are key partners in delivering this kind of training. We wanted to make sure that not only we were talking about these programs, but that we had a way to demonstrate that they were really going to happen at the local level.

We revised the WIA 35 percent rules to include earlier steps in career pathways. Wisconsin Technical College System postsecondary education changed its modification standards and procedures to establish a process for statewide approval.

We had had many, many conversations about student financial aid clarifications. This is an ongoing issue that we're working with that career pathways, at this point, has not been financial- aidable. And so we're working very closely with the federal folks to make those clarifications to assure that people can get financial aid when they're doing stackable credentials.

Plus, the technical college system changed its model for the way it delivered adult basic education and occupational training and made real policy change to ensure that this kind of training could be done with team teaching.

We are now in the process of trying to expand this statewide. We put together and interagency workgroup that included not only our workforce development boards – which are our WIA partners – but we also brought in our TANF partners, Trade Adjustment Act, DBR and the local technical colleges to really talk about how do we make this happen at the local level; how do we get the various employment and training partners to come together and to enroll their participants into these programs. That interagency workgroup is also taking a look at not only how they make this all happen, but looking to determine whether or not we need statewide policy to help those partnerships really be effective.

Wisconsin participated in the Accelerating Opportunity. We received a planning grant; we did not receive an implementation grant. But it really pushed us to meet some new goals. Under that planning grant we had proposed that we would do 3,500 bridge enrolled, and that out of those bridge enrollees, 2,800 would be completers within the three-year program. Wisconsin decided to stick with that goal.

And so 11 workforce development boards have agreed to not only convene the local employment and training partners as a result of the interagency workgroup, but they're also going to help us with getting those bridge programs' participants enrolled across the employment and training programs. So they're going to be, again, very instrumental partners in our work.

Some of the other things that are going to be coming out of this is a directory of career pathways and bridges. We are creating a new RISE website – and I apologize that I didn't mention RISE

Building Career Pathways: Roles for the Workforce Investment System Page 10 of 16 March 28, 2012 before, which is regional industry skills education, which is how we've been referring to our career pathways program in Wisconsin. But as we continue to build it we more and more frequently just say the Wisconsin career pathway program.

Also we're developing a career pathway roadmap tool which allows stakeholders to look at one- and two-year technical diplomas and associate's degrees and begin to break them down into new certificates and stackable credentials.

Our local technical colleges are also hosting open houses for employers now through June, to again provide more information about the work that's underway, how we can be partners with them, and how we can be meeting their workforce needs.

As I mentioned earlier, industry partnerships and sector strategies are really important to this work. The employers are a necessary relationship to have in building our career pathways model. So keeping our work close to industry needs is just inherent to the work that we're doing in conjunction with other partners – and this example is specific to the south central workforce development board – created a strategic industry partnership structure.

And you can see that those three bullet points there really help to define the industry partnership structure. This is something that is not just specific to south central Wisconsin. All of our boards have industry partnerships in place. All of our boards have strong relationships with employers and the employer community. And this is part of our statewide expansion with career pathways. We want those industry partnerships to also be very well-informed of the work that we're doing and be partners in the work that we're doing as we expand statewide and find ways to build the skill set of the workforce.

And so I will stop there.

MS. WALKER: Thanks so much, Linda, for all of that great information about Wisconsin. You're obviously doing quite a lot of good work around career pathways.

At this time we'd like to take a couple of questions that have been coming in for our speakers.

One question was, "What is TANF?" And let me just say that it's the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families program that is run by the Department of Health and Human Services. It funds training and support services for low-income adults.

Another great question was – we talked about Oregon, Arkansas; but what other states are there to possibly look to as leaders in this area? And I'm going to let Mary maybe speak to that.

MS. CLAGETT: Yeah. You know, there are quite a few states that are doing this.

The first two that come to mind – I think that were probably the first two that started this work - - are Washington state with its I-BEST model, and Oregon, I think probably had the first career pathway system. I think Arkansas, again, was very early in establishing this career pathways model.

Building Career Pathways: Roles for the Workforce Investment System Page 11 of 16 March 28, 2012 In addition, Wisconsin, of course. Minnesota's doing something called FastTrack that is really innovative. And then Virginia is taking this on from a state perspective. Maryland is adopting an I-BEST model. Also, Illinois, Kansas, Kentucky, North Carolina – there are actually just quite a few states that we really focusing on career pathways.

And the involvement of the workforce system varies. Some states have the workforce system as an essential core partner, and other states are focusing a little bit more on the community college side. But regardless, there are a lot of really innovative things that are happening.

Again, there's the toolkit – the career pathways toolkit that's on the community of practice, and Andrala can give you more information about that. That has a lot of information, not only about state initiatives but local initiatives and national initiatives that can be very helpful, providing you with information on what's happening in career pathways.

MS. WALKER: Thanks, Mary. Another great question has come in for Artee. "Can you give us some examples of job readiness skills that you all are training for in Arkansas?"

MR. WILLIAMS: Sure. Thank you.

Some of those are, again, required by area employers and would include things like reading, locating information, applied mathematics. We're also utilizing the ACT WorkKeys assessment as an entry point for a number of TANF clients where they complete that assessment and receive either a bronze, silver, gold or platinum certificate that proves they have basic job readiness skills.

MS. WALKER: Thanks so much for that.

Linda, there's a question, "What does RISE stand for, again?"

MS. PREYSZ: Sure. It is the regional industry skills education. And RISE is the name that we use here in Wisconsin for our career pathways and bridge programs. But I find when we talk about it with audiences outside of Wisconsin it's much easier to just say career pathways and bridge programs. It's a quicker connect. But if come to our website in Wisconsin, it will say RISE.

MS. WALKER: OK. Thanks so much. There's so many good questions coming in.

Another question asks, "What's the value and importance of the adult education system in these career pathways?" We believe that that is a very important player in the creation of career pathways. But Mary might have some additional thoughts to share with us on that.

MS. CLAGETT: Yeah. I mean, adult education – if you're dealing with your lowest-skilled individuals, adult education is essential; either that or developmental education. Because what you want to do is you want to take people from the lowest skill levels.

Building Career Pathways: Roles for the Workforce Investment System Page 12 of 16 March 28, 2012 And some of the most innovative programs – the ones you've heard from today and other co- enrollment programs like I-BEST and others – actually integrate or co-enroll individuals in adult education so they're learning their basic skills at the same time as they're enrolled in occupational skills training, often at the postsecondary level. So they can be earning college credit at the same time as they're learning their basic skills – or English language skills. So again, if you're dealing with your lowest-skilled population, adult education is essential.

MS. WALKER: Now, another question that we've been asked is, "Where or how do we access the career pathways toolkit?" That toolkit can be downloaded from our career pathways community of practice. The website address was given to you at the beginning of the webinar. And it's there right now where you can go and download it.

We're going to take a couple more questions and then we're going to transition to our live chat session.

So another question that has come through is asking Linda to give a little more information about the WIA 35 percent rule and how those funds are being utilized to pay for career pathways.

MS. PREYSZ: OK. Thanks for that question. And in fact, I was thinking that I should provide some more information when I was doing my presentation.

The 35 percent rule is really important because one of the things that we want to do in the WIA program is make sure that people are being linked to high-demand occupations and high-demand jobs, where the wages are family-sustaining. So by making a bridge program, eligible training options for getting people into higher-wage work was a very critical step in making sure that we are reaching the population with the highest needs.

The bridge program participants certainly aren't going to be in a high-wage occupation just by completing a bridge program. It's a first step in getting them there. And so by making this modification, there was a way to assure that we were really meeting the demands of all of our workers in the best way possible.

The bridge program participants have shown that when they are allowed to participate in the way that has adult basic education and occupational training delivered concurrently, they see why the adult basic education is so relevant. And it allows them, once completed, to move farther on that career pathway; that they're not just left with just a high school diploma or a GED or something else that still requires them to do so much more. So that bridge program completion is a very, very important piece of getting people into high-skill and high-wage occupations.

I have to say, though, that 35 percent rule change, while it was an important milestone, it still hasn't made the difference that we want to make in Wisconsin. We still have a lot of work to do in making sure that people are moving along the trajectory towards those higher-wage jobs. But it was an important policy driver for us, to have everyone really talking about how we make those changes.

MS. WALKER: Thanks so much for answering that.

Building Career Pathways: Roles for the Workforce Investment System Page 13 of 16 March 28, 2012 MS. PREYSZ: Sure.

MS. WALKER: We have a question for Arkansas. "You've had extraordinary success in getting numerous state agencies to collaborate in your career pathways project. What strategies would you say helped to make this work, Artee?"

MR. WILLIAMS: Thank you. I think in Arkansas, uniquely, the state workforce investment board and the TANF board have some of the agency directors and representatives on those two boards. All those folks know each other, have worked together in other capacities.

What also helped again, as I mentioned earlier, is the fact that our agency receives the TANF bloc grant. And we're able to leverage those funds, make it a little easier for the other agencies to work with us to ensure we have a good program.

But we're a small state and we all know together and have worked together for a long time, so that's always very, very helpful.

MS. WALKER: Yes. In many ways, building relationships is a lot of what this is all about, right?

So we have so many good questions coming in. I'm going to take one other question and then we're going to move to our live chat session.

But regarding the programs that combine ABE and an industry certification, what does the timing of that training look like in terms of the mix of hours in each, given that it may take some a lot longer to earn a GED than others? And I don't know if you, Linda, or Artee might want to speak to – how do you go about designing some of that work? I know, Linda, you guys have done a lot of work in this area.

MS. PREYSZ: Yes. We have done a lot of that work.

In terms of the design, we have brought together the adult basic ed folks and the occupational training folks together and they have been the ones to design what that is going to look like. We've also tried to model the work after Washington's I-BEST programs as best as we can. As you can guess, the team teaching product is very expensive. It does work, and so many of our bridge programs are delivered that way.

Some of them are not delivered as the team teaching model. It is instead where you have the occupational instructor and the adult basic education instructor working together so that their curriculum is married, but they're not necessarily in the room at the same time. So the hours can be different; the classroom instruction time can be different. It depends on what type of training we're really looking at.

We have done many different sectors – culinary arts; we've looked at manufacturing, health care, tourism and hospitality. There are many, many ways that the bridge program can be an

Building Career Pathways: Roles for the Workforce Investment System Page 14 of 16 March 28, 2012 introduction to other jobs. So the amount of time that is spent in that bridge program is going to be somewhat different depending on the skill sets that they're ultimately trying to achieve.

MS. WALKER: Thanks so much, Linda.

OK. Now I'd like to turn it back over to Brian so we can begin to wrap up. But then also, I want to just encourage everyone to stay with us as we move to our live chat session.

MR. KEATING: All right. Great. Thanks, Andrala.

Again, this is Brian. We want to, like Andrala said, encourage you to stay with us because we're about to go ahead and transition to the live chat follow-up section of the webinar. So we're actually going to push you out to the link directly so you access that.

Also, want to remind you if you have a pop-up blocker in place you may not get the link that we're about to send out to you. However – well, before that, actually, we want to provide you with the speakers' contact information.

And by the way, these slides are downloadable. So you don't have to necessarily memorize all this right now. Like we talked about earlier, we have recorded today's webinar. We're going to be making that webinar recording available in about two business days. And the PowerPoint slides here are already available. All you need to do is log into your Workforce3One account. And once you login with your email and password you'll be brought to your dashboard page.

You can go ahead, then, and click the "attended" tab and you'll be able to access the presenter slides – the PowerPoint slides, that is – with this contact information. And in about two business days you'll be able to watch the whole recording and also read a written transcript. So just wanted to remind you about that.

Now, we are going to go ahead and transition to our live chat. So what we're going to do is bring up the link for you on your screen. And that link that's on the PowerPoint slides you can actually go ahead and click right now. That'll bring you to the chat. You should already be logged into Workforce3One. If you're not, you will need to login. And if for some reason you're not a member of the career pathways community of practice, you'll need to go ahead and join.

But you should be able to just click that link and participate in the chat. And we're going to go ahead and also browse out to there, so you should see that coming up in your internet browser as well.

So we're going to go ahead and encourage you now to go ahead – and many of you, I can see, are already joining the live chat. We're going to have an additional 30 minutes now to go ahead and continue the dialogue. So if you have follow-up questions, if there's anything else that you missed or that you wanted to ask, given the content we just went over, we have that live chat and we're going to have the presenters also there to answer your questions, to participate in the chat.

Building Career Pathways: Roles for the Workforce Investment System Page 15 of 16 March 28, 2012 So we encourage you to stick with us. Join us now if you haven't already done so by clicking on that link and joining the chat. And we will have at least 30 minutes where we will go ahead and have that live chat.

So we're going to go ahead and end the verbal portion of today's webinar. But we will be available to continue participating in the chat and we encourage you to join us.

All right. Thanks very much, everybody. We look forward to seeing you on the live chat and look forward to your participation in future webinars. Have a great day.

Building Career Pathways: Roles for the Workforce Investment System Page 16 of 16 March 28, 2012