Adult Basic Education Recommendations
The Path Forward for Adult Education
Leading in Adult Education
This research effort led to a set of strategic recommendations. These strategies tie in directly with TalentFirst’s recommendations for making West Michigan a top talent region. However, the aim is not to benefit one region of Michigan. The strategies detailed in this report would put Michigan on a path to being a leader in adult education in the nation.
Adult Basic Education Strategies
In the report, TalentFirst outlined strategies to ensure a comprehensive approach to strengthening adult education in Michigan—recognizing that meaningful progress requires coordinated action across the system. Together, they focus on integrating adult education into broader talent development efforts, strengthening and aligning funding, supporting and elevating the educator workforce, and ensuring learners have access to the services and supports needed to succeed.
The strategies fall into four categories:
System Integration: Positioning adult education as part of a coordinated talent development system by raising its profile, aligning goals, working closely with employers and partners, delivering services in a human-centered manner, and connecting adult education and career pathways, and more.
Funding: Injecting more resources to support adult education performance through increased state funding, redesigning the funding distribution strategy, greater flexibility through policy waivers, and investing in resources for systems change.
Educator Supports: Demonstrating respect for the field through increased compensation and full-time positions, professional development to serve this population’s unique needs, and adult educator certification, among other strategies.
Learner Services: Addressing the whole learner to foster strong outcomes through expanded service access, flexible delivery methods, peer support, digital literacy, technology and learning environments, and learning plans that include assessment for disabilities and career connectivity.
Short-term Strategies (0-24 Months)
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1. Make clear at every opportunity that adult education plays a foundational role in talent development, is a social determinant of health, and is a contributor to family economic stability with multigenerational benefits. At the state-level, educate partner agency leadership and staff about adult-learner needs, partner resources, and services to increase interagency coordination and positioning of adult education as a crucial component of the state’s broader talent strategy.
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2. Improve data sharing and coordination among all agencies operating within the adult education system by establishing best practice guidelines for robust memorandums of understanding (MOU), to detail how all partners will collaborate to support adult learner persistence and completion.
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3. Improve language used and the outcomes to be gained in advertisements to increase program enrollment and employer engagement.
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4. Elevate the office of Adult Education with the state Department of Labor and Economic Opportunity as part of the state’s talent development in equal standing to efforts for early childhood, K-12, and post-secondary education and workforce development.
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5. Increase adult education funding by $15MM for FY 2023-24 to address unmet demand for services and stabilize program providers by ensuring a consistent level of state and federal funding is truly braided by providers aiming toward coherent goals.
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6. Incentivize program providers to offer a hybrid, flexible adult learning models (e.g., HyFlex), where each learning activity is offered in-person, synchronously online, and asynchronously online to improve persistence and completion and ensure equitable access to programs.
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7. Incentivize providers to develop individualized learning plans at intake that account for each learner’s personal, professional, and digital literacy goals — including skill targets, barrier-resolution steps, and education and career-planning milestone — to contextualize programs to meet the unique goals and needs of each learner.
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8. Revise the Adult Learning Plan (ALP) to be more inclusive and accessible for foreign-born learners, learners with visual impairments, and learners with low literacy levels.
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9. Ensure consistent evaluation and interpretation of performance across the continuum of adult education services, discouraging providers from filtering out hard to serve populations, by establishing separate performance benchmarks and outcome measures for adult basic education, English language acquisition, and high school completion programs that extend beyond WIOA-mandated measures. These outcomes should be developed by a committee comprised of representatives from state government, workforce development, business, and adult education.
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10. Prevent provider monopolies and stagnation by expanding eligibility through Section 107 of the State School Aid Act to allow a portion (30%) of funds to be leveraged by community-based organizations, contingent on quality (using the refined outcomes described above).
- 11. Establish the Center for Adult Education Success with a five-year $10MM grant modeled after the Center for Adult College Success to collaborate with interested adult education providers to expand services and pilot innovative practices that can be shared with other providers.
Medium-term Strategies (24-48 Months)
- 1. Incentivize providers to establish co-enrollment processes in partnership with Michigan Rehabilitation Services and/or other community organizations that offer disabilities testing and customized support to avoid duplication of services.
- 2. Increase Going PRO funding by $5MM and expand eligible training activities under Going PRO to include high school completion/equivalency, literacy, remedial education, and digital skill development to encourage employers to partner with adult education providers to contextualize adult education and reduce childcare and transportation as barriers.
- 3. Establish robust and coordinated regional systems by enabling resource navigators and career coaches (from workforce development agencies) to co-locate with all adult education programs, or other community-based locations where adult education services are offered, to facilitate greater collaboration among employers, community groups, and other parties acting within localized adult education ecosystems.
- 4. Facilitate systems change and improve equitable access to services in every county through targeted funding (e.g., for consistent staffing, technology tools, action planning, professional development, innovation, collaboration), including dedicated funding to expand testing locations.
- 5. Enhance the quality and scale of the adult educator workforce by increasing compensation and full-time positions for educators to achieve parity with peers and ensure that all providers have a certified teacher or teacher of record on staff.
- 6. Ensure accessibility in every county, including access to high school equivalency testing. Advertise services directly to potential students and indirectly through partners and other relevant groups.
Long-term Strategies (48+ Months)
- 1. Create a secure, confidential database that shares data on all adult learners among key partners by developing a database for non-WIOA funded learners that is integrated with the Michigan Adult Education Reporting System (MAERS) and the One Stop Management Information System (OSMIS). Connections should also be made to the statewide longitudinal data system to allow providers to better report on outcomes related to postsecondary continuation.
- 2. Allow time for programs to build capacity and scale effective models by incrementally increasing state funding of adult education to $80MM by 2030.
- 3. Secure policy waivers from the federal government under WIOA to enable greater funding coordination, spending flexibility, and data tracking.
- 4. Build credibility, professionalism, and expertise among adult educators by establishing a separate certification that recognizes the unique knowledge and expertise required of adult education professionals, with higher compensation for educators who achieve this credential.