December 21, 2015
From
December 3 – 4, the Division of Adult Education and Literacy (DAEL) in the Office
of Career, Technical, and Adult Education (OCTAE), hosted the Improved Reentry
Education (IRE) Annual Grantee Conference at the U.S. Department of Education
Lyndon Baines Johnson building, in Washington, D.C., under an ED/OCTAE funded
contract with Jobs for the Future (JFF).
This
meeting came during an unprecedented year in which steps were taken by the Obama administration
to make the nation’s criminal justice system “fairer and more effective and to
address the vicious cycle of poverty, criminality, and incarceration that traps
too many Americans and weakens too many communities…[by] highlighting the
reentry process of formerly incarcerated individuals and announc[ing] new
actions aimed at helping Americans who’ve paid their debt to society rehabilitate
and reintegrate back into their communities.”
Under
this contract, JFF will provide direct technical assistance to the nine
selected IRE grantees; assist Department staff in monitoring IRE projects and
assist grantees to develop evaluation plans including unique processes for data
collection and analysis; facilitate conferences; and establish online
communities of practice.
This
conference provided grantees with an understanding of the Department’s
processes and protocols for administering their IRE grants, the Department and
federal priorities related to reentry education, and the technical assistance
approach and priorities. It also provided an opportunity to network with peer
grantees, subject matter experts, the technical assistance team, and federal
staff.
Keynote
speakers included Johan E. Uvin, OCTAE’s assistant secretary, and Eric M.
Seleznow, deputy assistant secretary for the Employment and Training
Administration at the U.S. Department of Labor. Grantees also heard from seven
members of the Federal Interagency Reentry Council during a panel
session that included Lul Tesfai, U.S. Department of Education; Sarah Bard,
U.S. Small Business Administration; Jacqui R. Freeman, U.S. Department of
Labor; Mary Griffin, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau; Linda Mellgren, U.S.
Department of Health and Human Services; Jessica Neptune, U.S. Department of
Health and Human Services; and, Amy Solomon, U.S. Department of Justice. Grantees had the opportunity to ask questions
of the council members.
Please
access the White House fact sheet, to learn more about the administration’s
new actions to promote rehabilitation and reintegration for the formerly incarcerated.
To learn more about the IRE grant and the nine selected sites, please visit the
ED/OCTAE blog.
As part of the Obama administration's commitment
to expanding opportunities for students to access and succeed in postsecondary
education, in October the Department of Education announced an experiment focused on dual high school-college
enrollment. The experiment will enable high school
students enrolled in dual enrollment programs to access federal Pell Grants at
participating institutions. Students who have attended a dual-enrollment
program are more likely to apply to, enroll in, and succeed in college. These
students not only benefit from the academic experience of learning at a college
level but also often are better able to picture themselves in college, pursuing
a postsecondary degree. To help students succeed in these programs, ED is
seeking “postsecondary institutions, in partnership with public secondary
schools or local education agencies, to apply to participate in the
dual-enrollment experiment.”
On Wednesday, Jan. 13, 2016, from 1:30 to 3
p.m. EST, the office of Federal Student Aid will host a webinar for
postsecondary institutions interested in learning more about the goals,
requirements, and process for participating in this experiment. To register for
this webinar, please click here.
To be considered for participation in the
experiment, postsecondary institutions must submit a letter of interest to the
Department of Education, following the procedures outlined in the Federal Register notice,
no later than Monday, Feb. 1, 2016, for priority consideration. We invite all
postsecondary institutions to apply to expand access and provide support for
students.
Earlier
this year, ACT released The Condition of STEM 2015, a report on the STEM preparedness of
the graduating class of 2015. ACT uses its own definition of STEM and
STEM-related fields (see page 30 of the report), which it developed and
implemented in its 2013 Condition of STEM
report. STEM fields are classified into four key areas: science, computer science
and mathematics, medical and health, and engineering and technology.
Among
the good news revealed in the report is that approximately half of the 1.9
million graduates who took the ACT in 2014 expressed an interest in STEM
fields, with more expressing an interest in computer science and mathematics (fewer
expressed an interest in medical and health fields than has recently been the
case). Less encouraging was the finding that this interest does not necessarily
equate with aptitude.
To
ascertain aptitude for pursuing STEM courses of study in college, for the first
time this year ACT introduced its new STEM College Readiness Benchmark. This
new benchmark differs from the current ACT College Readiness Benchmarks in math
and science in that it is based on more rigorous entry-level criteria. Based on
the STEM College Readiness Benchmark, rates of attainment were very low, with
only 20 percent of high school graduates taking the ACT deemed ready to succeed
in first-year STEM college courses. Readiness is defined as either a 50 percent
chance of earning a B or higher or a 75 percent chance of earning a C or higher
in rigorous freshman courses like calculus, biology, chemistry, or physics.
This
new benchmark is an important indicator of future education success. ACT
research found that students with STEM majors who met the ACT STEM Benchmark
had a better chance of earning a cumulative grade point average of 3.0 or
higher and were substantially more likely to complete a STEM major.
Specifically, students meeting the STEM Benchmark have a 49 percent chance of
attainting a STEM degree in six years, compared to only 17 percent of those who
fall below this benchmark.
These
findings suggest problems for the STEM pipeline. The low percentage of high
school graduates prepared to succeed in STEM fields who are also interested in
teaching suggest that the demand for highly qualified STEM teachers at the
secondary level will continue. Even though the number of ACT-tested students
was higher in 2015 than in 2014, the number of 2015 graduates interested in
teaching mathematics and science was lower than in 2014. ACT finds this
alarming, as meeting the demand for well-prepared teachers in STEM areas is
critical to the future of the nation. .
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