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Speaker: OTAN Outreach and Technical Assistance Network.

Carolyn Zachry: Hello and welcome to the 2020-2021 school year. I am Dr. Carolyn Zachry, an education administrator and state director at the California Department of Education. I thought it was important to provide you with an update to what is happening in the world of adult education and how you play an important role in the work we do as a state to support our adult students to achieve their goals.

I want to thank Todd Haag from Chaffey Adult School for sharing on Twitter this really cool new Zoom feature that we've been trying out today. As you can see, I'm in your little-- I'm on your screen.

So I really want to start with a thank you. I want to thank all of you for all you did whether you are in the classroom, the front office, counseling, administration, or anyone I forgot for the pivot that you all made last March. I am so proud of how our adult education field, all of you, were able to change your delivery of instruction and support your students to help them continue on their education journey.

You helped students to get connected online or with packets. However, to do this, many of you had to work long hours to gain an understanding for yourselves on how to deliver instruction without students in the classroom with you. You participated in professional development offered by OTAN, CALPRO, CASAS, as well as COABE and LINCS and some of our friends in the curriculum arenas professional development.

Once you had instruction down, then we threw virtual assessment with CASAS GED and HiSET. And still you all persevered. And then what followed? Graduation celebrations. Thank you to all those schools that filled my inbox with the positive messages about your graduations. We tweeted those out.

Today, I'm going to cover six topics. These topics include funding, surveys, teaching skills that matter, the continuous improvement plan, California in the spotlight, and information from our state leadership projects. Our state funding this year is stable thanks to all of you who helped your local state legislator understand the importance of adult education. While we didn't receive a COLA, we also didn't receive a 10% cut.

On the federal side, our WIOA Title II funding has gone up a couple million dollars and is expected to go up again next year. We are watching all of the various stimulus bills and have also participated in a couple of grants from the US Departments of Labor and Education. We are still awaiting word on those. They are specific to helping individuals find employment in industry sectors identified by the California Workforce Development Board.

We did apply for a waiver to what is called the Tydings act. The important piece to note about the waiver is that you are able to spend 2019-20 WIOA Title II funds until September 30, 2020. The final ECR is open, and you may actually submit now then an amended claim by October 15, 2020. We're hoping that this will help with cash flow.

We have had a team of individuals from the field working on two documents. The first is a common intake document related to technology accessibility. By using common questions as an adult education system, we will be able to provide more accurate data to legislators, the superintendent, the chancellor, your regions, and maybe even for grant purposes. This will be shared very soon.

The second document is an opening survey. Similar to the surveys we did in the spring asking how you were delivering instruction, we are interested in knowing what school will look like for you at the start of this academic year. This information helps us to provide data about the delivery of California adult education services.

California will be participating in a project called Teaching Skills That Matter. This is a train the trainers program which trains teachers to integrate the skills that matter to adult students using approaches that work across critical topics. Using the project's tools and training, adult education teachers can teach the transferable skills students need in these critical contexts. Our team's focus will be immigrant integration.

The California team consists of four teachers named on the slide-- Jennifer, Alisa, Jill, and Jodie, staff from CALPRO, and Dr. Carmen Martinez-Calderon from the adult education office. We look forward to rolling this training out statewide in the '21-'22 academic year.

Penny's chat was covering my next slide. In our new WIOA grant cycle, we are moving away from the multiple plans that administrators had to submit to a single yearly plan we hope will drive professional development and improve outcomes for learning. This will need a team approach at an agency level. More information will be forthcoming when the document is finalized.

Burlington English has been hosting various webinars spotlighting individual states' adult education's response to COVID-19, and this week is California's turn. I hope that you have registered.

And now for some updates from our state leadership projects. OTAN is excited to announce it has released an updated fully-accessible online application and reporting site for WIOA Title II grantees.

Also, staff at OTAN are busy preparing for technology and distance learning, instructional webinars, office hours, curriculum options, Moodle accessibility, and more to support you as you continue to offer hybrid and distance learning options for students. Check out the website at otan.us for a full listing of these offerings.

CALPRO will offer professional development services virtually from fall 2020 and beyond as needed. Featured professional development opportunities include the Annual New Administrators Leadership Institute, the Professional Learning Community Institute and the Annual Integrated Education and Training Institute.

They are also pleased to announce and introduce the newest professional development offering, Success for all Learners through Equity. This 16-hour community of practice supports programs and education professionals in identifying implications of equity and inclusion, defining skills and actions of program managers, teachers, and staff to ensure equity, describing the concept of equity in the context of empowering students, and viewing policies and procedures through an equity lens.

The CASAS reading level indicator is now available for use in placing students into federal reporting tables. It is an informal nonproctored assessment that can be completed by students on their cell phone. CASAS also has several options available for testing students remotely.

Please go to the CASAS website California remote testing page for more information. There are YouTube videos, PowerPoint documents, and test administration guidelines available to help you successfully implement remote testing. And just a reminder, OCTAE is still requiring pre and post-testing.

There have been several updates to TE that are now available. The first is that WIOA Title II agencies will use TE quarterly data submission wizard to submit their quarterly data, including the data integrity report. This means that they no longer have to send a separate PDF of the DIR when completing these quarterly requirements.

TE also has new immigrant integration indicators. And these reports rely on information from the EL civics objective known as COAAPS that align with indicators identified in the immigrant integration document. There are TE reports that provide COAAP achievement by class and student and detail the specific learning activities represented by the COAAP.

There is a new column in the TE CAEP summary that calculates and displays these new outcomes. Good news related to the TE proxy wizard-- this enables tests administered late in the program year to be copied over and serve as a pretest for the new program year.

This program year only in response to COVID-19, the proxy date will change from May 12 to January 1 to June 30. This will enable agencies to potentially use tests that were completed just before the COVID-19 shutdown as pretests for program year 2020-2021.

And also, CASAS has completed correlation studies related to their performance on the CASAS reading and math goals assessments to the readiness to pass the GED or the HiSET. These studies provided correlation to CASAS' goals similar to the correlation for the life and work series. Results appear on the student TE-- on the TE individual skills profile report.

Also a reminder from CAEP that the CAEP summit-- mark your calendars-- is October 26 through the 29, and they are still looking for presenters. So consider presenting. And the last regional network meeting is on Wednesday the 26th, and be sure to review the weekly newsletter.

So as you zoom into the new school year, I want you to know that you do make a difference in the lives of the 800,000 adult learners in California, no matter the delivery method of instruction. I wish you all a successful school year. Thank you.