OK. You're going to do a little housekeeping?

Yes.

OK.

Hello.

Hello.

We were starting to feel lonely here.

Yes. Zoom has taken a little time to warm up this morning. So we were sitting here waiting for folks to be able to finally start filtering into the room. I will go ahead and go over the quick housekeeping. I know you guys have heard this a thousand times. So it's getting shorter and shorter each time I give it.

By now you all know-- I'm sorry. My name is Holly Clark with the CAEP Technical Assistance Project. And I'm sure by now you all know you have no ability to speak. You will communicate via the chat.

And we ask when you use the chat to please change it from To All Panelists to All Panelists and Attendees. It is very helpful for others in the room with you to be able to see the question that the presenter is answering. So I will post a reminder in the chat occasionally about making sure as All Panelists and Attendees when you send your message.

There is a Q&A. If you have a question, you're able to submit that via the Q&A. You can adjust your volume on your computer settings. And if you ever need to exit full Screen, you can hit escape on your keyboard, or you can go to your viewing options and reduce, enlarge or exit full screen.

There is an evaluation at the end of this session. All you have to do is select Continue and that will allow you to fill that out and get those points for the prizes at the end of the conference. I think that's everything we really need to go over this morning. So with that, I'll turn it over to your presenter this morning-- Judy Mortrude. Judy?

Thanks, Holly. Hello, everyone. Yes, please do find that chat room and open it up and introduce yourself. I'm pleased to have you joining this conversation. My name is Judy Mortrude. I am with the National College Transition Network, which is part of World Education, though you may know me from conversations we've had in the past from class because I have been lucky enough to hang around with California's Adult Education Program leaders for some time now.

This presentation today is specifically about competency-based education and the movement that is really gaining ground across the educational spectrum. So let me make sure I can get this-- there we go. OK. My hope is that this presentation will provide some insights into the competency-based education initiatives underway in secondary, post-secondary, and adult education, with, of course, special emphasis on adult education innovations.

We will also look into a recent report from the California Community College Success Center on strategies and initiatives to better serve adult learners. Those of you who know me know I'm from DC. So I know just a little bit about a lot of things. But I trust there are people joining today who are going to know much more about what's happening locally in California in competency-based education. So please do chat and share throughout.

OK. Competency-based education is really just seeking to build a system of personalized learning. Personalized learning is kind of a buzzword-- the idea where students master content and advance to new learning at their own pace.

It's seen as a solution to traditional models of education that can limit what learners achieve because either our structures either hold students back who have mastered content and are ready to move on to new levels of learning, leading them to feel frustrated and bored, or-- what has happened to many of our adult learners in their past educational experiences in the United States-- our systems have pushed students forward before they have mastered the content, again leading to frustration and confusion and disconnection from the education altogether. At its most basic, competency-based education flips this paradigm, right, this idea of education as a fixed period of time-- semesters or school years or seat time courses-- where some students get it and others don't to this idea of a learning environment where everyone is making progress, albeit in their own way at their own pace so that time becomes variable but the learning is constant.

Competency-based learning innovations are happening, as I said, across the spectrum-- secondary, post-secondary, adult education. And before we look specifically at CBE-- competence-based ed-- with adult learners, I think it's important to note what our secondary and post-secondary secondary partners are doing. After all, adult educators need to be aware where our adult learners have come from and where they're going to so that we can build the right kind of innovations to support them.

So in secondary education, we'll look into the Every Student Succeeds Act and the innovation in competency-based education that's being promoted through that piece of federal legislation. In post-secondary, we'll look at some of the US Department of Education's promotion of competency-based education through the experimental sites and negotiated rulemaking, which took place this year and is being finalized. We should have rules on that next month. And then we'll also, of course, look at adult education and the kinds of innovations in adult career pathways and high school secondary education-- secondary credential completion challenges.

OK. So on the K-12 side, it was really the end of the No Child Left Behind era, as federal policy and the passage of Every Student Succeeds Act in December of 2015 that have strongly promoted the competency-based strategies. This Department of Education memo promotes transitioning away from seat time in K-12 in favor of a structure that creates flexibility, allows students to progress as they demonstrate mastery of academic content, really regardless of time and place or pace of learning.

Competency-based strategies are about providing flexibility in the way that credit can be earned or awarded and again providing students with those personalized learning opportunities, which-- these personalized strategies include things listed on this slide in these bullets-- online and blended learning, dual enrollment and early college high school-- something that's very, very much in the California ecosystem-- project-based, community-based learning, credit recovery. The research has shown that this type of learning leads to better student engagement because the content is relevant to each student, tailored to their unique needs. It also leads to better student outcomes because the pace of the learning is customized to each student.

So the Every Student Succeeds Act created what's called the innovative assessment and accountability demonstration authority pilot. And under this umbrella, states can begin to test drive sort of the next generation assessment systems in a subset of districts in lieu of statewide assessment. So states may propose assessment systems that include competency-based assessments or performance-based assessments-- among other possible models-- that result in an annual summative proficiency determination for a student.

So it's looking at innovating inside that demonstration of learning space. And that innovative assessment-- it needs to still meet the same peer review requirements for alignment and rigor and reliability and validity as the statewide assessments in place now. But these demonstration pilots are really testing out new strategies that are then meant to be scaled statewide over several years.

So, for example, if you look at this map, you can see that Oregon, Utah, Florida-- they are all playing in the competency-based education pilot space. For example, Utah's Competency-Based Grants Program awards planning grants and implementation grants or even expansion grants to local education authorities, to school districts, to incentivize them to establish competency-based education through the use, again, of these personalized, blended, or extended learning-- even educator professional learning or other methods.

You can see in other states like Idaho and Ohio-- they have both competency-based education and what are called general innovation program funds. So Idaho, for example, authorized the initial creation of a cohort of incubators for mastery-based education in 2017. The State Department of Education had an application assessment process. They identified the local education authorities-- the school districts-- that they wanted to participate. 19 different school districts have come together and formed the first cohort of mastery of what they call the Idaho Mastery Education Network, which is a very interesting innovation to read about.

You can see California is not currently participating via the US Department of Education. But there are certainly movements afoot in California through your own state legislature.

So here's-- for example, from Governor Newsom's May Budget Revision-- a call that all education segments-- secondary, post-secondary, and, yes, adult education-- should expand the opportunities for competency-based education. You can see his call is really the credit-by-exam, the credit by prior learning, or the assessment method, which are a range of methods that we'll talk about inside the competency-based education structure.

Also, the interesting-- his call in the second bullet, again, for all education segments to develop some sort of common approach to awarding credit for similar learning outcomes, right? And one of the things we're finding with the competency-based education conversation is it's seeking to sort of knock down those walls between credit and noncredit at the college level-- at the community college level and make it all about competency-- demonstration of competency, which, as you can imagine, is a very big conversation.

That is an interesting conversation. Yeah, I would say, as is common in a lot of Department of Education initiatives, things get politicized and awards go to states that tend to favor administrations. So sometimes states only want to make application during certain administrations.

But I would note, again, that Every Student Succeeds Act did pass in 2015. It's just some of these other programs have been rolled out under it. But it's a good observation.

OK. So this slide is really about a communication strategy-- how to talk about the transition from traditional education models to these transformative education models. Research just has shown us there's a lot of variation but also some common themes, some key messages, in transitioning from traditional seat based ed models to mastery models. And those doing this work have developed these recommendations for communicating the shift-- which I love that-- communicating the shift to competency-based ed.

So states transitioning to these kinds of competency-based education models tend to really frame this in the context of college and career readiness-- buzzwords which we are very, very comfortable with or very used to hearing now. They tend to emphasize the overarching goals and principles for competency-based education without letting any one particular method get all the attention.

And by method, I mean whether they're talking about blended learning or extended learning or personalized learning or technology solutions. Try not to get stuck on one particular method but talk about it holistically. Of course, the important communication strategy of ensuring a balance between local control and state control-- always critical for buy-in in an educational strategy. Highlighting the goal of empowering local leaders, obviously, and also talking about competency-based education as not necessarily a new reform but a way to provide flexibility for educators to ensure that students demonstrate competency.

In a lot of ways-- in many ways-- the competency-based education reform conversation happening in secondary education reminds me a lot of the guided pathway reform conversations that are happening in post-secondary. So if you are seeing any of this-- if any of this is bubbling up in your LEA, local education authority, in a school district, I would love for you to just share that-- what you're hearing, what you're seeing-- in the chat box for other people to take a look. And as Holly's reminding us, you have to change it to say All Panelists and Attendees if you want everyone to see it.

OK. So now we're going to leave secondary education behind and move to post-secondary education competency-based initiatives. And the work in post-secondary, as you can imagine, is primarily institutionally based. There are a variety of networks that are working to support these educational reform initiatives. Most of those are philanthropically supported at this point. But there are also some federal policy encouragements that are seeking to support CBE in post-secondary.

These next couple of slides are very busy, but I'll try to point out a few things from them. In the past several years, there's been this research effort called deconstructing competency-based education. And every year it's done a State of the Field review. And this is the most recent.

And in this most recent research, 602 institutions-- post-secondary institutions-- responded to a survey. 11% said they were operating full competency-based education programs and just more than half said they were in the process of adopting CBE programs. The bulk of the programs are in undergraduate education. There is a slow and steady growth of competency-based education in post-secondary across the country.

In the upper right hand corner, you'll see that one of the primary focuses-- the primary sort of messages-- around CBE work in post-secondary is that it is about equity. It is a focus on equity, and it is a focus on serving adult learners. So this conversation fits, you know, hand in glove with the kind of Adult Promise work that's happening in California and around the country.

In the bottom right, you can see some of the most common undergraduate disciplines that CBE is happening in post-secondary. Certainly, nursing and health professions-- those kinds of occupations that have very well-defined credentialing lend themselves to competency-- based education strategies. Computer science-- also very clearly articulated industry credentials, right? So that's not surprising to see where things first begin to take hold.

OK. Another dense slide. On the left hand side, you see sort of the institutional barriers to competency-based implementation, which include things like startup costs and also-- I'm sorry, this is in the middle-- and also just other priorities. I love that other priorities. Yeah, like a global pandemic, right-- obviously another priority that could chill some of the institutional reform happening in competency-based education. Federal student aid regulations and processes are also listed as a barrier, even though the US Department of Education continues to promote competency-based education.

And over here in the top right, again, the motivation for implementing competency-based education programs is this chance to serve non-traditional students those adult learners, right? 57% of the people responding to the survey said that's what they think is the most motivating factor for taking up these strategies and to respond to workforce needs and improve outcomes.

76% of the institutions-- this is the top left-- expect that CBE will grow-- or this is at the bottom, sorry, bottom middle-- to grow in the next five years. And actually, as much as I say that other priorities are taking up our bandwidth right now, I would speculate that really the pivot to remote and online learning will only accelerate competency-based education in post-secondary. Because our technology use-- our technology solutions-- will exponentially advance.

Thanks, Raul, for sharing that. And I would love you if you have any links to what's happening at Calbright-- URLs. Put those in the chat for just other ways people can tap into more information that you've got to share. That would be terrific.

OK. So we talked about competency-based education as a flexible way for students to get credit for what they know, build on their knowledge and skills, earn those high quality degrees and certificates. It really focuses on what students must know and be able to do to earn degrees and other credentials. And progress then is measured by students demonstrating-- demonstrating through, yes, valid, reliably assessed learning objectives-- that they did, in fact, acquire the knowledge and skills required to earn those degrees or other credentials.

So I want to play this little video. And I'm going to hope this works. Let's see what happens. OK. There-- it's coming, I think. I can get it to you.

[video playback]

[music playing]

- In America today, more people than ever need higher education. Yet far too many don't pursue or earned degrees often because traditional classroom-based programs don't fit their lives. In response a growing number of colleges and universities are offering another option-- competency-based education.

Each program is unique, offering creative, state-of-the-art learning opportunities to fit the needs of many students who might not otherwise pursue education. Programs accomplish this by transparently communicating the learning objectives students must achieve to earn degrees and other credentials by enabling students with existing knowledge and skills to personalize their educations and accelerate progress towards completion, by using technology that enables students to learn any time, anywhere, at prices they can afford it, and by integrating support from faculty, mentors, and coaches that can build confidence needed for success, aimed at creating fair and just educational results.

While no single option is right for all students, these programs offer relevant and verifiable skills for greater success in work and life. The Competency-Based Education Network is helping colleges and universities create programs that engage students who otherwise might not be reached. Learn what's happening and what's possible at CBENetwork.org.

[end playback]

All right. Here we go. Thank you. Raul is putting some information, and he's going to copy that. There we go. Great-- willingness to share what's happening at Calbright right, which is fantastic. And yes, Calbright is your--

[static]

--uh-oh. Sorry. There we go-- your online community college. That's terrific. And I think a lot of times what we see in competency-based education reform is it gets-- it can get very tied to sort of technology innovation. And people are interested in that part of it But. Also interested in moving it beyond that.

So I'm going to show you a couple of other examples that you might want to dig into if you're looking for competency-based ed in the post-secondary realm. Salt Lake Community College is a leading college in the Competency-Based Education Network institutions, where video came from.

The video obviously really stresses this idea that it's flexibility. It's for the working learner. I love that little pie chart at the beginning where they show, you know, work and life and family and community and how to fit learning into it

Salt Lake City has about 1,000 students in its competency-based-- 19 different competency-based education programs. The programs broaden on an open term, and they allow students to accelerate or decelerate, which I think is really an interesting way to think about it, as people need for their adult lives, right? And in addition, students can start a program on most Mondays throughout the entire year, which is really an unusual model.

One of these programs is from their school of applied technology, right? And they really market this program as an idea-- as a program to help reduce a student's time toward completion, promote an accelerated schedule, lower the cost of attending college. It uses the recognition of prior learning-- which I know is a big conversation in California-- to help speed a student through assessment.

People use self-based, self-directed type learning. This program really does focus on technology enhanced educational resources to help adults customize their learning.

Another example-- big example-- in this conversation nationally is Southern New Hampshire University's College for America. So the College for America is a college within the college. Part of its mission is really to reinvent and improve higher education.

Lumina Foundation, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has said the philanthropy's very interested in promoting these models right now-- helped initiate College for America in 2013. And it's completely designed around a competency-based education format that empower students to complete projects, demonstrate competencies via direct assessment rather than taking scheduled online courses.

SNHU has become the first university program in the nation to be approved for federal financial aid-- federal student aid under the US department. Of Education's direct assessment provisions independent of traditional credit hours. Their motto is "a different path to the same degree."

So instead of earning letter grades through traditional classroom arrangements, learners work to master job-related competencies, skills that they demonstrate 100% through projects. And they largely get to do it on their own schedule, which gives them the maximum flexibility and the ability to progress more quickly toward a degree by using knowledge and skills they've already gained in the workforce. It is a tremendous model to look at, really pushing the envelope in a lot of ways.

And so again, the US Department of Education does continue to promote competency-based education. In fact, even in the recent COVID-19 response, they called for more flexibility, more regulatory reform, more emphasis on competency-based education and direct assessment.

And due to the pandemic, large numbers of post-secondary institutions have begun to offer distance education opportunities in order to continue instruction, as you well know. And really, these unexpected events of the last several months underscore the need for all institutions to develop, establish, and maintain the capacity to use these advanced technologies to assist students.

So some of this negotiated rulemaking was out for comment. We should have a final rule published in the Federal Register in November. And it's going to be under the heading of Innovation and Distance Education for Post-Secondary. So I will make sure that I flag that for you all when it comes out.

So this is from now. We're getting-- oh, there are four questions. OK. Should I stop and look at them now, Holly, or do you think I should keep going?

I would say yes. Possibly stop and look. I think that some of them are about what you've been discussing prior.

Oh, Jacqueline. OK. I'm about to get to the adult education part pretty soon. I promise. And I'm not sure of the answer to the question about, can we come up with something on our own? We need to have it approved by a governing body. Well, we're about to talk about what California's saying in the post-secondary space. So I would imagine it's going to need some sort of governing body.

Um, Burr yes. The link to the video is inside the PowerPoint. Oh. There's a link to a different video. OK. I might have to deal with that.

All right. Let me get us to the education space. But first, let me just say that this is from the California Community College Foundation. They presented this nice summary of the Department of Ed. guidance this way. The competency-based education can be course- or credit-based. It can be direct assessment. It can be a hybrid.

So this is how they are thinking about it in the California Community College. And this is where I say that last question, Jacqueline, I think might answer yours when we get to the adult education space. Do you need a substantive change approval? They're saying no, in terms of course-based or credit-based competency-based education, where the competency-based mastery is really tied to the courses and bound within a traditional academic term versus direct assessment competency-based education.

Judy, we have lost audio, I think. It's sounding like, Judy--

OK--

Oh, you're there. OK.

Sorry. Don't know what just happened there. What--

And your screen-- your screen share is no longer active either.

OK. All right. Well, let me see what I can do about that. Share screen, screen 2. All right. How's that?

OK. We're back up. Yeah.

We're back up. Awesome. OK. So this is from the California Community College Curriculum Committee, identifying sort of next steps in creating or revising a policy in order to create direct assessment competency-based education programs and to think about establishing a competency-based education grading system, really determining credit hour equivalencies and methods for direct assessment.

So I think it's fair to say this will take some time. I also think it's really fair to say that adult education needs to be in these conversations and thinking about how this impacts the adult education space. Because, again, if you are trying to create the kinds of partnerships and pathways and dual enrollment structures that we've been discussing a lot during this conference, these are innovations happening-- these are seismic shifts happening in the post-secondary world that adult education needs to be part of.

And I would really encourage you to go look at the Career Ladders Project website for a really lovely new report I just read last week on the Los Angeles Trade Technical Colleges competency-based education pathway and also a guide from Career Ladders discussing competency-based education. And think about how to get involved from your platform.

OK. So now here we go. We're turning our attention completely to the adult ed world and what's happening in adult education programs in a number of places that have been innovating with competency-based high school completion models, really, for a variety of reasons.

One reason is because of the adult career pathway movement right-- the federal career pathway definition now codified in the same-- with the same language in the three big federal education laws that we work under-- the Workforce Innovation Opportunity Act Title II Adult Ed, Perkins V the Career Technical Education Act, and the Higher Education Act, specifically in the provision that allows federal financial aid for students without a high school credential. They all promote this dual enrollment between adult education and post-secondary education with this language about organized for acceleration-- obviously, a competency-based education strategy.

A second reason that some states are really embracing the competency-based education diploma was really in response to high school equivalency test changes, namely, you remember, when the new GED came in 2010. And it really freaked out our field. This led many states to start thinking about alternative, statewide, high school diploma programs based on competencies.

And really kind of closely aligned to this is the overall skepticism around high stakes testing and the need for multiple measures to gauge learning and learning potential-- also a huge conversation in California's community college system, trying not to put everything into one high stakes test. And finally, as post-secondary and adult education sees competency based education as more adult focused, more aware of adult circumstances, adult mobility, this is really truly that hope for creating personalized learning for our adult education students.

So I'm going to share with you some of what's happening around the country. Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction-- which is their Department of Education-- has, for a very long time, provided a menu, a variety, of options of ways for Wisconsin's adults to earn a high school diploma or equivalency, including GED plus. You can see that they don't consider the GED a high school equivalency diploma. You have other requirements there on this chart 505. if you're going to use that test, there are still other requirements to achieve the high school equivalency.

Their newest option-- the one on the far right-- is called the 509. This is a high school equivalency high school diploma awarded by the State Department of Public Instruction on the completion of a competency-based program that fits beautifully inside their Wisconsin Adult Career Pathway system that they have been building for 15 years through philanthropic investment, through work under the TAACCCT grants.

They've really done a spectacular job of breaking down all of their AA and AAS diplomas into embedded technical diplomas of one year into career pathway certificates. And the high school-- competency-based high school diploma capitalizes on that work to build the system for adults to earn that secondary diploma while on their pathway for the post-secondary.

So to be awarded a Wisconsin high school diploma under 509, an adult has to be at least 18 and 1/2 years old. And then they build a portfolio of competencies to demonstrate proficiency in academic areas-- math and science and civics, employability. And the diploma is awarded by the state agency.

If you attended my dual enrollment presentation-- I think that was two days ago-- you learned that Wisconsin in 2020 became the first state to launch a state-defined ability benefit process to support people who have yet to earn their high school credential to enroll in post-secondary and use federal student aid. And this 509 option fits beautifully within that initiative.

So I'll leave this, and I will check the link behind it. This is a video you can look at from the Wisconsin Technical College System that they're using to promote these competency-based high school diplomas within a career pathway dual enrollment structure.

And there are other states definitely working in this space as well. Here's Mississippi-- state of Mississippi-- again, with a menu of ways that people can earn their diplomas so they created one that was not high stakes based. It was competency-based equivalency. I'll blow that up on the next screen.

You can see that they have some criteria for what level an adult education learner is functioning at. They need to definitely be enrolled in adult ed. They have embedded the career readiness-- the ACT's Career Readiness Certificate in there. They require 15 hours of college credit in one of their integrated education and training pathways and obtaining an industry recognized credential.

And you pay $25. $25 dollars versus-- what does a GED cost now? $120? HiSet is around $85. So it's even a cheaper option. Of course, there is the need for those 15 hours of college credit. And they, too, are using ability to benefit.

Washington. Washington state, home of I-BEST, first started what they called the 21-plus High School 21. It's been so successful now that their legislature just asked them take off the age 21 requirement. So now it's just called the High School Plus. It's a competency-based high school diploma for adult learners 18 and older who don't have a high school diploma or an equivalency.

This can be done through a lot of alternative means. It can be high school and college transcripts. It can be work-life and military experience. It can be a prior learning portfolio. It can be a direct assessment.

I'm going to play this video just because I think it's a lovely inspirational video. So let's see how I do here. I see a question about industry recognized credentials.

These are all like third party, exam-based credentials in Mississippi instead of credentials offered by the by the community college system. So they are things like commercial driver's license. They're are things like NCCER-- the construction trades.

They are industry-based, industry set. OK. I'm going to try to turn this on. See if it will work for me. It's a really nice example of an initiative that started under adult ed that has become part of just the environment in the state.

Judy, this video is not playing any sound.

No sound? Oh. Because when I came back in, I didn't do what I had to do, right? There we go.

Yeah. We tested it this morning. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. OK.

[video playback]

[music playing]

- For a lot of students, they have jobs--

How's that?

- --they have careers--

Perfect. Thank you.

--on how far they can progress because of the way other people perceive their capabilities without that piece of paper, without a diploma that says, yes, I finished something.

- The goal of basic skills is to get the students on a path, a path moving forward. So the high school diploma-- the High School 21 is a competency-based diploma for adults who are over the age of 21.

- The way that we work with high school 21 is that our students come with the experience. They've held jobs. They've supervised other people. They've earned a good living or a not great living and want to earn more. And if you have those skills already, we're just helping you figure out how do you use those skills in a school setting.

Students come in ready and prepared. They have an idea of how quickly they can really accomplish what they want to accomplish. And they do it.

- My name is Lauren Denegar. And I am a student here at SPSCC. And I am a high school graduate from the High School 21 program.

When you don't complete high school, you miss a lot of experiences. And I was anxious. I remember being remain anxious because I was the single teen mom. I had kids when I was a teenager.

I don't want to be the person who has a good dead end job or the minimum wage job. I want to leave that legacy for my children to say that my mom had a career and my mom did everything she could to be a better mom and a better parent and a better individual. Because I'm not somebody's house housewife and I don't want to be a bartender no more.

- I'm James Miller I graduated the High School 21 program here awhile back. And I'm currently enrolled at South Puget Sound here. I only had like a half a year left of high school, and I was too impatient, you know? I didn't have that sense of belief in myself at the time.

I was in construction for 25 years. And I recently herniated a few discs in my back and so labor and industry said, let's go ahead and try to get you a job, you know, apart from construction. So that kind of got the ball rolling in the department.

- I am the first person in my entire line of family-- all the way to my grandparents-- that graduated from high school. And I get a diploma. And I earned it, and I get to show my kids that it's OK if it doesn't work out the first time. Because you can always-- can always do it better, and you can always be better than what somebody tells you are.

- Students that I have seen get their diplomas with this program-- it wasn't even in their vocabulary. It was not even something they thought was attainable.

- I don't think it actually hit me until I had my diploma sent to me.

- It's the feeling of accomplishment. It's the feeling that your drive and success paid off for you.

- Of course, I called, you know, my folks. My mom was just, oh, I'm so proud of you and all this. I'm, you know, 45 years old. It was really cool.

- The world really does open up with new possibilities.

- Look at the edge of the cliff and go ahead and dive into waters, you know.

- Because you want to be a better you. And nobody's going to give that to you but you. And when you try and when you put everything you have into your one big goal, whether it's baby steps or a big leap, you can do that here. Because high school's behind us, and this is different. This is the start of your future.

[end playback]

- All right. A couple of things I'd say about that video, which, again, says 21-plus. But it is no longer called High School 21. Let's see. There we go.

I loved what she said about, high school's behind us. This is the start of the future it. It really does try to recognize the completion of that credential, that very important high school credential, as integrated inside a pathway and helps people move forward.

It recognizes people's life competencies. It does, yes, of course, count what classroom time and tests people have. And I'll show you from Arizona how they're even counting subtests from the GED.

So there's a lot of attention to rigor. It has been approved. So that it also opens the door to federal student aid. It cost $25 a quarter, though they often waive that. And they are also doing this in the correction sites.

Thank you, Jane. I am going to mention the National External Diploma Program, too, which is an excellent competency based national diploma that I know many of you are using in California.

These state efforts-- I think the power in some of these state efforts is that they bring the systems together for conversations, right? It has really helped Washington's education system show itself as a partner-- an embedded partner-- inside the community and technical college system.

OK. A few more-- Minnesota. Minnesota was one of those states that created their statewide adult high school diploma as a response to both the new GED test and some adult career pathway we were doing in the state. Again, it's another option. It is not-- there are people using the NAPD in Minnesota. It is not to say that it is not an option to use the GED or for a local education authority to continue to use its own school district-based diploma, if that's what they want to do.

But again, it's very much based on-- like Washington's-- meeting with a navigator, meeting with a coordinator who is going to assess prior learning experiences. It's going to use approved standardized assessments that are used in high schools for secondary credentials within ABE programs. It also lets you demonstrate completion of adult basic ed courses, which I think is really important and unique and not often used in these models. And they do have experiential and applied learning options.

Now-- oh, I should say one more thing about Minnesota. Now, like Washington, this was a diploma that started specifically for people over the age of 21. And the state-- it has been so successful, especially in a corrections environment that they've removed that and have now asked that it be available-- legislatively changed it to be available to anyone over 18.

So Arizona. Let me just point out that they're also a state experimenting in this space. They had a GED testing pathway to a high school equivalency. They had something called the College Credit Pathway, much like Washington state had, where if you earned 25 specific college credits at the 100-plus level, passing grade of C or more, from any Arizona accredited public community college or state university, you could be awarded the high school equivalency diploma by the College Credit Pathway. And recently, they've started, as of August this year, the Career Ready Portfolio, specifically for adult education programs and really specifically for people in their integrated education and training programs.

Oh. So this was the other one. This was the-- sorry, that slide goes with the middle. The College Credit Pathway was about earning those 25 college credits and completing the civics test.

But this new model-- the High School Career Readiness Pathway-- essentially says that if you can document the accumulation of 22 points in academic and career readiness areas that you are awarded the high school equivalency diploma by the State Education Agency. So you can see that these 22 points-- 14 in academic areas, eight in career areas-- and then Arizona was one of those states that also requires the civics test.

Let me break this down a little bit further for you, so you can see the variety of ways that people gain these 14 points, demonstrate their competencies. They can use high school credits. They can use college credits like again, courses that are at the 100 level or above.

So in other words-- well, actually that's not true. Because if you look inside the English Language Arts and the Mathematics college credit boxes here, you see that they are even awarding points for dev ed courses.

You could use passing subtests on the GED, right? So we all are very familiar with adult education learners who, when trying to obtain their diploma through a GED process, are able to pass one or two or even three tests and maybe not all of them. But if you could pass a subtest that has value inside this competency-based system, and then you can see how the adult education classes fit in as well, right?

A mastery of content-- they even have attendance. They have cut scores on tests. So they have a variety of formats for showing competencies based on academic readiness.

And then this is the competencies based on career readiness-- so remember, 14 points in academic readiness, eight points in career readiness and again a variety of ways that people can demonstrate this. They can have an internship. They can have a year of continuous full time or part time employment in the last three years.

Again, this is a state that uses the ACT WorkKeys Career Readiness credentials. So that's something. Or I-BEST-- they can be in an I-BEST program and earn that industry recognized credentials, much like Mississippi. So you can see that there are echoes across these different state based systems that are all kind of sharing what they're learning and building it into their own innovations.

So this model really only started in August. So there's a lot to be learned from Arizona's new model, which I think is one of the most comprehensive I've seen.

OK. So here is the National External Diploma Program. And yes, I definitely wanted to give a shout out to your home-grown CASAS. CASAS is National External Diploma Program, right? It's a web-based, applied, performance system.

It allows people to really complete their studies at their convenience. You come in for assessment. You have periodic check visits. Jane, you can type a lot more there. Type a link into it if people want to go see your website-- your excellent website and learn more about it.

It helps people adults obtain the high school diploma and really acquire all those academic, critical thinking, digital literacy skills. The performance tests that are in it our crosswalked to the college career readiness standards. And as I understand, NEDP has introduced remote proctoring of the process to continue to support people-- support learners at a distance.

So yes, the NEPD is a CASAS initiative product. Been around for many years. And yeah, there we go. Thank you, Jane. So again, it lives outside of the state education agency most. Oh, good. And you can see K.Hartley too.

Would WIOA fund this initiative? Hm. That's a-- Jane, I'm going to let you answer that question about WIOA. But I'm sure WIOA Title II would definitely help fund the services that are part of the NEPD or any of these competency-based diplomas. OK. A couple more slides here to bring us home and then I will look into the Q&A box because I think I've got some things waiting for me there.

California is one of six states right now participating in Lumina Foundation's Adult Promise Network. And the California Community College Success Center produced a research brief specifically on how the community college system can mitigate barriers to success and support more adults to opportunity.

The report is really great in that it shows an awareness that adults age 25 and up are a key population to achieving the California Community College Chancellor Office Vision for Success goals. And that organizing for acceleration is good for both colleges and students.

And the report highlighted a couple of college efforts. So I am going to just share these with you. If anybody works with these colleges, is from these colleges, please chat us more information

Oh, I'm almost at those colleges. One slide-- a couple slides to go before I get there. So part of this Adult Promise program is supporting a credit for prior learning strategy, right-- helping students get credit for what they already know. Credit for prior learning has been around quite a long time. Sometimes, it's called prior learning assessment. I recently saw it rebranded as recognition of previous learning or recognition of prior learning.

And research has shown that students who can use a credit for prior learning strategy are roughly twice as likely to complete a degree. It is a very good head start acceleration strategy. The most common credit for prior learning across the nation is credit for prior learning in second language proficiency. So it is a non-native English speaker in a lot of instances who's able to use their skill in speaking and being multilingual to earn credits, which is a terrific asset.

Credit for prior learning is tied to the Community College Vision for Success goals, which really talk about accelerating degree completion, accelerating certificate completion, helping students get through faster. This is, again, where I think having the conversations around ability to benefit, integrated education and training, and what kinds of strategies you will use as adult educators to support people to get their secondary credential while getting their post-secondary credential is a really important part of that conversation.

So a couple of California specific models-- again, if you know anything more about Cañada College's College for Working Adults, this is what I glean from that report. It is a program established in 2011. Provides degree programs specifically tailored for adults working full time or in or near San Mateo County.

It offers three associate degrees for transfer and three straight up associates degrees. The areas are psychology, sociology, social work, human services, two interdisciplinary study degrees. They're expected to add a business degree.

Has 265 active students, about 80% of whom are over 30 years old. The classes are a mix of in-person, online, and hybrid, at least prior to COVID.

It's created-- these are these kinds of innovations that have really tried to capitalize on that guided pathway idea, where the pathways are very clear, carefully structured. And with an exception of a small number of class options, students are very directed through a fixed pattern of courses to try to remove that uncertainty and confusion.

The students who come into the College for Working Adults sign an agreement committing to take only courses within the College for Working Adults. And they offer a lot of support services, dedicated counselors. I think these are the kinds of programs that adult educators could really try to have that integration conversation with. Their program's already operating inside the post-secondary world focusing on competency-based education, focusing on flexibility for adult learners.

Another one of these that was highlighted in this report from the adult promise-- on California's Adult Promise work is in Shasta College's Accelerated College Education program. Launched in 2016, It. Helps people compress 16 weeks semesters into eight week formats, which to me is always a signal for, how is the college handling the needs for supplemental academic instruction? And could they partner with adult education?

They have dedicated academic counselors. They have a textbook lending library. It's a cohort-based program. I believe there are currently about 300 students in this program. So again, looking for the innovators in your post-secondary landscape I think is an excellent way to start having some of these integration conversations.

In this same report, there was this line, which I thought was very interesting. So an entire report done by the Success Center about adult learners and the one mention of the California education program is basically to say CAEP is not a focus of this report. However, several interviewees emphasized that CAEP does prepare many adults for post-secondary instruction and should be considered part of the outreach, part of the pipeline infrastructure.