(SPEECH)
VERONICA PARKER: So Dr. Cayanna Good, she serves as the assistant commissioner for adult education with the Technical College System of Georgia. In this capacity, Dr. Good leads the TCSG Office of Adult Education, which administers federal adult education grants, provides adult education training programs for approximately 50,000 Georgia citizens, and supports local adult literacy community groups throughout the state.

In addition, the Office of Adult Education is responsible for the administration of all of Georgia's GED testing and awards the high school equivalency credential.

(DESCRIPTION)
Text, California Adult Education Program, Technical Assistance Project. Text, Veronica Parker, CAEP, TAP

(SPEECH)
Prior to assuming the assistant commissioner position, Dr. Good served as the exective director of Georgia Governor's Office of Student Achievement. She was appointed to that position by former governor Nathan Deal and served from January 2018 until her current appointment.

Dr. Good previously served as the deputy director with the Governor's Office of Student Achievement. And prior to that role, she held several senior level leadership positions within the Georgia Department of Education. Dr. Good has experience as both a high school and elementary school teacher. She has also worked as an overseeing partner of the New Teacher Projects of Georgia Teaching Fellows and as the managing director of the Teach for America Leadership Initiative.

Dr. Good earned a bachelor's degree in English literature from Fisk University, a master's degree in education from Georgia State University, and a doctoral degree in educational leadership from Mercer University. She and her two children live in Gwinnett County, Georgia. So I will now press it to Dr. Good, who will get us started with our plenary address. Dr. Good.

DR. CAYANNA GOOD: Thank you so much, Veronica. I am going to go ahead and pop my PowerPoint on the screen. I hope that you all can see it. And I just cannot convey how excited I am to be with you today.

(DESCRIPTION)
The speaker's video screen appears in the top right corner with text, Dr. Cayanna Good. Slide text, Technical College System of Georgia CAEP Summit 2021, Dr. Cayanna Good, cgood@tcsg.edu.

(SPEECH)
Thank you, all. I'm going to just make sure that you can see it in presentation mode. And we practiced. I promise we did.

VERONICA PARKER: So you would just select from current slide. Sorry, from beginning.

DR. CAYANNA GOOD: Thank you.

VERONICA PARKER: And then go back.

(DESCRIPTION)
The slide has text at the top that is partially cut off. Text at bottom, Students and Test-Takers, If you didn't finish high school, we offer free classes to help you prepare to take the GED test or HiSET exam. We also offer free English as a Second Language, ESL classes. These free classes help thousands of Georgians each year learn the skills needed to complete their high school equivalency GED/HiSET, attain citizenship, go to college, or find a job. There are multiple options to earn your high school equivalency at one of our programs across Georgia, GED, and HiSET testing scholarships are available for those who qualify. English & Citizenship Classes, GED/HiSET Prep Classes, High School Equivalency Options, Sign Up for GED Test, Sign Up for HiSET Exam.

(SPEECH)
DR. CAYANNA GOOD: So thank you all for having me with you here today at your Reimaging Adult Education Summit. I am thrilled to have this opportunity because I am the biggest fan of adult education instructors, local program providers, and the students that we have the deep honor and privilege to serve. California adult educators, I know that you know that this is incredibly noble work. And I hope that you know that it is just a tremendous personal honor for me to be here with you this morning.

When I was first approached by Veronica about speaking to you all, I admit I was a little bit confused and more than a little bit concerned. You see, I'm not a national speaker. I don't have a story about how Georgia's adult education program was terrible. And until I came, it sort of magically whipped things into shaped.

I am not a national author. And I certainly am not an expert on how you take a student who comes in at ABE level one, and you can move them to ABE level 5 in a matter of two weeks. But what I am is deeply passionate about this work. And I know you share my passion.

I am really, really excited about working collaboratively with educators to ensure that we are doing our work in the most effective and equitable manner. I am incredibly proud of the work that we have done in Georgia with adult education. And I am perhaps naively optimistic about where we can go as a field to address poverty in ways that I don't think we have yet adequately grappled with.

I am also just really hungry to engage in conversations with you all about how we can move forward as a field to grapple with the loss and trauma that we have all endured for almost two years now. So that we can get to a place where we are collectively imagining what's possible within the whole of adult education. So that's our high school equivalency pathway students, our English language learners. Students who come to us with multiple disabilities that they may or may not disclose. And students who have been persistently unemployed.

I have spent the majority of my working life in the K-12 space. You heard Veronica mention that I had the deep privilege to work as both a high school teacher and an elementary school teacher. I did that in Houston, Texas. And I've also had these stints with national non-profits. I've worked as an administrator with various state agencies. My whole career has really allowed me to be really a proactive advocate for helping educators really meet the needs of kids. And for me, when I say kids, it's really clear, bright line, all kids.

So at the end of 2018, I decided to move into something way outside of my comfort zone. And that was to take this position as the state director for Georgia's Adult Education Program. So I'm gonna let you in on a secret. Also, I have been involved in education for 20 some odd years.

I had an oversimplified notion of what happens within this adult education space. To me at that time, GED and adult education were synonymous. I was completely unaware about the scope and frankly, the impact of what we do. Providing instruction for the most vulnerable, building bridges towards opportunity.

I inherited an amazing team in Georgia with a legacy of successful implementation of computer-based GED testing, really strong program performance, smart and tenured staffers. This is an example of our website. You can see that we have a whole lot going on within one office.

Within our first year together, I made some slight tweaks to our work. An online intake form based upon a conversation that I had with one of our program administrators who said they brought in close to 2,500 students a year. And if we could just move away from doing all of the data entry for all of those students via Word document. Done.

We were able to explore new pathways for the 1.1 million Georgians who lack the high school equivalency. And every adult ed program in Georgia had some component of workforce training. We were rocking and rolling. Tweaks. Life was really good for us. And we were all riding that high when we had our end of the year Student of the Year celebration and Instructor of the Year celebration.

(DESCRIPTION)
Program overview, 30 programs, 22 technical colleges, 5 community-based organizations, 3 school districts. A graph shows the NRS Enrollment of the 30 programs ranging from 32 to 3,404.

(SPEECH)
That event had all 30 programs, which represents 22 technical colleges, at that point, five community-based organizations, and three school districts. They were all represented. They were having a wonderful time. Lots of pictures, press. It was wonderful.

(DESCRIPTION)
A photo of a person in mid-air from jumping off a cliff into calm blue water. Text, March 2020.

(SPEECH)
The event ended March 11th 2020. On March 13 of 2020, the world, as we all knew it, simply disappeared. Since that time, we have all, every single one of us, dealt with unimaginable loss, grief, frustration, confusion for 19 months and counting.

We all collectively witnessed viral images of violent racism, a deep political fracture within our country. And we watched many families truly suffer from lack of digital access. We observed two different workforce phenomenon, essentials and remotes. The discomfort that we all felt when attempting to pivot to virtual instruction revealed great canyons of issues with access and equity. But we all had to learn to allow that discomfort to become a catalyst.

During the first few months of the global shutdown, I have to be 100% vulnerable and honest. I had to grapple with the fact that I had misunderstood the assignment and purpose of where we needed to go in Georgia to best serve our students. Frankly, tinkering with intake forms and creating isolated programs is not enough for us to transform the lifelong trajectory of our students within this new framework.

In Georgia, that meant taking a hard look at how we structured our work. In 2019, we had 100% of our programs offering an integrated education and training, IET program. Not just within our IELCE. Every single program had an IET. Had equality in programming.

Please don't misunderstand. I'm really proud of that. I'm proud that we decided that IET was important enough for all of our programs to figure out how to provide this contextualized, concurrent workforce preparation training. We had hundreds of students earning skilled credentials, either while learning English or working towards their high school equivalency credential.

In 2021, however, we started questioning, did we have equity in our IT offerings across programs? We all know that equality is providing the same opportunities to all students. Yes. All students in our program had the opportunity to participate in an IET. But we also know that equity is giving very specific resources and support to bring students to the same opportunity level as their peers.

Our rural peers, to urban peers, our non-native English-speaking peers, to native English speaking peers, our single non-partner peers, to family caregivers. We didn't have equity in our IT programming. We also started really looking at the credentials earned and their job placement. We started looking at the average range. It was shockingly low in all categories.

Our students on average were exiting our program, and we have an exceptionally high Social Security number identification rate, respond rate amongst our students. So we're able to do a data match with our Department of Labor. So these numbers are pretty accurate. We had students who were exiting our program six months to 12 months who were earning $16,000 a year. We had to grapple with the fact that we were educating our students to remain in poverty.

As an aside, we all have this data. We all report our wage data six months after exit and then again, 12 months after exit. I strongly encourage all of us within this field to know what that looks like and to really allow that to be a key metric for our success.

I was fascinated to see that in California, your data there is just presented so beautifully on your adult education pipeline. You have this data at your fingertips. That $16,000 wage still haunts me. We began to internally think about how we could influence this amount within our context. Quickly, we realized that our IETs needed to evolve. An IET for English language learners with ServSafe is probably not the credential that will lift them out of poverty.

We needed to deeply understand workforce needs, and we needed to shift our focus less on finding what jobs are available, to finding what family sustaining wage careers could we assist our students in pursuing. We are looking in Georgia to increase our IT participants from 472 over the past year to 833 by 2024. With the goal that 70% of our participants will be employed in their training field within six months of x.

So this is huge. This significantly transforms how we craft our IT offerings. How we quantify our success. How we train our instructors. There are thorny issues that we still have to figure out. I do not have all the answers today. IET for recent newcomers to this country is notoriously difficult to figure out.

We recently received a Strengthening Community College Grant from the US Department of Labor. And we are building out a few bridge IET programs that we're hoping can better prepare our students who are still grappling with learning English. We are also trying to figure out what's the appropriate length of some of these more rigorous items because we know that we have busy parents who are struggling just to attend their regular course offerings.

And so that means we need to explore what digital opportunities exist, particularly for upper level ABE and ASC students. Perhaps, it's CompTIA. What's the flexibility that we can tap into that's just inherent in an online course offering? I am incredibly fortunate to lead a team that is just as passionate about IET as I am. But I'm also just as lucky that I sit within a larger organization, the Technical College System of Georgia, that really pushes IT and sees its potential to revolutionize adult education in our state.

And I'm grateful that they grant me grace. That they know we are in the process of extreme innovation. And I might not have a perfect solution for all 40,000 to 50,000 of our adult learners. I know that in California, you all serve almost 800,000 students. So I know that there is additional context and nuance that I might not be aware of.

Another area, again, where we all have data is around high school equivalency and post-secondary education or other training opportunities. We know the future of work, not in America, but around the globe, demands digital skills and ongoing online skills training. In Georgia, we had to first look at our HSE numbers. We were a GED only state for about 1,000 years. Seriously, I'm literally well over 70 years.

At the beginning of 2020, we launched additional offerings. A high set because we know that people like choice. It's the reason why we have the SAT and the ACT. It's the reason why some folks prefer to take the GRE and others the MAT. Frankly, at the state level, we decided that we were agnostic as long as folks can be successful in earning a recognized HSE credential.

We also launched a non-tested pathway that combines previously earned high school credit with course-based high school classes and college classes. Prior to the pandemic, we were graduating around 10,000 GED credentialed individuals in a given year. Remember, in Georgia, we have well over one million individuals who lack a high school equivalency or a high school diploma. We had to accept that having just one offering wasn't going to close that gap. We needed to do things differently.

One of the statistics that I found really interesting just kind of playing around in your own data is that with your 2019-2020, your statewide estimate of HSE graduates is around 3% of your total NRS numbers. Which, of course, is impacted by the pandemic. But over the previous two years, it's around 4%.

Trust me. I'm saying this without judgment. But it's something I feel that we strongly, as a field, need to put a stake in the ground around. We know that measurable skill gains can also be earned through high school equivalency completion. But we found that many of our programs were holding students from testing because they wanted to earn that EFL. They wanted to earn it from pre and post testing. They were literally holding students back.

When we started looking at post-secondary, we know that some of our students gravitate towards traditional degrees. And for many, increasingly, they're looking at micro credentials that are stackable. This was an area where we really had to challenge ourselves. We really weren't in the space of a post-secondary. And it's an area where we needed to grapple with our own statistical transition look like.

We had to understand the number. But we also had to understand how, if at all, were we influencing the number. And then we had to think through strategies that would allow us to grow that number. We do know that moving to post-secondary is exceptionally difficult, exceptionally difficult if you are a parent.

(DESCRIPTION)
Adult Education in Georgia, The Need. There are 1,083,602 adults with no high school diploma, HSD/HSE in Georgia. The percentage of adults with no HSD/HSE ranges from 6.3%, Chattahoochee County, to 38.4%, Stewart County. 1/3 of Georgians without a HSD or HSE are between the ages of 18-34. The average wage upon exit is $16,000.

(SPEECH)
So over the past 12 months, we started exploring partnerships around wraparound supports in a very different manner. We are the proud recipients of a 2Gen post-secondary grant with the Aspen Foundation, which is part of-- it's the Ascend Aspen foundation. This grant allows us to focus on our student parents. Not just single parents. Not just single mothers. Student parents who are in any type of adult education program.

(DESCRIPTION)
How Do We Propose to Impact $16,000? A pie chart, with 1/3 labeled Post-Secondary Education, 1/3 labeled High School Equivalency, and 1/3 labeled Workforce which is set out from the other 2/3.

(SPEECH)
So that we're looking at the policy that impacts our students. And we're trying to remove those barriers at both the state and the local level. We want to ensure that we are helping our students not only engage in this post-secondary education, but we want them to be retained and ultimately to graduate.

(DESCRIPTION)
Text, 72%. Children of parents with low literacy skills have a 72% chance of being at the lowest reading levels themselves. An asterisk appears after with text, 1, National Bureau of Economic Research, Center for Immigration Studies, National Commission on Adult Literacy. A diagram shows an arrow from the left that points right and goes through Child Focused and Child-Focused with Parent Elements, for example, early childhood development parenting skills, family literacy and health screening, to point to the Whole Family in the middle. An arrow on the right points left and goes through Parent-Focused and Parent-Focused with Child Elements, for example, child care, workforce program, food and nutrition and supports for student parents, to point to Whole Family in the middle.

(SPEECH)
We saw this particular grant opportunity because it was personal. As a working mother, augmenting my children's education when they became remote learners, it was incredibly difficult. It was difficult for my children. And it was very difficult for me. And I'm an educator. I'm also completely cognizant that I have a tremendous amount of social capital and privilege.

So many of our families enrolled in adult education. You know this. They struggle with child care. They struggle with assisting their school age children with multiple digital platforms and perhaps, one device. And perhaps, that device was a cell phone. They struggled with navigating how to prioritize their own educational journey amidst all of this challenge. That struggle led us to the most difficult year in Georgia with respect to retention.

You know that for your programs, you probably saw that NRS number just sink. Know that we saw that no sink nationally. We started creating partnerships at the state level in Georgia who engage families in new ways to eliminate policy barriers and to access additional funding to ensure that family members enrolled in any adult education class know that we are concerned about their entire family's economic, educational, and social well-being.

It is not enough for us to get MSGs and think that our work is done. We want to award our students access to excellent health care, adequate housing, and jobs that pay living wages. These changes require us to reform. Quite literally, to make changes in how we think about our work in order to improve.

In Georgia, that has meant revising our vision, our mission, our priorities, and even our core beliefs. We are now committed to doing two things really well. Delivering high quality services and improving the lives of adult learners. We are also committed to being focused on access for all, regardless of zip code. Exemplifying integrity. Being deeply knowledgeable about our work and the field. And we are on fire about pursuing excellence through innovation and collaboration.

This work and the challenges are frankly too complex, too nuanced, too entrenched to be arrogant enough to think that this is something that we can do by ourselves. We are constantly chasing partnerships with local workforce boards, employers, and supportive partners across agencies. From the early care and learning the Department of Education, the Department of Corrections, Health and Human Services as examples.

Leaders and stakeholders involved in working with our most vulnerable have to be about the business of analyzing our data. We have to be about the business of letting the data speak and tell the story of how we're performing. We have to take off any sort of personal feelings and personal assumptions about what is and isn't effective. And we have to be unafraid to address the practices, policies, and procedures at all levels, so that we can best support our learners.

I mentioned to Veronica there is no way that I could speak 30 minutes. So I'm almost at the end. I am now unapologetically about the business of ensuring that every learner in the adult education program in Georgia has everything that they need to be successful in their life journey. And I say that. Again, I mentioned, I perhaps am naively optimistic. But I really, truly believe that this future state is possible.

The issue of digital illiteracy, generational poverty, and lack of critical access I have to believe is not intractable. Because I know that adult educators have always had a transformative impact on every learner that they encounter. It's time. It's time for us to reform. It's time for us to reimagine. It's time for us to reignite. I am so deeply grateful for the work that you do. And I know that this future state is possible because you were here doing it. Thank you.

(DESCRIPTION)
A blurred image of a tunnel at warp speed.

(SPEECH)
VERONICA PARKER: Thank you, Dr. Good for that plenary address. Although you said that you were not going to take up the 30 minutes, we are after 9 o'clock. So you took up the 30 minutes, and we appreciate it. You made some really, really, really great points. And I wholeheartedly appreciate your authenticity, as well as your vulnerability when naming some of the encounters that you address at the beginning of the pandemic and even at the start of your tenure in your appointment in your current role. So we definitely, definitely appreciate that. And in the chat, you have some people who are saying thank you for your address and your presentation.

(DESCRIPTION)
Dr. Goode clasps her hands to us.

(SPEECH)
And so if anyone has any questions, we do have a little bit of time for Q&As. So if you have any questions of Dr. Good, we will definitely take those at this time. And we do have a couple of questions that we would like to ask you just to kick off the conversation.

So the first one being, you mentioned addressing the whole learner and making sure that our systems provide services to address the whole learner and their experience in the real world, whether it be parenting, the educational attainment, and how that translate into livable wages and jobs and things of that nature.

So when you think about the student centered approach in meeting the needs of the whole adult learner, what are your thoughts on adult learners being a part of the decision making process? So that notion of adult learners having a seat at the table.

DR. CAYANNA GOOD: So I think that's the only way to accomplish it. I love the question because when I talk about the Aspen grant, that was a really important element to us. On every local counsel, we have to have student voice. And again, we did not want to be where we were prescribing, it has to be a single mother. It has to be a single father. In fact, we've said it just needs to be someone who was working within their family context. But we want to hear their voice.

I can't tell you what your challenges are. I need you to share with me. And I need you to share with me where we also knocked it out the park for you. So that we're able to expand that. We also, honestly, one of the best things that we ever could have done is we started a marketing campaign. We knew we needed to rebrand our work because it is so expansive. And we did that. And we were actually able to survey our students.

And there was a lot of concern at first. Oh, the literacy rate. And oh, everyone doesn't speak English. And it was like, yeah, but we can get translators, right? Yeah, we can make sure that we're not asking 10,000 questions in the survey. But let's just see. The response was overwhelming. Their response was absolutely overwhelming.

And it's just something that we do every year now. We don't evaluate ourselves. We don't make any policy changes without student voice. And I would highly encourage anyone engaged in this work to make sure they're not neglecting literally who we are serving as we're making decisions.

VERONICA PARKER: Absolutely. The student voice is extremely important as they are the receivers of the programs and services that we provide. So absolutely. We do have a question from Sheila in the chat. So she says, Dr. Good, how important is it to network with and build partnerships with outside organizations in order to support the whole learner?

DR. CAYANNA GOOD: Again, I don't think we can do this work alone. I'm not an employer. I'm not Home Depot. I'm not Sam's Club. I am not Google. I don't know what their needs are. But I am positive that we have the workforce that they're looking for. And if we can partner together, the woes that they have about filling these critical vacancies, we could probably tap into the folks who are hungry. Like they have volunteered themselves for this journey. They are hungry for what this future state for their lives could be.

I'm shameless. I'm annoying to a lot of different partners because I'm always like, we have the folks. How can we partner together? I mentioned some of the agencies that we've been working with. For the Department of Early Care and Learning, there shouldn't be a wrong door.

If you are enrolling your child, and whether you need childcare for your toddler, or whether you're looking for aftercare, we need to ask the question, they need to ask the question, do you need to earn your high school diploma? Do you need English language services. When you're signing your child up, we can check this box and already automatically enroll you in adult education and vice versa. I think when we make those supports available, we truly are addressing the whole learner. It's a great question.

VERONICA PARKER: Great, great. And any other questions, definitely post them in the chat. We will make sure-- OK. We have another one that has come in. Thank you, Wendy. How have you worked with faculty/instructors and institutions to shift their focus to training for higher wage jobs?

DR. CAYANNA GOOD: So the very first thing that we're doing is sharing the number. I mean, weren't you all shocked when you heard me say $16,000? And even in rural Georgia with the cost of living, you are still in poverty. So just having that as a common metric in aggregate that we can all agree on is shockingly low has been huge.

It has been incumbent upon us at the system office to provide some supports around what does that look like and to help-- I sit on the State Workforce Board. And I understand that operates very differently from those local workforce boards. So we've also been trying to do a better job at having that group better collaborate. So Title I better collaborate with Title II.

Because each local workforce board is always thinking about wage. And so if they're thinking about wage, and we want them to fund some of our programs, but we're not thinking about wage, that's a huge disconnect. So we've had to do quite a bit of training. We're going to continue to do quite a bit of training, so that we're all thinking about, OK, I'm constructing this IET.

It really does need to be in the context of what do you need to live in a way that you can afford an automobile, that you can afford groceries, that you can afford adequate housing. And I'm not knocking ServSafe, don't misunderstand me. But having a credential in ServSafe isn't going to allow you those aspects. It's also not necessarily a bridge to move forward.

So yes. I see in the chat, a family living wage in San Francisco is over $100,000. But if your average wage right now, and I think in California, again, aggregate, knowing that there are extremes on either end, is around $25,000. Like we have to grapple with what that means. And that's after exit.

VERONICA PARKER: Absolutely. Thank you for that. And then we have another question from Ryan. Dr. Good, thank you for all of your comments today. Have you done any work in the area of supporting student motivation and persistence? And if so, what strategies are you're deploying?

DR. CAYANNA GOOD: So we have always had a career service specialist. And they have been tasked with really working with our adult students to ensure that we're addressing some of those barriers. I will say. One person who might be working with thousands of students is probably not the best strategy.

It also doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that there are probably other strategies that we can employ because our students do have some-- like they do have cell phones, right? And so we have been really fortunate, I have been really annoying, our commissioner has been really supportive, that we started looking at some CRM solution that we previously didn't grapple with.

I want to take some of the work off of my career service specialist and off of my local programs. So I want to be like the gym that you go to at the beginning of January. And you do the free trial. And you do the free trial. And then after the first two weeks, you're like, yeah, life has happened. It's really difficult. And they start to stalk you, but in a really positive way.

Like we have the access to that technology. So we're actually going to put all of our students who allow us to sign them up for it. We're going to put them in it. And they're going to get messages of encouragement. Not just we missed you in class, but also, you really rocked it out when you passed the GED test the other day. We're so excited. We can't wait for you to finish up.

I believe that has the potential to be particularly powerful. And the reason why I say that is because we actually have engaged in this campaign for students who just have one more test to go. We have around 4,000 of those folks. And there were so many misconceptions. Just sending one email allowed them to reach out and say, oh, I thought my score is expired. Oh, I thought that the range has changed. And we were able to provide them sort of the one on one support. We can use technology for good. It doesn't always have to be for bad. So that's one of the ways.

We also honestly are trying to do a lot around providing supports for mental wellness. A lot of times, we talk about mental health, but what we really mean is mental illness. We're trying to shift that to mental wellness of not just our adults, but frankly, the educators who support them as well. And we've actually been infusing them to all of our professional development opportunities.

VERONICA PARKER: Great. Great. Thank you. And then we have a question from Penny. She says, I believe the future was forged throughout the pandemic, that digital skills/literacy at all levels can be a solution. Yet many learners and teachers were caught unaware and/or unskilled in the tools and capabilities for distance learning. Are any suggestions for helping all gain those basic skills that infiltrate all aspects of our society?

DR. CAYANNA GOOD: This is so difficult. And this is one where I've had to push a bit. And we just started, right? I mean, we're not post-pandemic. We're still in the pandemic. We're just in a different phase of the pandemic. When we all had to pivot online, we had every single learning management platform known to man. Some folks were doing Google. Some folks were using Google. And some folks were using this and this and that.

We were able to just say, everyone's going to be on Blackboard. And we're going to assist you and provide professional development with Blackboard. That was really difficult. So we spent a lot of time just providing a lot of professional development for our instructors. And we're going to continue. Like we actually have a Wednesday regular meeting, where we just go over tools and tips with Blackboard.

We've had to require every single program to have some form of digital skill building within their program, regardless of what type of program. IELCE, ABE, ASE, English language learners. I would agree strongly, Penny. It's digital literacy is a requirement. It's as much of a requirement as being able to understanding s-t-o-p and red means stop.

So we have to ensure that we're providing real opportunities for our students to engage in that. And we're still building it. I wish I could offer a lot of great suggestions about this has worked. We required it in our continuation grant. And we're providing professional development.

And after probably a year, we'll probably add some additional elements to our monitoring guide to ensure that folks feel like they understand that this is really important to us, that we're equipping our adults with these digital skills that they need to be successful in this very new world that we have.

VERONICA PARKER: OK. And then Jennie asked, your comments on tracking employment for family sustaining careers is wonderful. However, we don't have high rates of Social Security number disclosure, mostly self-reported. Do you or anyone else have recommendations on how to help track employment data to know if we are educating our students to remain in poverty?

DR. CAYANNA GOOD: So. I wish I had a really good answer for you. And I wish I had some really special way in Georgia that we have such a high rate. I think we have one of the highest rates in the country. We just ask. We just ask. And we explain that no one's going to see it. It's OK. You don't have to worry. And I think that there's just a degree of trust there that our students provided to us.

I think with the metrics that you do have, you're collecting it from somewhere. And I'm not sure if it's all self-reported. And if there is a great concern that you have with the self report, or you actually feel like based on some matching of self-reported and perhaps they've disclosed their Social Security number, you're able to see that it's actually not wildly off.

I think, and I really open this up to anyone else here. If you want to track employment data, I don't know how you do it with a high level of accuracy without the Department of Labor. And even within that, we do have some areas where it's completely self-disclosed. Are you a single parent? And for whatever reason, we have students who don't feel completely comfortable. So the statistic is just kind of laughably low.

We've started having conversations with other agencies about perhaps we can do some additional data match with TANF. And the child care subsidy in Georgia that's CAPS, so that we can do some additional matches there. So it's probably a terrible answer. But I just don't have a good one beyond. We've just been very fortunate in Georgia that we have such a high rate.

VERONICA PARKER: OK. And Cecilia has offered, when they register students by phone, they ask. And if they don't have one, they move on. And then when they come in to test, you have them sign the form to keep the number confidential. So that's a suggestion being offered to you, Jennie.

Any other questions that you would like to ask Dr. Good? We have a few more minutes. Ryan has asked, adult education in California has a major political element, as many adult education programs need to keep local and statewide politicians informed to sustain and hopefully increase funding. Is that a phenomenon in Georgia? And if so, what are your efforts and strategies in that arena?

DR. CAYANNA GOOD: Beautiful question. So you heard from my bio that that's the world I've been in for some time. So I understand that as noble as the work of education is, you can't escape the politics of it. I think adult education has the ability to be so incredibly transformative on so many levels. But we remain persistently as the best kept secret. No one knows what we do. No one knows what we do.

So I talked about the marketing campaign. The marketing campaign is geared from the student's perspective. And I mentioned, we have this big celebration for Student of the Year. We just followed up with them. Like what are you doing now? Talk about your story. It defies logic that we are not tapping into these folks all over the place.

We have people who think that if you earn a GED, you can't go into the military. We all know that's not true. We have folks who came to this country without knowing a word of English. And now, they are managers of corporations. And they're doing fantastic work because of the work that you do. No one knows.

So the marketing campaign is twofold. One, we certainly want to increase our enrollment in our programs. But two, I want folks to look at it and say, oh, my goodness. This is happening in our state. This is wonderful. It's actually a competition for a student of the year. Guess who I invite to be the judges? Local and state politicians. Because hearing the stories from the students themselves when they're going into budget meetings, they're much more able to articulate the need for the work that we do.

And I'm not above sort of shamelessly plugging that we offer these programs free of charge for thousands of folks, regardless of disability, regardless of home situation. We provide lots of wraparound supports. And we do it to the tune of in Georgia, far less than $1,000 per student. That's very powerful. We are just a good bargain for state politicians. But they don't know because frankly, we don't tell them often enough. And they change. So even if we tell them one year, we probably have to tell a whole new bunch a couple of years later.

VERONICA PARKER: Absolutely. Absolutely. So Sophia says that that's her mantra too, that adult education is a hidden gem. And that she's constantly reminding people, stakeholders, agencies, and anyone of what adult education is all about. And then Penny talks about celebrating successful students. And each adult school can use those stories to help their local agencies and regions. And she put the link there.

DR. CAYANNA GOOD: I love it. I love sharing and collaborating. I mentioned I was so impressed with your data that I sent it to our folks. I'm like, I want to do what California is doing. So I can't wait to look at this link to see your stories about your successful students.

VERONICA PARKER: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And the Technical Assistance Project, we actually just launched a model program website, where we are now showcasing model programs. And we'll provide you with that information as well we celebrated. Two of our programs yesterday during the opening address. And we've been celebrating all of our programs that's submitted over the last couple of days. So we can share that information with you as well.

And then Shiela adds, Dr. Good, do your adult schools collaborate with local community colleges? So you are a part of the college system. Do you partner with your local adult schools?

DR. CAYANNA GOOD: So in Georgia we don't have community colleges. So it's forbidden because of various and sundry reasons. There are only technical colleges. We've been fortunate that every single technical college in the system, so there are 22, they all have an adult education program.

And each adult education program is responsible for a metric that rolls up and is actually part of that college president's overall evaluation. And I can't say enough about being in a system that has been so supportive of the work that we do. But that being said, the 22 colleges are not our only providers. We do have school system providers. And we also have community-based organizations as well.

VERONICA PARKER: OK. Yes. Thank you for that explanation. So we are coming close to time. So we can take maybe one or two more questions from the field if you all have them. One additional question that I had to ask. You've actually covered the content for the other questions that I had. So thank you so much for that. One question is what are some strategies that educators can utilize to overcome fears of reimagining education resulting from the ongoing disruption that we are still experiencing?

DR. CAYANNA GOOD: So I mentioned it earlier. And I think it's key. And as educators, I get it. You want to knock it out of the park immediately the very first time. It's just impossible, right? So when we had to pivot online, if we had to really think through all the different components and all the different pieces collectively until it was just right, we wouldn't have offered virtual instruction to anyone probably until like next month.

Because it is messy, and complex, and fraught with real issues of access. We were thrown into it. And because you all are rock stars, collectively across the country, we figured out there are some things that really, really work well. There are some things that really, really don't work well. We have to kind of abandon this notion that if it's not perfect, it's not something that we can do. Or if there is not a blueprint that we can look to, or a publisher has this curriculum already built out, we really can't do it until then.

To reimagine this, you just have to tap into your own brilliance, your own heart the areas that I can see some of your faces. And when I've said some things, I've seen like you all nodding, right? Like there are some of these things you just kind of know intuitively. I think we just have to experiment. And we have to iterate. And then we have to really reflect on what's coming back. And then we have to continue to iterate. And we have to continue to share what's working and what's not.

And I think even these conversations. So I think one of the areas of beauty with adult education is we're all educating folks to be successful in the same high school equivalency exams. The NRS assessments are the same across the country. We have one large national association. We should be collaborating across states like crazy all the time. And it's just an area where I think, frankly, we all have to grow more and be more comfortable with that.

VERONICA PARKER: Absolutely. Thank you so much for that. And I'm not seeing anything else in the chat. So if we do not have any more questions, I'd like to thank you on behalf of the CAP Technical Assistance Project, as well as the CAP, our California Adult Education Program System, and all of our attendees who are in attendance with this plenary address. Thank you so much for your time. We definitely appreciate it. We appreciate your wisdom. Again, your authenticity, as well as your vulnerability and speaking about some of the things that you all have experienced in Georgia.

And I agree, the cross collaboration across state lines is extremely important, which is why I thought that it was important to reach out to you. So a practitioner who is in the work and doing it as well. So it was very important to us that we saw that through. So yes, thank you so much for your time. We appreciate it. And if no one has anything else, we'll go ahead and close.

(DESCRIPTION)
Dr. Good waves.

(SPEECH)
Our next set of breakout sessions start at 10:00 AM. So as you utilize this 30-minute break, definitely take a break. Stretch. Move around. Re-energize yourself. Hopefully, this plenary address we energizes you. I know every energized me as I prepare for our next session. And we'll see you all at 10:00.

Be sure to stop by our exhibit hall. Post on social media what you thought about today's session. Use our hashtags. We'll be able to share that information with Dr. Good if we have any great thoughts in there that she should be recognizing. And yeah, we'll see everybody back at 10:00 AM. Thank you again, Dr. Good, and safe travels back.

DR. CAYANNA GOOD: Thank you very much. All right. Thanks, everyone. Have a great rest of your summit.

VERONICA PARKER: Thank you.

(DESCRIPTION)
The video screen of Mandlee Gonzales, Tech Host. Text, California Adult Education Program, Technical Assistance Project.