Breaking Through: Helping Low-Skilled Adults Enter and Succeed in College and Careers
Breaking Through is focused on the development, refinement, and scale up of professional and technical pathways serving large number of low-income adults who enter community college underprepared for credit-level work. Since 2005, the Breaking Through Initiative (BT) has pioneered and demonstrated that by focusing on four (4) key strategies, community colleges across the country are able to move academically underprepared adults into postsecondary occupational and technical career programs. Through this project, NCWE and its partner, Jobs for the Future (JFF), have undertaken a set of activities designed to strengthen the knowledge base about strategies and outcomes of community colleges implementing Breaking Through pathways, deepen peer learning activities among participating colleges, and build momentum and lay the groundwork to position BT for significant expansion.
Breaking Through Key Initiatives
The goal of BT is to strengthen postsecondary outcomes for low-income, academically underprepared adults by focusing on strategies that create more effective pathways through pre-college and degree-level programs. Four (4) key strategies are employed to ensure student success:
• Program Realignment
• Accelerated Learning
• Comprehensive Support Services
• Strong Labor Market Connections and Payoffs
Breaking Through Practice Guide
The Breaking Through Practice Guide, developed by JFF, helps practitioners serve adults who have low literacy and math levels and who want to succeed in postsecondary education. The Practice Guide highlights innovations from community colleges that participating in the Breaking Through initiative between 2005 and 2009. The Practice Guide has four components, each devoted to a “high leverage strategy” that community colleges and other programs can adopt to increase their success with low-skilled younger and older adults.