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Employer Success Stories

Read stories about how Adult Education helps businesses thrive.

Basic Skills Partnership
UCLA Labor Center and Parent Worker Project
Los Angeles, California

Los Angeles Janitors Struggle to Access Educational Resources for their Children
Over 90% of janitorial workers are immigrant workers and often work difficult hours and hold multiple jobs. As a result, many struggle to access educational resources for their children.
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Ventura Adult and Continuing Education Center
Ventura, California

Adult School Trains Qualified, Entry-Level Employees with the Industry Certifications and Basic Skills Necessary to Retain Employment
In April 2017, the Workforce Education Coalition started a regional IT guild designed to offer local employers an opportunity to identify industry needs in the field. 
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Abraham
Adult Learner, Mt. Diablo Adult Education

The Language Barrier and Culture Shock Made Traditional High School Difficult for Him
A native of Guinea, Abraham immigrated to the U.S. at age 17 to be with his family in Concord. The language barrier and culture shock made traditional high school difficult for him. “I was intimidated because of the language. It was a fast-paced environment,” he says. “That’s why I wasn’t a fan of high school. I didn’t want to go.”
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Raymond Lopez
Adult Learner, Charle A. Jones Career & Education Center

Student is Fighting Hard to Succeed and is on His Way to Becoming a Great Medical Assistant
In August of 2016, Raymond Lopez came to our Orientation at CAJ and met with one of our counselors to discuss what program he might be able to do. Raymond was a dislocated worker and on Disability, he was seeking a new career and was new to Adult Education. 
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Hector Pinon
Adult Learner, Placer School for Adults

From English Language Learner to College Professor
In 1988 at the age of 15, Hector Pinon left Patzcuaró, Mexico, to work with his brother at a mill in Auburn in order to help his family back home, but what he really wanted to do was go to high school. Instead, he started attending English as second language classes in the evenings. 
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Marc Pomerlau
Adult Learner, Torrance Adult School

Dream of Becoming a Pharmacy Technician Realized
Marc Pomerleau resides in Gardena, California. At one time, he worked at Torrance Memorial Hospital as a patient transporter. While working at the hospital, he often passed by the pharmacy department and pictured himself working there.
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Mario
Adult Learner, San Mateo Adult School

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Steven
Adult Learner, Placer School for Adults

Former Truck Driver Trains for a New Career
As an 18-year career truck driver, I was diagnosed with sleep apnea, along with a degenerative disc in my neck, and also developed carpal tunnel tendonitis arthritis in my left wrist – my dominant hand. I found myself in a tricky situation because driving an 18-wheeler had become almost impossible for me to do.
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Audelino Valladaraz Jr.
Adult Learner, Corning Adult School

Corning Adult School Teachers Give Student the Confidence to Succeed
Audelino has been trying to get back to school to be a better person to provide more for his family. He describes his experience as not easy and kind of hard.
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Adult Education Innovations

Educators across the country are developing new ways to manage the complexities of helping adult students elevate themselves through education. Learn how adult educators are getting creative!

ADVANCE (Lake Tahoe Adult Education Consortium)

Culinary Industry Engagement Leads to Accelerated Student Outcomes
ADVANCE (the Lake Tahoe Adult Education Consortium) wanted to find a way to help local culinary industry partners rapidly fill vacancies in critical staffing positions and provide interested career seekers with an immediate “on-ramp” to a higher-wage position. In addition, the consortium needed to make sure it identified and delivered the skill training that was valued by the industry and created a program that was deliverable in multiple models. Ensuring that there was a pay-off for completers, as well as employers, was also a critical design principle.
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Allan Hancock Community College Consortium

Jointly Staffed One-Stop Center Brings Convenience to Adult Learners
The Allan Hancock Community College Consortium, which includes the northern part of Santa Barbara County, is located on California’s Central Coast and encompasses a 3,000-square-mile service area.
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Capital Adult Education Regional Consortium

CAERC Launches Regional Asset and Pathways Website
The CAERC Regional Asset Map and Pathways website promotes outreach, communication, alignment, collaboration and efficiency of services in the region. The website was developed in two phases. In phase one, the regional asset map identified the adult basic education (ABE), adult secondary education (ASE), and English as a second language (ESL) classes offered by CAERC members and partners across the region. Phase two expanded the search capabilities of the site to connect learners to a career exploration tool, job skills programs, and career technical education (CTE) programs.
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Chabot-Las Positas/Mid-Alameda County Consortium

Consortium Leverages Resources to Hire Full-time Transition Specialist
In order to better serve adult learners, members of the Chabot-Las Positas/Mid-Alameda County Consortium (MACC) agreed that each member would hire or assign staff to provide support for student transitions.
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Citrus College Adult Education Consortium 

Consortium Members Aligned ESL Course Levels for Seamless Transitions
A significant challenge for creating seamless transitions for students enrolled in Citrus College Adult Education Consortium (CCAEC) member institutions was aligning the disparate noncredit courses for each English as a second language (ESL) level offered by the members.
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Contra Costa County Adult Education Consortium

New Career Pathway Merges English Acquisition and Early Childhood Credential
Within the region served by the Contra Costa County Adult Education Consortium (CCCAEC), approximately 10 percent of adults do not possess a high school diploma or its equivalent and about 7 percent have a limited English-speaking ability.
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El Camino College

Consortium Collaborates to Spread the Word about Adult Education in the Region
Each institution in the South Bay Adult Education Consortium offered quality programs but had not fully developed partnerships to help students transition from one program to another. The region’s adult schools and El Camino College operated in isolation from one another.
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Feather River Consortium

Succession Planning: Adapting Apprenticeships to Fit a Rural Community
In rural communities, such as Plumas County, where there is a deficit in state-approved apprenticeship programs, there appears to be a lack of opportunity for adult learners to gain on-the-job training, despite a clear need to prepare the next generation of workers to transition into the workforce. Some businesses are forced to close their doors or operate at a considerable loss when business owners can no longer manage their workload or want to retire, or a nonprofit director leaves.
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Foothill-De Anza/North Santa Clara County Student Transition Consortium

Transition Adviser Helping to Facilitate Seamless Transitions
Transitioning from one adult program to another or from an adult program to a community college can be overwhelming for adult learners who may not be familiar with how to navigate the process – and, as a result, some opt not to move up to the next level of their education. When this happens, the learner delays the opportunity for advancement and regional workforce development efforts are impacted, so the consortium wanted to find a way to make the transition smoother.
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Gateway SCV

Partnership Helps Consortium Address Classroom Shortage Challenge
GatewaySCV, the consortium consisting of Golden Oak Adult School and College of the Canyons in the Santa Clarita Valley, struggles with a shortage of classroom space during daytime hours. In addition, local employers struggle to find qualified entry-level employees. There is an unmet need for classroom space during the day to meet student and employer needs.
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Gavilan College

Curriculum Institute Sparks Innovative Solution Among Consortium Members
Traditional English as a second language (ESL) programs have many levels, and their courses do little to prepare students for the work world. The Gavilan Regional Adult and Career Education Services consortium knew that it was a challenge for many students to complete an entire ESL program sequence and then move on to credit-bearing college career technical education courses, and it wanted to change that.
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Grossmont-Cuyamaca CCD

College Field Trips Inspire Adult Learners to Chart Their Educational Paths
Adult education students at Grossmont Adult Education (GAE)/Grossmont Union High School District and at the Mountain Empire Unified School District, both in the East Region Adult Education consortium (San Diego), felt they needed more information about career opportunities, matriculation and support services. The students, quite literally, couldn’t see college in their future.
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Lassen County Steps to Success Program

A Two-Pronged Program That Helps Students Complete Their Basic Education and Prepares Them for Entry into the Workforce
In Lassen County, higher percentages of young adults are unemployed and on probation. These young adults lack basic education and have little to no vocational employment skills, a combination that proves frustrating to employers and is a concern for a community with a shortage of qualified employees. The Lassen County AB86 Consortium needed to come up a way of serving this population by teaching them basic workforce skills to become functioning members of the community.
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Los Angeles Regional Adult Education Consortium (LARAEC)

Contextualized, Integrated Math Helps Photovoltaic Trainees Succeed
Students enrolled in the Photovoltaics (PV) Training Program at Los Angeles Unified School District’s East Los Angeles Skills Center were experiencing significant difficulties with the applied math skills needed to successfully complete the training. Students mastered most training competencies, except for those that required a math background. As a result, program attrition was high and the number of completers was low. Students were frustrated. They were unwilling to add more time to their training, and they were not convinced that math was relevant to their ability to secure a job.
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Monterey County Office of Education Alternative Education

Program Puts Incarcerated Youth Back on Path to Work
Students in the Monterey County Office of Education Alternative Education (MCOEAE) program, a part of the Salinas Valley Adult Education Consortium, have significant secondary education gaps that cannot be addressed by traditional means. These gaps are the result of incarceration or probation, and many of these students have experienced severe poverty or other trauma in the past. These factors make it nearly impossible to build a pathway toward a viable, high-wage career or to prepare for success in postsecondary education or training.
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Placer School for Adults

Teacher Academy
The challenge? What an interesting question. The answer to the question, which is just another question, was how to change the way we have done things for so long? How to integrate from the bottom to the top. How to innovate, educate, invigorate, and clear the path for our students to come in one door, and then leave by a multiplicity of other doors that lead to internships, career paths, further education, and so much more.
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