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Los Angeles Regional Adult Education Consortium (LARAEC)

The Challenge

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.

The Solution

LAUSD, a member of the Los Angeles Regional Adult Education Consortium (LARAEC), realized the program’s success would require the use of contextualization and integration, meaning that math instruction would need to be taught in a way that the future photovoltaic installers could see how the concepts applied to the trade they were learning – and it would need to be incorporated into photovoltaic training, instead of students taking it as a separate class. AEBG funding made it possible for math and career technical education (CTE) instructors to collaborate to develop the contextualized math curriculum and to integrate it into phases 1 and 2 of the photovoltaic installer training. Students took both the newly designed class and the first two phases of training at the same time.

The Outcome

By integrating math instruction into skills training, students were able to proceed with their CTE courses instead of having to wait until they mastered the necessary math skills. The majority of students who trained under the new approach completed the program and earned an industry-recognized credential after the contextualized, integrated course was added to their CTE program. This represents tremendous success, particularly because many of the students were former inmates who had not attended school or training for many years. Subsequently, most participants, many of whom were referred by community partner Homeboy Industries, secured employment installing solar panels at homes, businesses and solar power plants.