College/ABE Partnerships

Minnesota State and Adult Education Co-Req Partnerships to Achieve Outstanding Student Outcomes

Welcome to the Minnesota State and ABE (Adult Basic Education) Co-Req Partnership website. Its purpose is to provide resources and information to anyone wishing to explore and promote effective college and ABE partnership models. This could include ABE Educators, College faculty, Deans, and Administrators, anyone with co-req reporting responsibility, and ABE Regional Directors.

Background

Originally started as a project to help explore and promote partnerships between ABE and college practitioners in the developmental education realm, the focus of this effort changed in 2024, when the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities System initiated a statewide effort to replace existing Developmental Education non-credit courses with a corequisite course format that awards enrolled students with college credit. The full expression of the format change is to occur by 2027.

Currently, Minnesota State is piloting numerous corequisite reading, writing, and math courses to inform the overall approach, while also convening faculty, staff, and others to discuss challenges, concerns, delivery strategies, and desired outcomes.

Partnering with ABE to address student needs is especially important to consider at this critical juncture in the program development process.

Prior to this change, twenty-four different Dev Ed/ABE partnerships based out of twenty-one of the 30 Minnesota State two-year colleges were in existence. Many of these partnerships either ended or have been placed on hold while the Minnesota State system is in the planning phase of moving to co-req courses. Some however, still exist, are either involved in the planning phase, or are already launching co-req courses. The work of these partnerships will be followed closely.

What history revealed from Dev Ed/ABE partnerships, is that this collaborative teaching model demonstrated significant improvement in the success of students in dev ed and college-level gateway courses.

The partnership model paired Dev Ed and ABE instructors in dev ed and gateway courses. While their roles and responsibilities may differ from partnership to partnership, there are measurable and anecdotal data demonstrating benefits to students. And the model clearly has a strong connection to equity work.

You can read more about the Dev Ed/ABE project work, resources developed, and success stories, all included in the Dev Ed/ABE Partnership Toolkit, by selecting the link below. All resources are still valuable and applicable for colleges and ABE offices wishing to forge a partnership for co-req purposes.

This project originated in 2020 out of northwestern Minnesota with funding coming from the Northwest ABE Transitions Region. It quickly gained statewide interest where others wanted to learn more about how successful partnerships worked. Thus began a series of activities over the course of a few years. In the academic year 2022-2023, the project was funded by the Minnesota Department of Education (MDE) and the Minnesota State system of universities and colleges. For the past two years, the project is being funded by MDE, the ABE unit.

Of special note is the existence of the Minnesota State/ABE Co-Req Affinity Group, formerly the Dev Ed/ABE Affinity Group. The group’s composition by role includes ABE Educators, Faculty, College Deans and Administrators, anyone with co-req reporting responsibility, and ABE Regional Directors; those who wish to explore and promote effective partnership models for student success. More information about the Affinity Group can be found below.

We thank you for visiting this site and hope you take a look around and become familiar with what is available.