Adult Career Pathways Resources

This handbook was developed to guide CTE career programs in how to build and sustain a strong and active advisory committee. It can be a helpful resource for ABE in two ways – for use in your own collaboration with employers, and for tapping into your CTE partner's existing advisory committee employer relationships.

Element Two of the Toolkit provides useful guidance and tools to identify industry sectors; conduct labor market analysis; clarify role of employers in program development and operations; and sustain and expand business partnerships.

Use the entire toolkit as a package or select individual exercises, checklists, planning guides, or resources that are most relevant to you. Includes an assessment of current employer relationships; provides strategies for new employer outreach; and provides tools that connect employers directly to your ACP program.

This template, useful in any adult career pathways (ACP) program development work, guides a step-by-step process to define a goal appropriate for one’s own context for engaging employers in an ACP in new ways.

This activity, used in an ACP Program Development cohort of program managers, guides a process of identifying potential roles for employers in adult career pathway (ACP) programs; assessing employer partnerships currently in place; seeing opportunities for expanding employer partnerships; and communicating effectively with employers.

Hear from Minnesota ABE professionals and their employer partners about ways they collaborate, their challenges and successes. Understand the role of Career and Technical Education advisory committees and how ABE can get involved and connect with those employers. Gain strategies for effective employer outreach in your own context. (2018)

Third in a series of five 2019-20 Minnesota ABE webinars on adult career pathways.  MN Dept. of Education staff and ABE professionals from across the state share best practices, successful models, lessons learned, plus tools and resources for your use locally. (1.5 hours)

This 2-hour, self-paced course helps adult education instructors and program administrators understand how to identify, engage, and sustain engagement of appropriate employers in the development of career pathways programs.

This 10-page issue brief offers practical strategies on engaging employers and building business-education partnerships to support ACP programs, and highlights promising examples from adult education providers in three states.

Across the US, millions of workers with limited reading, math, or digital problem-solving skills hold jobs across the service sector. This report offers a fresh analysis of rigorous data, painting a picture of the approximately 20 million American workers employed in key service-sector industries who lack foundational skills. It highlights promising practices and interventions used by U.S. employers to help their workers to upskill, and details key policy levers that can foster economic mobility for these workers. 

This online tool kit provides state and local program administrators with information regarding the key components of work-based learning (WBL), an instructional strategy that enhances classroom learning by connecting it to the workplace. It offers guidelines and resources related to creating a state WBL strategy, engaging employers, collecting data, and scaling effective programs.