A college credential is essential to earning a decent income in today’s economy. A well-educated workforce is essential to the ability of businesses, communities, and the nation to compete.

These widely accepted propositions are central to President Obama’s economic agenda—as is the role played by community colleges in meeting that dual mandate. In a major address on July 14, he announced The American Graduation Initiative, an effort to “reform and strengthen community colleges . . . from coast to coast so they get the resources students and schools need—and the results workers and businesses demand.”

Yet large numbers of students entering community college are ill-prepared for college-level work. They must start with developmental education courses, a delay that erodes their chances of earning college credentials. Many of these students come straight from high school and have a high school diploma. Many others, from young adults to men and women over 60, are victims of the recession and the changing needs of the American economy.

Ensuring that all students who enter community college through developmental education eventually achieve their educational and career goals is the keystone of many JFF projects, including Achieving the Dream, Jobs to Careers, and Breaking Through.

Of course, the ideal is that all young people graduate from high school and are prepared for college. This proposition, too, is essential to JFF, including our Connected by 25 initiatives, some of which are also described in this Newswire.

In a new JFF policy brief, Michael Lawrence Collins describes the role of state policy in helping community colleges advance students who are placed in developmental education. Setting Up Success in Developmental Education highlights ways in which 15 states have approached the task of improving outcomes for students who test into developmental education. These states are participants in Achieving the Dream: Community Colleges Count, a national initiative focused on student success.

“Developmental education could be a bridge, helping low-income and students of color succeed in college and achieve their dreams for better jobs, better wages, and better lives,” says Mike Collins, explaining his motivation for writing Setting Up Success. “Instead, it often acts as a filter through which thousands of students and their hopes of earning credentials and degrees are lost.”

Mike came to JFF from Texas, where he served as Assistant Commissioner for Participation and Success at the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board. Seeking to increase college access and success, he worked with K-12, higher education, the business community, the Texas Legislature, and community-based organizations. Today, Mike applies his Texas experience on a national scale as JFF develops and advocates for state policies that promote student success. He helps states craft and implement public policies designed to increase the numbers of low-income students and students of color who make a successful transition from high school into college, and then earn postsecondary credentials and degrees.

JFF will manage the state policy component of the Developmental Education Initiative, a new endeavor funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Lumina Foundation for Education. Working with six Achieving the Dream states, this initiative will highlight and scale up institutional strategies and state policies that can dramatically improve outcomes for community college students who test into developmental education. The Developmental Education Initiative will build on strategies described in Setting Up Success.

In Better Together, JFF’s Gloria Cross Mwase examines how states can help working adults bolster pre-collegiate skills that restrain them from taking full advantage of for-credit, college-level career and technical programs. She offers examples of meeting this challenge by aligning two distinct systems for strengthening pre-collegiate skills: adult education and developmental education.

Better Together is part of a series of state policy reports from Breaking Through, a multiyear initiative of Jobs for the Future and the National Council for Workforce Education. The effort is helping community colleges identify and develop institutional strategies that can enable low-skilled adult students to enter into and succeed in occupational and technical degree programs at community colleges.

In June, JFF and the Annapolis Coalition on the Behavioral Health Workforce convened Developing the Behavioral Health Workforce: Stimulus Funds & Workforce Models, sponsored by the Robert Wood Johnson and Hitachi foundations. This meeting of leaders from the mental health and addiction sectors shared information about accessing stimulus funds and models for improving the skills of workers in addiction and mental health treatment.

At the meeting, JFF released From Competencies to Curriculum: Building Career Paths for Frontline Workers in Behavioral Health by Randall Wilson. This issue brief documents the efforts of a partnership anchored by the Philadelphia’s District 1199C Training and Upgrading Fund (a labor-management partnership) and two employers serving people with mental illness. This unique effort is addressing the gap between the critical role played by behavioral health workers and the training—and career opportunities—open to these workers. The brief was prepared for Jobs to Careers, a national initiative that is developing the skills and career paths of workers on the front lines of health and health care.

The first step to a college credential is completion of a high school diploma or its equivalent. For far too many young people, this remains an elusive goal. JFF continues to expand its efforts to improve outcomes and options for this group of young people, through its work on dropout prevention and recovery with school districts and their partners, as well as through two new efforts, supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Leaders in high school policy and practice confront the dual challenge of significantly improving graduation rates, while simultaneously preparing graduates to succeed in college. To do this, they complement school reform strategies with early interventions and “back on track” options to reengage and accelerate the learning of students who have fallen off track. JFF’s Connected by 25 team works with a dozen communities on improving graduation rates without compromising on academic achievement goals.

Based on lessons and tools from leading communities, JFF offers Bringing Off-Track Youth into the Center of High School Reform, a “starter kit” for school districts seeking to introduce a systemic approach to dropout prevention and recovery. This toolkit supports the efforts of a school district and its partners to create a system of back-on-track options for off-track and out-of-school youth. It focuses on key decision points in identifying young people who are falling off track and on creating high-quality learning environments to help them reengage and graduate college-ready.

JFF has launched a research and development effort focused on growing a new GED to College pathway that provides students who have dropped out with what they need to succeed in postsecondary education. Through this effort, JFF seeks to build the capacity and advance the efforts of youth-serving national and local intermediaries, community colleges, and community-based youth employment and education programs to develop GED to College models that provide low-income young adults with on ramps to college, leading to a degree or other meaningful credential.

JFF is partnering on a multiyear effort with the Postsecondary Success Initiative of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The goal is to build the capacity and advance the efforts of YouthBuild USA and the National Youth Employment Coalition as these national intermediaries work with local affiliates and/or members to develop on ramps to postsecondary success for low-income 18 to 26 year olds, many of whom are out of school and shut out of jobs and careers that lead to economic self-sufficiency.

The Workforce Development Strategy Group of the National Center on Education and the Economy joined with JFF to form JFF’s Washington, DC-based Workforce and Education Policy Group.

“JFF will benefit greatly from the depth of knowledge and experience of talented individuals at NCEE,” says JFF president and CEO Marlene Seltzer. “At this critical moment in Washington, this is a great opportunity for us to expand our reach as we work with our partners to double the number of low-income youth and adults who by 2020 attain postsecondary credentials that help them advance into family-sustaining careers.”

“The Workforce Development Strategies Group of NCEE has achieved remarkable success in helping to guide the evolution of the nation’s employment and training policy,” says Ray Marshall, former Secretary of Labor and chair of the NCEE board. “We will miss them but recognize the extraordinary value they bring to the workforce development mission of Jobs for the Future.”