Adult education caters to basic skills needs

Accessibility key to attracting under-served students

MOSES LAKE — Demand for adult basic skills programs on college campuses like Big Bend Community College, are changing the way educational institutions and the communities which surround them address the needs of under-served student populations.

Those include English as a second language learners, students who have little or no education in their country of origin and those who lack basic skills in core areas such as reading, writing and math.

"I think what has evolved, and what we have gotten a lot better at doing, is helping connect adults' educational goals with training and occupation training and specific goals that will get them a viable, living wage job," said Sandy Cheek, basic skills director at BBCC. "We're paying a lot more attention to the issue of retention and we're looking at these folks and we're saying if they make it, if they even make it to college, sometimes they don't make it through college, and lets start looking at why."

Twenty-one-year-old Rayna Salinas was a single mom who had previously been laid off her job before enrolling in the spring of 2005 for customer job skills training at BBCC.

She had already received her GED through BBCC.

"The way I looked at it was you never stop learning and some people just need a boost of confidence," she said, adding that is especially important for single mothers who do not have many support systems.

Difficulty finding day care services and no drivers license were barriers that prevented Salinas from moving up the career ladder in a specific field.

Combined with the close proximity of day care services offered at BBCC where she was attending basic skills classes, encouragement from others to get her drivers license and flexible school and work hours enabled her to continue her studies, work and provide for her child.

That type of accessibility to services is exactly what Cheek and Kathy Cooper, a policy associate for the last decade for basic skills policy at the Washington State Board for Community and Technical Colleges, say is allowing under-served populations to get the skills they need to earn a living wage.

Strengthening partnerships within as well as outside of college campuses has been a major component of changing perceptions about adult basic skills.

"What I think has changed is the nature and the purpose of our partnerships and I think we're getting a lot more strategic about partnering with, and paying more attention to, employers and business and industry and looking at the economic side of things," Cheek said.

Basic skills, a department Cheek describes as once being somewhat separated from other programs on the BBCC campus, has in her opinion become recognized as a feeder for other academic programs.

The Integrated Basic Education Skills Training approach is an example of such a program.

IBEST was instituted at BBCC in 2004 and integrates vocational and language skills training in an effort to reach low income and migrant student populations.

"They get college credit and they get their language gains and they get jobs," Cheek said.

Cooper estimates that between 2000 and 2010 the number of the ESL student population needing basic skills and educational services is going to more than double.

"For all of them the first step to being able to be fully participatory, be good, active citizens, good parents and workers is to gain that English language skill," Cooper said. "These are hard working adults who need better skills in order to get a (living) wage job and to further contribute to the local economy."

The difference between making or not making the jump to the next income level for many of these families, Cheek said, is having a high school diploma plus one year of college credit with a viable vocational certificate.

In a world where the majority of college student populations are no longer the typical 18-year-old right out of high school, Cheek estimates they are looking to college campuses and in particular community colleges because of increasing access.

"Community colleges are in your community and so they're kind of a first step for an adult who is recognizing 'gee I need to upgrade my skills if I want to continue to have a living wage job,'" Cheek said. "I think we're affordable, we're accessible and the economy has dictated that people need to get specific skills beyond a high school diploma."