U.S. Department of Education Invites Participation and Feedback to Improve Adult Skills in the U.S.

Good evening, all!

I wanted to share with you information that was in last week's OVAE Connection concerning the engagement process that is being used to seek feedback for a national action plan to build the nation's capacity to improve the skills of adults.  Stakeholders are encouraged to host engagement events and the following provides information, links, and supplemental resources on how you might host your own local engagement event.  Feedback from engagement events should be submitted to OVAE by March 14, 2014.

Gail Cope, SME, LINCS Program Management Group

*****************************************************************************************************************************************************************

In October 2013, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) released results from the international Survey of Adult Skills, a product of the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC). In an effort to examine the economic and social case for reskilling adults in the United States, the OECD analyzed the findings using U.S. data from the survey and prepared the report Time for the U.S. to Reskill? What the Survey of Adult Skills Says. As a result of report findings, which demonstrated that the U.S. had a large population of adults with low skills, the U.S. Department of Education launched an engagement effort on Nov. 20, 2013, that will result in a national action plan to increase the nation’s capacity to improve the skills of adults.

OVAE is seeking feedback for the national plan through January 2014 in regional engagement sessions. A diverse cross-section of stakeholders—state and education officials; leaders in businesses, industry, policy, and labor; researchers and data experts; philanthropists; and other concerned citizens—will be surveyed.

In addition to regional engagement sessions, stakeholders are encouraged to plan and hold Time to Reskill local engagement events, and to send feedback from these events to OVAE. Local engagement events are designed to involve multiple stakeholders in your community or organization in the conversation about adult skills systems and how those systems can be strengthened to effectively reach more adults with low skills.

To conduct a local engagement event, please access and use the engagement event toolkit. To set the context for a local conversation about why skills matter, OVAE has produced a consultation paper that explains the OECD report and provides background information, definitions, and key findings from it, as well as implications and policy recommendations.

Local engagement events must be conducted and feedback sent to OVAE by no later than March 14, 2014, in order to be considered for the national action plan, which will be released in spring 2014. Feedback can be submitted through an online submission form.

More information about the adult skills outreach initiative is available here.