This report covers the responses House Higher Education received for their RFI on Charge #3, relating to evaluations of the 60X30TX plan. The RFI for this charge can be found here and a complete list of responses can be found here.
The HillCo report below is a summary of information intended to give you an overview and highlight of the various topics included in the responses. This report does not cover the entirety of each response, but aims to provide an overview of the testimony submitted.
General Questions from the Committee:
How can the state meet the goals of 60x30TX?
- Students can demonstrate college, career or military readiness through the Texas State Initiative Assessment or meet a number of other measures
- Provides an overview of the CCMR models TEA manages, the GEAR UP statewide grant and CTE programs of study
Is there legislative action that could help expand work-based learning?
- Barriers in work-based learning include: student readiness and maturity, insurance and liability, time commitment, age and transportation
- Stakeholders recommend legislation to:
- Improve access to insurance and liability coverage for employers to host school-age students
- Support development of regional intermediaries which support education-employer partnerships
- Expand access to virtual work-based learning and training equipment and platforms
What is needed in order to identify and address gaps in existing data collection methods?
- Need to strengthen and formalize tri-agency workforce initiatives like periodic joint review of data collection
- Need to develop systematic/routine evaluation and assessment of local, regional, and state education and workforce data and information system needs
- Need to develop avenues to collect information on Texan employment that directly aligns educational pathways to occupations entered
- Need to continuing support of expansion of Tri-Agency access to external data sources to provide comprehensive view of educational and workforce opportunity
- Need to collect information that better exposes students’ momentum through career pathways
What changes, if any, are needed to align data collection between the THECB, TWC and TEA in order to collect consistent metrics?
- Need to extend use and assignment of Texas Student Data System Unique ID to facilitate matching across agency administrative data in areas of Tri-Agency interest
- Need to improve data standards and extensibility of systems intended to share data across LEAs, including across sectors
- Need to reduce use of self-reported indicators by sharing of source information, where applicable, timely, and allowed
- Use of SAT/ACT scores to determine satisfaction of TSI, dual credit hours earned, etc.
- Need to develop consolidated Tri-Agency, stakeholder-facing tools and reports that address questions and information like agency-defined regions or geographical boundaries of interest
Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board
- Highlights the COVID-19 impact to 60X30 goals and the Texas workforce
- Began a GradTX pilot project in the Houston region to reengage the “some college, no credential” population
- Estimated 1 million Texans in the Houston region with some college, but no credential who can benefit from the opportunity to reskill/upskill
- The GradTX pilot project and the federal GEER reenrollment support will allow the Coordinating Board and IHEs to reengage the “some college, no credential” population
- Working to optimize the data sets such as the National Student Clearinghouse and U.S. Census to make the resulting analysis available to stakeholders
- Will provide dashboards and secure tools to enable every Texas college and university to monitor individual student progress
How can the state meet the goals of 60x30TX?
- June 2020, TWC launched the Statewide Skills Initiative to make 5,000 online courses available for free to all unemployment benefit recipients in the state
- Has reached6 million individuals
- continuing to adapt and innovate programs, working alongside agency partners and other stakeholders to adapt to the needs of Texas and reach the 60x30TX goals
How has the pandemic impacted our state’s workforce needs?
- As a result of COVID-19, the state has seen over 4.8 million claims for unemployment insurance since the week of March 14, 2020
- At the height of the pandemic, all 11 major industries suffered series-high over-the-month job declines
- In April 2020, the commission approved $28 million in funds to support local workforce staff in expanding services
Is there legislative action that could help expand work-based learning?
- No encounters of legislative barriers to providing work-based learning opportunities has happened during this time
- Continued support for local apprenticeship programs?
Do current community college district boundaries align with the needs of the communities they serve? If not, how should they be altered and why will those changes improve educational opportunities for Texans?
- Collaboration has been key to ensuring local needs
- Many community college districts fostered partnerships with their Local Workforce Boards; better serves the community
- Partnerships open discussions that may influence consideration of district boundaries
What is the current capability to handle an influx of Texans seeking re-training or upskilling opportunities through state programs?
- By increasing the server capacity to WorkInTexas.com to accommodate the increased traffic
- Contracted with two-third party call centers to assist claimants with their registrations, resumes, and how to conduct job searches in WorkInTexas
- Authorized up to $5.8 million for the Skills Enhancement Initiative that provides access to 5,000 free online courses through the Matrix online learning platform
What is needed in order to identify and address gaps in existing data collection methods?
- Created “Texas Data Workgroup” to focus on issues related to data sharing and data gaps
- When this work is complete, recommendations to the governor and legislature will be made
What improvements could be made to alleviate ‘summer melt’ and to facilitate streamlined student advising?
- Innovative methods of student engagement help to educate students on programs of study that provide a clear path toward a future career
- Work-based learning programs such as internships and apprenticeships enable students to stay engaged
What changes, if any, are needed to align data collection between the THECB, TWC and TEA in order to collect consistent metrics?
- Extend use of the PEIMS student identifier to facilitate data matching beyond the childcare program and enhance monitoring of dropout recovery efforts
- Expand the allowable uses of data between the agencies
- Develop consolidated Tri-Agency, stakeholder/public-facing data tools that answer questions about Texas education and workforce development
- Ability to filter the data by demographic and geographic characteristics and time periods
Does the overall financial status of small and rural community colleges affect their capacity to meet the goals of 60x30TX?
- The Skills Development Fund fosters collaboration between employers and community colleges
- Approximately 69,000 participants benefit from basic literacy and math AEL services each year; provides integrated education and training models
How has the overall financial status of small and rural community colleges been affected since COVID-19? How does that affect their ability to carry out normal operations?
- Commitment to partnering with community colleges has remained consistent
- Upskilling workers remains a primary goal, outreaching to individuals who need workforce services, including occupational training
Texas Association of Community Colleges
How can the state meet the goals of 60x30TX?
- Trends suggest the state is at risk of falling short of the 60X30TX goal
- The state’s masterplan could benefit from setting goals related to industry recognized credentials and certificates not currently included under the metrics
How has the pandemic impacted our state’s workforce needs?
- The net number of jobs will decline 4.8% this year on a December-over-December basis
- The post-coronavirus workforce will need high-value credentials relevant to high-demand occupations; community colleges will fill this need
Is there legislative action that could help expand work-based learning?
- Willing partners with legislators to identify and remove workforce barriers, address industry shortages, and update policies to respond to future disruptions
Do current community college district boundaries align with the needs of the communities they serve? If not, how should they be altered and why will those changes improve educational opportunities for Texans?
- Community college service areas could benefit from a continual review process like legislative redistricting or agency sunset review
- Provided an overview of the factors that should be analyzed concerning CC service areas
What is the current capability to handle an influx of Texans seeking re-training or upskilling opportunities through state programs?
- With the help of the Legislature, Texas Talent Pathways initiative seeks to deploy workforce education in high-demand fields to 300,000 Texans within 300 day
- Community colleges have the infrastructure to meet the demands, can meet the needs of workers where they live, and provide re-training or up skilling online or in-person
What improvements could be made to alleviate ‘summer melt’ and to facilitate streamlined student advising?
- Regional collaboratives can support high school to college transitions and alleviate ‘summer melt’
Does the overall financial status of small and rural community colleges affect their capacity to meet the goals of 60X30TX?
- As a result of higher dependency on tuition and the state funding formula, volatility in enrollment has a more pronounced effect on small and rural colleges
- Less-resourced institutions often cannot offer some of the tuition waivers and other supports as their larger, urban counterparts
How has the overall financial status of small and rural community colleges been affected since COVID-19? How does that affect their ability to carry out normal operations?
- Estimates the community college sector will experience a financial loss of $72.2 million in FY20; estimated $123 million in projected reimbursements statewide
- Early indications of enrollment declines, and the related declines in tuition revenue, could increase unreimbursed losses heading into the Fall 2020 semester
Mike Reeser, Texas State Technical College
How can the state meet the goals of 60x30TX?
- For technical education, institutions must evaluate job demand in each region and then design program offerings to match those available jobs
How has the pandemic impacted our state’s workforce needs?
- Readjusting work training/programs to recover
- Higher education must anticipate where the growth will happen and adjust accordingly
- The college rapid industry skills & employability program (RI$E) is one example
Is there legislative action that could help expand work-based learning?
- The needs of Texas employers do not match with the state’s ability to provide a qualified workforce through the existing institutional structures and constraints
- Outreach to employers, rather than IHEs, to determine the optimal paths to maintaining a qualified workforce
Do current community college district boundaries align with the needs of the communities they serve? If not, how should they be altered and why will those changes improve educational opportunities for Texans?
- The jurisdictional constraints of service delivery areas can delay or even prevent industry from receiving the specialized workforce training needed to improve workforce
What is the current capability to handle influx of Texans seeking re-training or upskilling opportunities through the state programs?
- Output of trained graduates is constrained by limits in the physical space available at the college or the fixed amount of specialized equipment needed for hands-on training
- Less common is the availability of qualified faculty to teach these highly technical programs
What is needed in order to identify and address gaps in existing data collection methods?
- Data collection, reporting, and distribution should be designed more to enhance how that data can be put to work to drive strategic decisions and policy
What improvements should be made to alleviate ‘summer melt’ and to facilitate streamlined student advising?
- TSTC operates year-round, concurrent semesters; ‘summer melt’ does not have a significant impact upon fall enrollment
What changes, if any, are needed to align data collection between the THECB, TWC and TEA in order to collect consistent metrics?
- Improve the sharing of data between the TEA, THECB, and TWC for students transitioning between high school and college, and those transitioning into the labor market
Texas A&M Engineering Extension Service
How has the pandemic impacted our state’s workforce needs?
- During the pandemic, thousands of Texans lost their jobs; many need training and upskilling quickly to obtain new employment
Is there legislative action that could help expand work-based learning?
- State can support apprenticeship programs and require specific training/certification standards for industries wanting to do business with Texas, such as cybersecurity
What is the current capability to handle an influx of Texans seeking re-training or upskilling opportunities through state programs?
- The state has sufficient training providers to meet the increased numbers of individuals seeking training, re-training, and upskilling
- Additional funding to these providers is needed to reduce the overall cost to the students
What is needed in order to identify and address gaps in existing data collection methods?
- Bringing everyone to the table to discuss common goals and obstacles when it comes to data collection and analysis
Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station
How can the state meet the goals of 60x30TX?
- Expand what “counts” towards meeting these goals by revising what counts as a certificate, certification, etc
How has the pandemic impacted our state’s workforce needs?
- teaching and instruction at all levels have been adversely impacted, which will impact how we prepare, maintain and advance the workforce’s knowledge, skills and abilities
Is there legislative action that could help expand work-based learning?
- Financial incentives for companies if they invest in certain types of training that can impact the state in terms of a trained workforce
Do current community college district boundaries align with the needs of the communities they serve? If not, how should they be altered and why will those changes improve educational opportunities for Texans?
- Partnering with another CCD that has high demand for the same training and both districts could benefit with the funding formula
What is the current capability to handle an influx of Texans seeking re-training or upskilling opportunities through state programs?
- Not enough effort and detail put into the needs assessment portion
- Being able to assess specific needs without relying on grand numbers, so that the impact is beneficial to companies, educational institutions, and individual workers
What is needed in order to identify and address age gaps in existing data collection methods?
- Data collection and analysis need to be quicker
- Need a way to gather qualitative data to inform the quantitative data that is generally processed
- Identifying ways to work with industry groups and individual companies at a local level to provide periodic narrative data
- Will work with THECB to attain the 60X30TX goal; highlights TSUS performance metrics
The University of Texas System
- Goal relies on meeting targets for degrees awarded to African American students, Hispanic students, male students, and economically disadvantaged students
- For underrepresented minorities, rates rose by almost 10 points; 19% to 30%
- UT system is committed to implementing strategies to help o meet the goals of 60X30TX
- The low educational attainment rate has significantly contributed to San Antonio’s poverty rate
- In 2018, 27% of the adult population in San Antonio had earned a high school diploma or equivalent; 30% of the adult population had some college or associate’s degree
- Alamo Colleges is partnering with the City of San Antonio Council to focus on a plan that invests and trains people in this program to help the community of San Antonio
- Alamo Colleges will be training approximately 6,000 of the 15,000 residents the county has set as target goals for this program
- Blinn’s partnership programs have proved to be the most successful in the state; overviews the TEAM partnership with Texas A&M
- Partnerships have been successful; will continue to do so working toward the goals the 60X30TX
How can the state meet the goals of 60X30TX?
- Through the establishment of partnerships between universities and community colleges
- Recognizing and approving generalist degree programs would help provide more flexible workforce for the state
How has the pandemic impacted our state’s workforce needs?
- Leaving some businesses unable to recover, the needs of re-training, training, and higher education to once again become marketable
Is there legislative action that could help expand work-based learning?
- Any action that would incentivize the acceleration of partnerships
- Broader degree programs with alignment to community college programs would provide a flexible well-educated citizen across a career
What is the current capability to handle influx of Texans seeking re-training or upskilling opportunities through state programs?
- Primary limitation is would be the availability of clinical, internship, or field-based experience opportunities
What is needed to identify and address gaps in existing data collection methods?
- The different constituencies (THECB, TWC, and TEA) should coordinate data definitions and collections
What improvements could be made to alleviate ‘summer melt’ and to facilitate streamlined student advising?
- Keeping tuition low while providing families in need with the necessary recourses to overcome financial hurdles is important
- Ongoing communication; providing info via text, social media, email, and regular mail is critical
- Creating summer bridge programs to reduce the fear of college
- Intervening early in student’s senior year of high school to demystify the college process and improve the summer melt phenomenon
What changes, if any, are needed to align data collection between the THECB, TWC, and TEA to collect consistent metrics?
- Having a central repository where uniform data for these agencies could be housed would significantly improve date integration (which would allow better tracking for outcome of students)
- Specifically related to TEA, a uniform calculation of high school GPAs to a 4-point scale would make data more useful
- Has grown approximately 20% each year since 2011; has awarded over 15,000 degrees
- Average age of students is 34 with an age range from 18 to 60s and beyond
- Partnered with 17 community colleges to support transfer articulation of all degree programs or natural transfer between community college and WGU Texas
- Implementing the OWL transfer pilot program; a partnership with 3 community college districts
- Offers competency-based education which is knowledge-based, not time based
- Students advance by demonstrating their knowledge/ abilities rather than accumulating credit hours; model better serves adult learners who enroll with specific skill sets
- The average time it takes to graduate from WGU Texas is about 2.5 years for a bachelor’s degree, which costs about $15,000
- Students spend at least four years to earn a bachelor’s degree; national average is 5 years
- Provides data of those currently enrolled versus graduation rates
How can the state meet the goals of 60X30TX?
- Recommends the state increases investment in higher education, including investment in state financial aid, open educational resources, and policies for direct student support
- Recommends protections embedded in within student loan servicing
- A solution is the creation of a student loan ombudsman
- Would research and track data regarding student loan debt, act as a public facing liaison, and investigate consumer complaints
Is there legislative action that could help expand work-based learning?
- Apprenticeship navigators could serve as points of regional contact for apprenticeship programs
- They can help identify apprenticeship sponsors, create outreach for apprenticeships, and strengthen partnerships
What is needed in order to identify and address gaps in existing data collection methods?
- Gather data regarding the number of students to parents enrolled in public postsecondary institutions
What is needed in order to identify and address gaps in existing data collection methods? What changes, if any, are needed to align data collection between the THECB, TWC and TEA in order to collect consistent metrics?
- Need to increase Stakeholder Input into the data collection policies and practices
- Need to improve Clarity and standardization of data definitions
- Should encourage common frameworks for confidentiality, security, and privacy
- Should invest in state and local staff capacity for strategic data analysis and use
- Need to support talent solutions that address needs of small and rural institutions, perhaps through collaboration that enable economies of scale
- Recommends support training in data governance, management and use across P20W sectors
- Should design state data recourses from users’ perspective
- Need to create more avenues for analysts to securely access linked P20W info
- Should make critical data elements currently collected more readily and securely accessible to researchers and decision makers
- Should consider options for collecting certain new workforce data elements
- Should consider options for supporting secure, compliant, near-real-time local data sharing arrangements
- Partnership strongly supports the Tri-Agency initiatives
- The partnership is working with Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board to launch the GradTX 2.0 initiative through a Houston pilot
- A priority of this pilot program is to re-engage those who have yet to complete their degrees and remove barriers to completion
- Embedding AP in the overarching goals of the 60X30TX plan
- AP plays a critical role in Texas’ college readiness, completion, and affordability agenda
- Enacting a statewide CLEP credit policy
- Texas can significantly increase the number of students obtaining postsecondary credentials via the CLEP program
- Support programs that expand college and career opportunities for students
- HB3 supports academic gains and boosts the college-going culture in high schools across the state by reimbursing districts for exams
- Texas legislature and state agencies should remove barriers for true “alignment” between public education, higher education, and the diverse workforce needs of Texas employers
- Evaluation and formation of IBC list should be a key priority of all three agencies
How can the state meet the goals of 60X30TX?
- It is crucial to strengthen pathways along the Texas education to workforce continuum by bolstering K-12 and postsecondary linkages, streamlining credit and credential portability, and more closely aligning education with workforce needs
How has the pandemic impacted our state’s workforce needs?
- Since March, over 4.3 unemployment claims have been made in Texas
- By 2036, 71% of jobs in Texas will require postsecondary credential, currently only 32% of high school graduates earn a credential within six years of high school graduation
- COVID-19 has the potential to worsen the existing workforce, in addition to exacerbating existing inequities and barriers to education
Is there legislative action that could help expand work-based learning?
- Pass legislation that improves coordination of grantmaking between TEA, THECB, and TWC
- Develop and adopt common rules and definitions for high-quality work-based learning and associated terms in statute across TEA, THECB, and TWC
- Establish a tri-agency data tracking system that promotes high-quality work-based learning experiences and tracks program accountability
- Offer flexibility to work-based learning programs that attempt to shift these experienced online due to COVID-19
- Develop a statewide and comprehensive broadband connectivity strategy that will have lasting impacts on connecting K-12, higher education and workforce opportunities
What is needed in order to identify and address gaps in existing data collection methods?
- Developing and adopting common rules, definitions, and metrics across agencies for work-based learning
What improvements could be made to alleviate ‘summer melt’ and to facilitate streamlined student advising?
- Staff capacity is one of the most pressing concerns in combating summer melt
- Dedicate funds for expanding high school college counseling
- As part of college and alumni counseling, consider implementing a mandatory intent to enroll survey prior to high school graduation
- Consider accepting students’ unofficial high school transcript for enrollment into all institutes of higher education and providing a later deadline to receive official final transcript
What changes, if any, are needed to align data collection between THECB, TWC, and TEA in order to collect consistent metrics?
- Consistent measures can help lead to consistent metric collection across agencies
- An agreed-upon list of measures and success indicators would help guide the collection of consistent metrics and outcomes data across agencies
How can the state meet the goals of 60X30TX?
- Ensure a greater share of high school graduates enroll directly in postsecondary immediately following high-school graduation
- Ensure a greater share of high school graduates complete high school meeting state college ready standards
- Ensure Texas has clear strategy to improve completion of federal and state college financial aid to complement HB3 FASFA graduation and that the TEXAS grant program is fully funded
How has the pandemic impacted our state’s workforce needs?
- Pandemic highlighted the need for postsecondary credentials in the labor market and the need for improved digital resources to allow for remote work and learning
- Underscored the need for enhanced UI wage information to better understand the demographic breakdown, educational qualifications, and previous occupation/SOC codes of the unemployed
- Local workforce will face a need for more childcare services when the state fully re-opens
Is there legislative action that could help expand work-based learning?
- Continue to fund and increase opportunities like the P-TECH
- Allow employers or local chambers to receive incentives to partner with school districts and offer internships with simplified legal barriers and teacher externships opportunities
- Create a one-stop online information site of work-based learning opportunities available at the high school, postsecondary and adult levels
- Increase or maintain the Skills Development Fund to continue incentivizing companies to upskill/train their employees
Do current community college district boundaries align with the needs of the communities they serve? If not, how should they be altered and why will those changes improve education opportunities for Texans?
- Need geofencing to determine completion of high-need/in-demand credentials and employer hiring within a community-college systems’ boundaries
- Need assessment of transportation/mobility challenges, poverty/child-care deserts and digital access across respective community college districts
What is the current capability to handle an influx of Texans seeking re-training or upskilling opportunities through state programs?
- Need to improve the availability of online instruction and virtual degree/certification framework across institutions
What is needed in order to identify and address gaps in existing data collection methods?
- Need improved data alignment/sharing between to track completion of degrees/certifications, dual-credit, higher education, workforce training, and continuing education programs
- An annual Tri-Agency review of high-demand/in-demand and certifications/credentials to linked occupations/labor market demand by Texas region
What improvements could be made to alleviate ‘summer melt’ and to facilitate streamlined student advising?
- Improved capacity for higher education and public education institutions to share data needed to target summer college transition support for recent high school graduates
- Coordination and data exchange for summer advising between higher education institutions and school districts
What changes, if any, are needed to align data collection between THECB, TWC, and TEA in order to collect consistent metrics?
- Improved interoperability or capacity to exchange data between the THECB, Apply Texas and Counselor Suite system, TEA PEIMS/TAPR Data Bases, and TWC data systems
Texas Public Policy Foundation
- Concerning the 60×30 program goals:
- THECB’s 2019 legislature report said 43.5% of the target population had a degree or certificate
- Are not on track to meet the 60% by 2030
- Need to expand the sources of the credentials accepted such as industry-based and short-term credentials that could be earned in high school
- Not on track to meet the goal of having 550,000 students in 2030 who completed a certificate, associate, bachelor’s, or master’s
- Due to COVID-19 related enrollment declines, the “already unrealistic” trajectory is further unattainable
- Need to incentivize IHEs and community colleges to deliver education that leads to jobs
- Programs in career and technical education at IHEs and community colleges should operate based on the return-value funding model used at Texas State Technical College
- To expand work-based learning:
- Recommends legislation is passed that allows secondary CTE allocations to be used by school districts to outsource community paid internships and apprenticeships
- Should increase the amount of the allotment school districts are required to spend on CTE programs from 55% to 85%
- Concerning data sharing between THECB, TWC and TEA:
- Recommends the legislature and Tri-Agency Commission study how to create incentives for transparency and data access
- Need to study and compare outcomes from various state-funded workforce training programs
- As a result of COVID-19, 3.5 million Texas workers filed for unemployment
- Related job losses disproportionately affected low-wage workers, women, and workers of color
- Workers without a high school degree were 10% more likely to have stopped working
- 38% aged 25-35 have earned at least an Associate degree, 44% nationally
- Minorities are earning degrees at lower rates than their white peers
- Need data collection via extending PEIMS into postsecondary
- Need to model safe and secure agreements to foster information sharing between instructions
- Need incentives for postsecondary collaborative partnerships that focus on postsecondary enrollment with a focus on equity
What is needed in order to identify and address gaps in existing data collection methods? What improvements could be made to alleviate ‘summer melt’ and to facilitate streamlined student advising?
- Need to provide actionable data to students and adults supporting them
- Should enact personalized texting with reminders, extend high school counselor/college advisor contracts to be year-round and provide advisors access to process reports (like Dallas College)
- The Legislature should review student outcomes of Texas College Bridge and consider scaling the program
- Program provides free remedial online classes; upon completion students can directly enroll in college-level courses with partnered institutions
How can the state meet the goals of 60x30TX?
- Only 23% of State’s graduates go on to achieve a postsecondary credential within 6 years
- Completion figures drop “drastically” for students of color or those experiencing poverty
- Regions like San Antonio, Houston, Tyler, and Fort Wort are focusing on students who have been historically under-represented in higher education
- Legislators should incentivize regional collaboration through grants for those meeting postsecondary access quality benchmarks
- Need dedicated staff to support regional efforts, data infrastructure and info-sharing agreements, personalized student support, student support teams
- Commit partnership submitted data concerning COVID-19’s effect on the labor market, changes in demand for HE, and projected data for improvements to postsecondary attainment
- Cannot meet the goals of 60X30TX without a strong and diverse teacher workforce
- Pre-pandemic, participation in educator preparation programs had not recovered to pre-recession levels
- Rising retirements, health concerns and financial insecurity are likely to fuel ongoing turnover among current educators
- Need to explore the following opportunities:
- Expanding the capacity of the current workforce with aspiring teachers; can provide tutoring/small group instruction to families who do not have access to such resources
- Can potentially augment virtual/hybrid learning by providing essential academic support
- Aspiring teachers nearing the completion of their pre-service development can partner with certified teachers to team-teach
- Expanding the pipeline of future Texas teachers
- State should set numeric goals at state, regional and district levels to increase access to strong and diverse teachers
- State should establish regional consortiums with partnerships between school districts, postsecondary institutions, high-quality EPPs and others to impact Grow Your Own strategies
- State should continue targeted financial aid and loan forgiveness for aspiring teachers
- State should invest in minority serving institutions and those preparing teachers in rural/content shortage areas
- State should increase public HBCU funding to match or exceed investments in public flagships
- State should explore funding opportunities to support the highest-producing Hispanic-Serving Institutions
- The state should consider how to create a pathway for paraprofessionals and teacher assistants to continue serving and being paid while being enrolled in a teacher-preparation program
- Especially in Bilingual/Dual Language and Special Education
- 60X30TX plan should include other industry recognized credentials and certificates
- Overviews the unemployment rate in the Gulf Coast region during the pandemic; unemployment rate reached 14.3% but has since stabilized
- Majority of pandemic-related job losses were in personal care, retail trade and sales
- Unemployment claims for advanced degree earners; those with a bachelor’s degree or higher in education or health care faired significantly worse
- Job posting data from March to July remained high; CS, trucking and nursing had high demand
- Current trends suggest the state is at risk for falling short of the 60X30TX goal
- Legislative action could expand the reach of work-based learning through the following ways:
- Incentivize Partnerships that include education and employers through grant programming
- Provide employers that engage in such partnerships tax incentives
- Increase funding for dual credit, both SCH and CE, when partnered with employers
- Create alternative funding mechanisms for dual credit programming that allows “ADA Seat Time” for work-based learning
- State should ease restrictions on funding that disallow employers and colleges to be nimble to the changing labor market
- State should incentivize projects that do not follow traditional grant programs
- With partners in education, employers, community-based organizations, and workforce boards
- Overviews the history of Texas community college service delivery areas; indicates factors that impact the efficacy of service areas
- Provides a list of factors the legislature should examine concerning service delivery areas
- Notes statutory changes to a community college service delivery area warrants careful examination by the Legislature; including an interim study
What is the current capability to handle an influx of Texans seeking re-training or upskilling
opportunities through state programs?
- Has assisted numerous institutions and organizations to develop content for college readiness, credentialing, and certification programs
What improvements could be made to alleviate ‘summer melt’ and to facilitate streamlined student advising?
- Development of bridge programs has been successful; especially for low-income and minority students
- ‘Summer melt’ felt the hardest in mathematics; student loses 2.5 months of knowledge
What improvements could be made to alleviate ‘summer melt’ and to facilitate streamlined student advising?
- Recommends creation of a bridge incentive program that creates partnerships between IHEs and K-12s and/or nonprofits
- Recommends partnerships between IHEs and K-12s to build strong dual enrollment programs
- Recommends creation of an incentive program for IHEs for meeting certain thresholds for persistence/completion rates with educationally disadvantaged students
- Recommends simplification of the process to apply and enroll in community college
- Recommends streamlining the financial aid application process including:
- Processing applications sooner, requiring a standard awarding letter for students, and adding more information on ApplyTexas
- Recommends requiring colleges to offer meningitis testing rather than dropping those who have not completed it from enrollment
- Should be offered in the 11th grade and included on the high school transcript
- Recommends the state provide greater, affordable digital access; gaps in K-12 and postsecondary
What changes, if any, are needed to align data collection between the THECB, TWC, and TEA in order to collect consistent metrics?
- Recommends creation of a standard FERPA waiver to be used across all IHEs and K-12
- Recommends assigning one student-identifying number that follows a student from K-12 through higher education
Texas Tech University
What is needed in order to identify and address gaps in existing data collection methods?
- Only one census date for the long semester enrollment creates issues with being able to offer variable semester lengths
- Shorter semesters, 8-week, would allow students to double the number of hours taken within the same amount of time
What improvements could be made to alleviate ‘summer melt’ and to facilitate streamlined student advising?
- Provides an overview of how the college has worked to enhance digital communications with incoming students and parents
- ‘Summer melt’ centers around the student being able to pay tuition, difficulty completing college paperwork, academic placement tests, housing applications, among others
- First generation and low-income students are more likely to experience ‘summer melt’
- Overviews the universities’ strategies to combat this
Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center
What is the current capability to handle an influx of Texans seeking re-training or upskilling
opportunities through state programs?
- Offer several accelerated second-degree options for students who seek to complete a new degree or in a compressed amount of time
- Capabilities to handle increases in student enrollment rely on state funding, expansion of program size allowances, and approval of program expansions to new sites or campuses
- Seeking approval to expand its traditional Bachelor of Science in Nursing to another campus
Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center El Paso
How can the state meet the goals of 60x30TX?
- Need ongoing state support and appropriated resources
How has the pandemic impacted our state’s workforce needs?
- Demands for trained healthcare professionals has been amplified
- Includes nurses, physicians, dentists, and biomedical researchers
- Exposed healthcare shortages in underserved regions and underrepresented populations; communities in the US-Mexico border region
- HRIs now looking to expand capacity and increase program offerings
Is there legislative action that could help expand work-based learning?
- As students are experiencing unprecedented financial challenges, legislative actions needed to help students manage the cost of educational programs
- Need expansion of loan forgiveness for health care professionals, health care researchers, financial aid, dual-credit, and credit-for-experience programs
- Need additional support for graduate medical education to increase medical workforce by keeping graduates in Texas
What is the current capability to handle an influx of Texans seeking re-training or upskilling opportunities through state programs?
- Working to expand degree program offerings; outlines degree options and residency programs currently available
What is needed in order to identify and address gaps in existing data collection methods?
- Recommend surveying Texas institutions to assess gaps in data collection methods
What changes, if any, are needed to align data collection between the THECB, TWC and TEA
in order to collect consistent metrics?
- Need improved association and linkage of databases; need a central website for accessibility of data
- Need mechanisms to track students from entry into education programs into the workforce
How can the state meet the goals of 60x30TX?
- Need to increase the college-going rate among high school graduates
- Need to develop more effective partnerships between academic departments of colleges and universities with high school and community colleges
- Need to enhance industry-based degrees and certificate programs at colleges and universities
- Need to enhance funding for state educational grants
How has the pandemic impacted our state’s workforce needs?
- Has created new categorizations of “essential workers,” a largescale shift to telework and skyrocketing unemployment
- Need to develop high quality jobs with a skilled workforce
Is there legislative action that could help expand work-based learning?
- Need to fund institutional efforts in work-based learning
- Universities should partner with outside enterprises to allow students to build relationships that would lead to job opportunities
What is the current capability to handle an influx of Texans seeking re-training or upskilling
opportunities through state programs?
- Need or skills training centers at state universities that provide long-term and short-term re-training programs
What is needed in order to identify and address gaps in existing data collection methods?
- Need to review current data collection methods; should include research professionals for universities statewide
What improvements could be made to alleviate ‘summer melt’ and to facilitate streamlined
student advising?
- Academic mentors/advisors can aid; students in dual credit programs need to be accepted early in the university/college and not have to re-submit an application
- Community college students need to be accepted early into a university
- Intrusive college/university advising can aid; successful in the community college sector
What changes, if any, are needed to align data collection between the THECB, TWC and
TEA in order to collect consistent metrics?
- Need a comprehensive review
Texas Association of Workforce Boards
- Should maintain and bolster programs administered by TWC in collaboration with WDBs and higher education providers including:
- Skills Development Fund, Skills Development Fund COVID-10 Special Training Initiative, Skills for Small Business Program, and Career and Education Outreach Program
- Should incentivize the development of additional fast-start fast-finish upskilling programs
- Should expand apprenticeships and internships for high school and post-secondary students and incentivize/remove barriers for business participation
- Recommends providing employer tax credits for employers providing internships for high school and community college students that meet demand occupations in the local region
- Recommends increasing funding of TWC’s Apprenticeship Training Program
- Recommends increased apprenticeship/internship opportunities for those with disabilities
- Should incentivize the development of apprenticeships/internships for veterans
- Should require college credit and credit toward industry certifications be awarded for demonstrated skills arising from the military training of veterans
- Should expand dual course study programs, certificate programs and workforce continuing education programs at high schools and middle school levels
- Should require contact hour reimbursement for community colleges offering dual credit programs toward recognized industry certifications that do not involve college credit courses
- Should develop Statewide Articulation Agreements to ensure students taking dual credit receive full credit when transferring among state education institutions
- Should increase the availability of Career & Technology Education programs in public community and technical colleges and ISDs
- Should maintain or increase state funding for Texas State Technical College and Texas Community Colleges
- Should consider and adopt strategies identified in the Tri-Agency 2020 Commissioners’ Report and those identified in TEA’s Texas Regional Pathways Network
- Should work with TWC and WDBs to encourage increased funding of federal support programs
- Provides an attachment that highlights key workforce development programs
Texas Association of Manufacturers
How can the state meet the goals of 60x30TX?
- Need to align K-12 through postsecondary programs and training to meet Texas’ workforce needs
- ISDs need clear signals in the accountability system that certifications started in high school and finished later are valued by employers
- ISDs should be conferring certifications and associate’s degrees alongside high school graduations
- Should not cut technical training and workforce programs; support the Texas State Technical College model of outcomes-based funding
- Supports TWC’s Skills Development Fund and JET Fund
How has the pandemic impacted our state’s workforce needs?
- Many technical and skilled trades programs must have in-person training and skills demonstration verification to be effective
- The Federal Government’s CISA Essential Critical Infrastructure Guidance should teach students and families about the stability of industries that must remain open
Do current community college district boundaries align with the needs of the communities they serve?
- Geographical boundaries of community colleges can be barriers to quality programs; especially outside of authorized taxing districts
- Should allow a community the first right of refusal to meet those needs for employers seeking to collaborate with a higher education partner
What is needed in order to identify and address gaps in existing data collection methods? What changes, if any, are needed to align data collection between the THECB, TWC and TEA in order to collect consistent metrics?
- Agencies must collect, share and distribute robust data on careers, wages, education and program outcomes to serve employers and inform students on ROI
How can the state meet the goals of 60x30TX?
- Texas currently falls 16% behind the 60X30TX goals
- Should have student-facing program report cards and living wage designations for all postsecondary programs
- Course pathways should be made more direct and clearer for students by adopting statewide meta-majors and expanding co-requisite remediation options for students
- Credit transfer can be made more seamless through common course numbering within higher education regions
- TEA, THECB, and TWC should integrate data collection/sharing by adopting complementary goals in support of educational attainment
- Should expand the definition of credentials to include privately issued and create attainment sub-goals around attainment of workforce-aligned degrees/credentials
- State should differentiate pricing and financial aid options for degrees and credentials most needed in the workforce are the least expensive to obtain
How has the pandemic impacted our state’s workforce needs?
- Job losses have not been distributed evenly across populations; those with lower educational attainment are disproportionally affected by job losses
- Workforce development efforts such as reskilling, upskilling, and credentialing programs have become critical
Is there legislative action that could help expand work-based learning?
- State agencies, higher education institutions, and employers should collaborate to develop credit and credentialing opportunities connected to internship
- Should evaluate regulatory barriers that limit uptake of apprenticeship programs and consider the role of occupational licensing reform
- Should re-examine the objectives of work-study programs and consider aligning student positions to meaningful skills and experiences for the workforce
- P-TECH opportunities should be expanded to communities that can support them; need a landscape analysis
Do current community college district boundaries align with the needs of the communities they serve? If not, how should they be altered and why will those changes improve educational opportunities for Texans?
- Community college district boundaries do not consistently align with needs of local communities
- Is a misalignment between community college taxing districts and service districts
- Counties should be taxed relative to their use of local community colleges
- Community college districts should align programming and ensure degrees and credentials are offered to as many interested students as possible
- References Dallas County Community College District’s recent consolidation into Dallas College to ensue transfer of credits
What is the current capability to handle an influx of Texans seeking re-training or upskilling opportunities through state programs?
- Texas does not currently have robust data tracking, evaluation, and accountability systems to maximize limited resources
- THECB and TWC could build a dashboard to capture the size of regional participation in programs that are workplace based/ include a community or technical college partner
- Need timely, skills-based regional workforce data to inform program offerings and curriculum
- TWC should adopt value-based metrics based on participant employment and earning outcomes to identify programs that are/are not working
- Such as those adopted by Texas State Technical Colleges
What is needed in order to identify and address gaps in existing data collection methods?
- Regional workforce data should include skills-based workforce needs and nuanced, research-based workforce projection
- University of Texas’s Education Research Center holds potential but is not widely accessible
- State agencies should utilize workforce data sets, such as those from Burning Glass, to better identify and plan for workforce demands
What improvements could be made to alleviate ‘summer melt’ and to facilitate streamlined student advising?
- Last session, HB 3 aimed to address contributing factors to ‘summer melt’
- State agencies should build student facing tools that ensure a smooth transition to college
- Includes online advising resources, outcomes-oriented data, and course crosswalks show which credits earned in high school apply to specific college courses
- Alternative models of college remediation, like co-requisite and summer remediation should be emphasized
What changes, if any, are needed to align data collection between the THECB, TWC and TEA in order to collect consistent metrics?
- Data should be integrated between systems to illustrate progress around shared, complementary goals
- TEA and THECB should identify key benchmarks that will ensure graduating high school students enter postsecondary programs academically ready for success
- TWC could identify populations at risk of job loss and set goals around credential attainment and upskilling
- Data access to valuable ERC data should be improved for stakeholders around Texas
- Overviews unemployment rates by educational attainment, UI claims, wage comparison by educational attainment and employment and earning outcomes for participants of TWC’s Workforce Development Programs
Do current community college district boundaries align with the needs of the communities they serve? If not, how should they be altered and why will those changes improve educational opportunities for Texans?
- Supports last session’s suggestion that community college service areas should be reexamined
- Issue is that only a portion of residents in the service area are obligated to pay a property tax to fund the operation of the community college
- Current system continues to place pressure on the residents in a community college’s taxing boundary as state funding has decreased since SB 397 was implemented
- A system setup to require individuals to voluntarily vote themselves to be taxed is setup to fail
- Unequal tax burden is magnified as communities/subdivisions expand outside a population center’s jurisdictional boundaries; new areas are not included in the tax base
- Propose that the legislature require all property within a statutorily defined service area to be included within the taxing boundaries of the current community college
- Would naturally drive down the property tax rate of every community college
- Legislature could consider adding a provision that prohibits a community college from annexing into their taxing boundary an area that is within another community college’s service area
- Provides a chart of Lee College’s service area and an overview of legislative changes concerning community college annexations and service areas