What's New at TWC: Upcoming Forum on Addressing
the Needs of Adults with Limited English Proficiency
The growing population of limited English Proficiency (LEP) adults is challenging both adult educators and workforce development partners to develop new strategies to ensure these customers benefit from education and employment services. In an effort to address this ever-increasing demand for quality services, the Texas Workforce Commission (TWC) is sponsoring a free, quarterly forum on the topic of serving LEP adults. The goal of the forum is to bring together two groups - workforce partners and adult education providers. TWC's Quarterly Forum follows on the heels of two important events focusing on accessibility of services for LEP adults thus proving the timeliness and urgency for collaboration.
The first event to highlight the significance of serving LEP adults was the January 5th agreement between TWC, the Texas Education Agency (TEA), the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board (THECB), and the Texas Workforce Investment Council (TWIC).1 Under this agreement, agencies are directed to engage in partnerships to strengthen the delivery of all services to LEP adults. More specifically, Senate Bill 280, Article 5 (78th Texas Legislature), directs these agencies to collaboratively develop demand-driven workplace literacy and basic skills curricula. Through these curricula, literacy service providers will be connecting employers' training needs to the employment outcomes sought by ABE students in target industries. Additionally, the TWC Commission has provided guidance to target Spanish-speaking, LEP adults using an integrated (ESL/technical training) approach that capitalizes on strategically using learners' native language to more rapidly facilitate skills acquisition while they develop the English literacy necessary for employment. The goal of this work is to improve the employability and employment outcomes of Spanish-speaking Texans in the following industries: sales and service, health care, manufacturing, and construction trades.
These state level initiatives build upon trends and guidance at the Federal level. The United States Department of Labor Employment and Training Administration (DOL-ETA), Region IV (Dallas), recently convened a conference to address the accessibility of services to LEP adults in the workforce network. During the two-day "Bridging the LEP Gap in Workforce Development" conference, special attention was focused on effective collaborations and best practices in workforce adult literacy services for LEP adults. The best examples of public-private collaborations came from industries in which curriculum design and program outcomes were driven by input from three sources: employers, literacy service providers, and employees/students. Several of those examples came from Texas: Tarrant County Workforce Development Board, Anamarc Educational Institute (El Paso), AdEdge Computer Training Center (El Paso), and Business Access (Dallas).
Who is invited to attend the free TWC Quarterly Forum on LEP adults? Employers, human resources staff, teachers, program administrators, curriculum developers, workforce board members, workforce staff and vendors...in other words, everyone who interacts with the LEP adult in either an educational or workforce setting in Texas. Highlights from the upcoming conference will include:
a) strategies for improving accessibility of services to LEP adults in One Stop centers and education services;
b) innovative Vocational English to Speakers of Other Languages (VESOL) approaches;
c) strategies for connecting employers' needs to curriculum development; and
d) models of partnerships between workforce boards and literacy service providers that meet students' employment outcome goals.
Check the TWC web site, http://www.texasworkforce.org, for more details and to register. You may also call Anson Green at (512) 936-0642 for more information.
Footnotes
1See Green, Anson. Opportunity
2 Basic Education and Workforce Development Partners Come Together
to Plan for the Future of ABE. Literacy Links,
8(2), pgs. 1-2, 10.
About the Author
Varshna N. Jackson, M.Ed., worked for many years as a teacher trainer and independent consultant throughout Texas. She continued to teach intermittently in a community-based ESL program (only taking breaks to have babies!) working with adults at all proficiency levels. She now works for TWC in Workforce Adult Literacy concentrating on employment-focused literacy initiatives.
