Rethinking Basic Skills Education in California

California’s future prosperity and competitiveness depends to an important degree on our ability to increase the share of basic skills students who attain a community college degree or certificate and/or who transfer to and graduate from a four-year institution. The danger, as we make framing decisions about basic skills education, is that we beggar our future both by underfunding the basic skills system and by failing to learn the lessons of recent practice and research about what works and what doesn’t.

This brief suggests key principles and strategies policymakers should keep in mind when examining competing policy recommendations. The principles are resource adequacy (maintaining funding and improving efficiency); transparency (ensuring that students understand the full range of their options); and acceleration (organizing institutions, programs, and courses to facilitate timely student completion). The strategies are integration of the Adult Education and CCC basic skills programs; linking basic skills programs to career pathways; allowing students to pursue a variety of strategies for addressing their basic skills needs, rather than rigidly defining them by “levels”; and providing students adequate counseling, peer group support, and financial aid.