Below is a collection of “TWC Transmittals” from the Adult Education and Literacy State Director/staff  that contains general grant-related information, policy clarifications and helpful guidance for AEL-funded programs. This compilation includes select TWC Transmittals dated April, 2018 forward and is updated regularly as new TWC Transmittals are generated. Messages are in date order beginning with the most recent correspondence. To help find topics, you can use your browser’s “Find” function (command + f) to find words in titles listed on this page.

2022

View past archives

July 28, 2022

Watch the Meeting

July 14, 2022

Resources: Watch Meeting | PD Plan Template | Agenda

June 16, 2022

Resources: Watch Meeting | Call Draft | Attention DL Students | Attention DL Students (Spanish)

May 5, 2022

Resources: Watch Meeting | Agenda | TEAMS 5.8.3 Release Notes | TRUE Workforce Announcement

April 21, 2022

Resources: Watch Meeting | Agenda

April 4, 2022

Resources: Watch Meeting | Agenda

March 24, 2022

Resources: Watch meeting

February 17, 2022

This transmittal is to notify AEL grantees of two public review and comment periods, as described in this message.
TRI-AGENCY STATE WORKFORCE GOALS OPEN FOR PUBLIC REVIEW AND COMMENT (comment period ends March 2, 2022)
WIOA COMBINED STATE PLAN TWO-YEAR MODIFICATION FOR PROGRAM YEARS 2020-2O23 OPEN FOR PUBLIC REVIEW AND COMMENT (comment period ends March 17, 2022)

TRI-AGENCY STATE WORKFORCE GOALS OPEN FOR PUBLIC REVIEW AND COMMENT

Tri-Agency Workforce Initiative - Linking Education and Workforce: Spurring Economic Growth Across Texas
As directed by House Bill 3767, 87th Texas Legislature (Regular Session), the Tri-Agency Workforce Initiative presents state workforce development goals for public review and comment. The state workforce development goals address the three statewide priorities listed below and identified in the 2020 Tri-Agency Workforce Initiative report, Linking Education and Workforce: Spurring Economic Growth Across Texas.
You may review the proposed goals and provide public comment at Tri-Agency State Workforce Goals. You may also go directly to the public comment form at Tri-Agency Workforce Initiative Statewide Workforce Development Goals Public Comment Form. 

Public comment will close on March 2, 2022. If you have questions about the public comment form or need assistance, contact triagency.feedback@twc.texas.gov.

ABOUT THE INITIATIVE:
Governor Greg Abbott established the Tri-Agency Workforce Initiative in March 2016. Through the Initiative, the Commissioners of the Texas Education Agency (TEA), the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board (THECB), and the Texas Workforce Commission (TWC) work together to help Texas grow in economic prosperity.

TRI-AGENCY PRIORITIES
Pathways
Support efficient and flexible pathways to earning degrees, certificates, and other credentials linked to high-wage, in-demand jobs. 
Support
Ensure students receive the supports necessary to succeed at all stages of their educations and in their transitions to the workforce.
Infrastructure
Create a robust infrastructure for interagency collaboration around common goals, data, and processes to ensure improved student outcomes and meet employers’ needs. 

WIOA COMBINED STATE PLAN TWO-YEAR MODIFICATION FOR PROGRAM

YEARS 2020-2O23 OPEN FOR PUBLIC REVIEW AND COMMENT

Texas Workforce Commission’s (TWC) Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA) Combined State Plan (CSP) for Program Years 2020–2023 was submitted to the US Department of Labor and the US Department of Education on April 13, 2020, and approved on June 26, 2020. WIOA §676.145(a)(1) requires states to submit modifications to a CSP at the conclusion of the first two years of a four-year plan to “reflect changes in labor market and economic conditions or other factors affecting the implementation of the Combined State Plan.”
On February 15, 2022, TWC’s three-member Commission (Commission) approved the required Two-Year Modification of the CSP for WIOA covering Program Years 2020–2023 for posting for public comment.
As part of the submission-and-approval process, TWC seeks public comment and input regarding the development of the proposed modification to the CSP. The plan modification covers the following WIOA core programs and two optional programs:

• Adult, dislocated worker, and youth programs under Title I of WIOA
• Adult Education and Family Literacy Act program under Title II of WIOA
• Wagner-Peyser Act Employment Service program as amended by Title III of WIOA
• Vocational Rehabilitation program under Title IV of WIOA
• Senior Community Service Employment Program
• Wagner-Peyser Agricultural Outreach plan

The plan is divided into a strategic section, an operational section, a waiver requests section, and four program sections.
Select the following links for each section of the plan:

• Executive Summary, Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act Combined State Plan for Program Years 2020–2023, Two-Year Plan Modification
• WIOA Combined State Plan, Texas Workforce Commission, Program Years 2020–2023, Two-Year Modifications, I.-II., Strategic Elements
• WIOA CSP 2020-2023 Two-Year Modifications, III., Waiver Requests
• WIOA CSP 2020-2023 Two-Year Modifications, III.-VI., Operational Planning Elements and Adult/Displaced Workers/Youth
• WIOA CSP 2020-2023 Two-Year Modifications, VI., AEL
• WIOA CSP 2020-2023 Two-Year Modifications, VI., Agricultural Outreach Plan
• WIOA CSP 2020-2023 Two-Year Modifications, VI., VR
• WIOA CSP 2020-2023 Two-Year Modifications, VII., SCSEP

The Commission welcomes your input. The plan will be posted for public comment for 30 days. The deadline to submit comments is March 17, 2022.

Submit comments by email to: workforce.editing@twc.texas.gov.

January 28, 2022

The attached letter, signed by TWC’s Workforce Development Division Director, Courtney Arbour, notifies Texas’ AEL provider network of a training opportunity sponsored by the Department of Education, in collaboration with the research firm, Mathematica.  

Mathematica will hold an informational webinar on February 3rd at 10:30-11:30am CST, and interested providers may access the webinar directly by clicking “Join Meeting” or links below.

For questions about the study and the webinar, please contact Linda Rosenberg at 609-936-2762 or AdultEdStudy@mathematica-mpr.com.

Thank you for your consideration.

Resources: Department of Ed - Letter of Support - Carreer Navigator Training and Study | Connecting Adults to Success - Brochure

January 27, 2022

View the meeting

Resources: TEAMS 5.8.1 Full Release Notes | Bi-weekly Call Agenda | Gas Voucher Request Form | Transportation Services Student Contract | Community Action: Standard Operating Procedure for Transportation Support

2021

View past archives

December 15, 2021

Good afternoon -- Attached for your review is the final draft of AEL Letter 06-21, “High School Equivalency Subsidy Program for Program Year 2021–2022” and its attachment.

Please email comments to workforce.editing@twc.texas.gov by 3:30 p.m. on Friday, December 17, 2021.

If no comments are received by the 48-hour deadline, we will assume that the documents are approved without comment.

Resources: AEL 06-21 Draft HSE Subsidy Letter | HSE Voucher Distribution

October 20, 2021

This week’s Bi-weekly provider call is cancelled. Next call will be November 4th, 2021.

Attach: Please find responses for questions related to Performance Based Funding (PBF) passed by the Commission on September 28th, 2021 and PBF Splits approved by Commission June 8th, 2021.

Also below are the PD Happenings for Oct/Nov

• October 22, 2021 – 11:30 am CDT – Tech and Tell: Turning Your Classroom with Video Discussions - Flip Grid (90 minutes)
• October 25, 2021 – noon CDT – Manager Monday: 12 Overlooked Practices Great Leaders Develop that Poor Leaders Don't
• October 25-27, 2021 – NCFL Conference (virtual) http://conference.familieslearning.org/
• October 27, 2021 – 13:30 pm CDT -  Workforce Wednesday: Personal & Workplace Success Skills Library
• October 29, 2021 – 9 – noon CDT – Gulf Coast Literacy Symposium – virtual – registration https://www.literacytexas.org/calendar/2021-gulf-coast/
• November 9, 2021 – noon CDT - Teacher Tuesday: Introducing the Texas AEL Family and Civics Content Standards
• November 16, 2021 – 9 -3:30 CDT – TWC Preconference

Introducing Contextualized Video Lessons and Resources for Adult Students and Instructors – Adult Ed Med - https://www.adultedmed.com/ . MORE TO COME on how to use these new resources!

Resources: PBF and Targets | PBF FAQ | PBF Split

July 7, 2021: May Performance & Other Updates

I hope this finds you well. Wanted to convey a few items as we slide into mid-July. The Commission is committed to focusing efforts and funding to end the middle skills gap through comprehensive career pathways. We play a mighty role in this narrative as so many lower skilled Texans long for opportunities to earn higher wages in careers that feed our Texas economy. You will continue to see a commitment from TWC AEL to review and revise our approaches to ensure that we are implementing innovative quality models and programs that help support our customers reaching their goals. With your continued feedback, I expect to see some of our early policies evolve over the next year as we evaluate/reflect. I also anticipate more opportunities to demonstrate and create scalable and sustainable career pathway models.

May Performance
Attached are the May performance numbers. Hopefully, you are feeling the Covid veil lift in your respective institutions and looking forward to a year of growth.

Target Negotiations
Adam Leonard and I will be walking through the target negotiation tool and instructions on the July 15th bi weekly call—your presence is appreciated! We will present to you the rationale behind some of the changes based on new streamlined budgets/amendments for Y4, which include adjustments to cost per, less enrollment target categories, and greater flexibility. We still have state level targets that we must account for, thus you will still see TWC recommendations, but as always you can negotiate those targets based on local needs and opportunities. We hope to conclude all negotiations and TWC approvals by July 31st.

Carryforward Target Negotiations
Once data and balances are reported for June, we will begin a second round of negotiations for the Y3 carryforward balances—if you spent all your money or the balance is de minimis, this may not apply to you. Tentatively, we will kick off carryforward negotiations first week of August, different tool, relatively same instructions and process. We hope to have these finalized by August 6th, so shorter turnaround time.

Last but not least, TEAMS PY 21-22 is OPEN! We typically wait to open TEAMS until after DSO, reason being—there are some old business rules that are attached to PY. These rules sometimes make it difficult to complete EOY reporting in one year, once we open a new year. Let us know if you are experiencing any issues with closing out your PY 20-21 data @ TEAMS.technicalassistance@twc.texas.gov

Looking forward to PY 21-22!

Resources: MPR Summary | ELF Gains by Domain July 1, 2020 - May 31, 2021 | Enrollments July 1, 2020 - May 31, 2021 | Measurable Skills Gain Contracted July 1, 2020 - May 31, 2021

May 27, 2021: April Performance and Other Updates

I hope all of you are pushing for strong summer enrollments. The last year has been filled with many challenges and great success. I hope you are willing to share your insights with your peers at the upcoming Fall Institute Aug. 31-Sept 2. There is still time to submit a proposal through May 31st! Thank you to all the early submitters!

WII Grant Close Out
Reminder that Workforce Integration Initiative (WII) grant will end June 30th, 2021. I would encourage you to work with your fiscal/finance staff to determine expenses that can be charged to this grant instead of your Core grant. The Commission approved this funding to address a need that was expressed by the field/providers and I would hate to have large balances when I know that most of you have dedicated expenses/purchases (follow-up staff, hardware, software, licenses, etc) that are intended/allowed for the WII grant. If you have any questions, please contact us.

AEL Letter – 48 hr review process
TWC offers a 48 hr review period for policy letters prior to publication. I will start sharing these with you when the 48 hour review period begins. There are explicit instructions for where to send comments. Your comments are taken into consideration prior to the publication of the letter to determine if we need to further clarify any portion of the policy or make any edits prior to publication . This level of transparency and opportunity is important for smooth implementation of new policy and I hope you will take advantage of the option. Attached is the first letter I would like to share “AEL Enrollment & Data Validation Elements”.

In the future, the email notification will include the normal “TWC Transmittal:” subject line and the body will look like this:

48-Hour Review: AEL Letter 04-21, "AEL Enrollment and Data Validation Requirements" and Attachment 1 (Comments Due Friday at 1pm)

Attached for your review is the final draft of AEL Letter 04-21, "AEL Enrollment and Data Validation Requirements" and its attachment.

Please email comments to workforce.editing@twc.texas.gov by 1 p.m. on Friday, May 28, 2021. (Please do not email your Program Specialist or AEL TA.)

If no comments are received by the 48-hour deadline, we will assume that the documents are approved without comment.

April Performance
Attached are the April performance reports. We will likely not meet our state performance numbers. I know that data does not always provide a clear picture of the energy being dedicated at the local level, but we have to continue to strengthen our efforts leading into next year. If you do not currently have a strong implementation plan for summer classes or need some assistance from us or peers to assist with creating one—please reach out. There are so many in need of your services and we have to be open and available to meet those needs. We also have to be looking for opportunities to outreach, recruit, and expand our partnerships to ensure that local community leaders know what services we have to offer. WE CAN DO THIS! I am trying to attach myself to every opportunity to talk about AEL and funnel customers into your doors.  

I am looking forward to a new program year filled with innovation and opportunity to grow our program. We will soon be kicking off Year 4 of this grant cycle and we are already planning and authoring our next RFA. Thank you all for your hard work this year—I see you—and can’t wait to share some exciting updates for Y4 at our Fall institute!

Resources: Enrollment and Data validation Elements | Enrollment Source Documentation | MPR Summary Report | Gains By Domain (Jul - Apr) | Enrollments (Jul - Apr) | MSG Contracted (Jul - Apr) | MSG Management Report (Jul - Apr)

May 20, 2021: AEL Bi-Weekly Call

Watch the presentation

Resources: Grantee Signature Authority List | Call Agenda | Letter | EOY Checklist | Survey

March 25, 2021: Bi-Weekly Call

Watch the presentation

Resources: Response to Public Comments | Call Agenda

March 19, 2021: TEAMS 5.6 Release Notes

Dear Grantees,

I hope you are all well and getting ready for beautiful weekend. Attached you will find the TEAMS 5.6 Release Notes. The TEAMS release this morning has two user facing defects that I have been discussing with you over the last several months.

1. Duplicate Records—In an effort to combat the large amount of duplicate records in our system, we have created some controls when searching for and adding new participants to the system. You will have to search by First/Last Name and DOB. This will be an inconvenience, but necessary in order to control the enormous amount of duplication we see in the system that impacts our data integrity and performance. Training staff to utilize other features available in the system (reports) to pull up student information that may not be readily available, like Participant IDs or DOB, is highly recommended.
2. Exception Errors When Pulling Reports—This fix should allow you to now pull reports and filter by Participant variables (homelessness, ELL, foster youth, etc..) We are still working on some issues concerning the education status. This may have to come out in a future release. Please continue to report any issues.

In the next bi-weekly call, I will ask about the new requirements and get some feedback. Hope you all have a great weekend.

Resources: TEAMS 5.6 Release Notes

March 8, 2021: January Performance & HiSet Update

Dear Grantees,

Happy Monday! I hope you had a fabulous weekend. I wanted to provide the January Performance Reports and introduce some new reports! Also, brief update on HiSet contract.

Report: “EFL Gains By Domain”
This report shows how well participants are post-testing across each domain. The report only includes participants who have both a pre and post test. The student count is duplicated in each content area. For example, if Jane took a TABE 11/12 Reading, Language and Math pre and post test, she will be represented in each content area.

What It Can Tell You

1. How well students are doing when being post-tested in each content area in each EFL
2. Specific EFL that may require some additional analysis to improve, move student to progress
3. Which EFL are impacting your MSG outcomes—remember the more students who are not passing post test in EFL with higher targets, the greater the impact to your outcomes
4. You can use the MSG Management Report to see this at a provider/site/class level

How Can You Use It

1. Determine PD needs for specific content areas that need improvement
2. Determine PD for instructional strategies for students at certain EFL’s
3. Determine the impact of students in certain levels/content areas to your overall MSG outcome/success rates

Report: “MSG Gain PBF”
This report will tell you how you are doing each month as we move to the end of Q3 for the PBF Measure 2. The report will include the students who reached ‘participant’ status by 12/31/2020 (Den) and the number of those who have achieved at least one MSG by end of the reporting month. You have until March 31,2021 to ensure that those students achieve an MSG. Some of you have already met the measure—great job!

State Performance
Challenges with Covid and ongoing issues from inclement weather have hurt our enrollment numbers drastically. We have served  34,131 students and only 26,501 of them have reached 12+ hours in our program. To give you some comparison, last year in January our number enrolled was 56,421, that is a 47% less than usual. I would encourage you to review these performance reports carefully and see what your peers are doing—there are bright spots out there.
As you can imagine, with so many Texans in need of our services, we have to be diligent in continuing to provide services while being safe. I wanted to thank you for sending in your monthly surveys, these inform us of the constraints happening locally and help us determine need for state level initiatives that may be needed to support service delivery.

HiSet Update
We have a contract! We are close to getting vouchers from HiSet and will get those distributed to Grantees asap. Important Note: All HiSet tests must be taken before August 31,2021! We will also be making some tweaks to our AEL HSE Letter –coming soon!

We will NOT be extending February data sign off (March 15th) unless there is a system issue/outage or unforeseen circumstance.

Resources: Gains by Domain | MPR Summary Report | Measurable Skill Gains PBF Report | Enrollments | Measurable Skill Gains Contracted

February 8, 2021: TALAE PRE-CONFERENCE & TWC ANNUAL CONFERENCE -- CALL FOR PROPOSALS

Dear Grantees,

Happy Monday! I hope this email finds you well. Attached is the final agenda for the TALAE Pre-conference. The morning session is the AEL Best in Class Awards and Business meeting—open to all. The afternoon is reserved for those who are in these roles:

• Directors
• Performance Accountability Lead
• Quality Assurance Lead

You can register for the Pre-conference or regular TALAE sessions here: https://www.talae.org/registration.html

Reminder: CALL FOR PROPOSALS DUE FEB. 12th! TWC Annual Workforce Conference Nov. 17 – 19, 2021
We have had many innovative projects launch over the past year and would love for you to highlight your partnerships with local Workforce Boards/VR, community colleges, and employers! Virtual services, including how to conduct comprehensive intake, serve students, and conduct follow-up remotely is also a great topic with much interest. Time to shine, AEL! For consortium—As always, please coordinate with your TWC AEL grantee on proposal submissions.

As we look forward to the new year, and in preparation for the upcoming 2021 Annual Workforce Conference, scheduled for Nov. 17 – 19, 2021, at the Marriott Marquis Houston in Houston, Texas,

If you have any questions about the TWC conference or proposal submittal, contact Carolyn S. Zubeldia at (512) 463-5556 or carolyn.zubeldia@twc.texas.gov ; Julia Mercado at (512) 463-9936 or julia.mercado@twc.texas.gov

Resources: TALAE Agenda

January 14, 2021: Bi-Weekly Call

View presentation

Resources: Grantee Targets Briefing | MAWAE Fact Sheet | MAWAE Flyer Template | MAWAE Social Media Posts | Call Agenda