The Plus 50 Initiative: Executive Summary of the Year One Evaluation Report

The American Association of Community Colleges' (AACC) Plus 50 Initiative is a three-year initiative launched in June 2008 and funded by The Atlantic Philanthropies. It was created to support a pilot group of two-year institutions to develop or expand campus programs that engage plus 50 learners. The initiative focuses on three types of programmatic implementation: workforce training and career development; learning and enrichment; and volunteering. Programs also include the services and supports that allow plus 50 learners better access to community college offerings. AACC engaged LFA Group to conduct the Plus 50 evaluation. LFA developed a mixed-method evaluation designed to collect both quantitative and qualitative data to assess the initiative and support continuous improvements over the course of the three-year initiative. The primary elements measured include grantees' implementation progress, participant satisfaction, and capturing lessons learned and promising practices from the first year of the initiative. To measure the many components of the initiative, LFA collected data using several methods: conducting interviews with program staff at each of the grantee colleges and with AACC staff; asking grantees to complete program implementation data collection worksheets; and partnering with grantees to administer participant surveys for the students taking part in Plus 50 programming. Findings from the evaluation are discussed in this report. (Contains 8 exhibits and 8 footnotes.) [This report was prepared for the Plus 50 Initiative and The Atlantic Philanthropies by the Learning for Action (LFA) Group. For the full report, "Plus 50: Year One Evaluation Report," see ED523962.]