Jobs requiring some postsecondary education are expected to grow faster than average during the next decade, yet too many workers lack the skills and credentials essential for these twenty-first century jobs.  Addressing this mismatch is becoming an economic imperative for workers, employers, and the country as a whole.

The Joyce Foundation launched the Shifting Gears initiative in 2006 to help five Midwest states address this problem.  These states ― Illinois, Indiana, Minnesota, Ohio and Wisconsin ― are re-engineering adult education, workforce development and postsecondary education policies to support economic growth and expand job opportunities for low-skilled workers in the Midwest.

Because Shifting Gears focuses on state-led systemic change, this website is directed toward state policymakers and others across the country seeking to transform state education and training policies to increase economic opportunity for low-skilled adults. 

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What’s New

Shifting Gears partners, Brandon Roberts and Derek Price, have recently published Educating Adult Workers: The Shifting Gears Approach to Systems Change.  This initiative-sponsored report describes how Shifting Gears is supporting and guiding state policy systems change through the use of proactive coaching, evaluative feedback, and tools such as a structured policy agenda and action plan and logic model.  (January 2009)

Shifting Gears State teams conducted a cross-site meeting on December 15-16 to discuss their plans to improve their state data alignment across system. View the presentations and meeting materials for all sessions.  (December 2009)

The Shifting Gears initiative is featured in a new report from the Center for American Progress, Strong Students, Strong Workers: Models for Student Success through Workforce Development and Community College Partnerships.  (December 2009)