Updated December 2016
These postsecondary initiatives of the California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office (CCCCO) are state-funded assistance programs. Extended Opportunity Programs and Services (EOPS) provides academic and financial support to community college students with educational and socioeconomic barriers to college success. Cooperative Agencies Resources for Education (CARE) is administered by EOPS, and targets single parents with children under age 14 to help these individuals complete High School Equivalency programs or pursue job-relevant curriculum.
Eligible participants include California residents who are:
The California Community College Board of Governors allocates state funding to participating colleges.
Resources: Overview
EOPS/CARE could benefit from collaboration with initiatives that share their goals and have similarly aligned responsibilities.
There could be opportunity to connect services to populations identified in community colleges’ Student Equity Plans and structured career pathways. Leveraging Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act industry sector partnerships, as well as initiatives such as the Career Technical Education Incentive Grant program and Linked Learning programs, could connect participants to training for high-demand sectors and improve this industry-specific target.
Basic skills instruction and tutoring could be integrated with career technical education to provide contextualized foundational skill building, which may help this initiative take advantage of participant-focused, evidence-based practices. There is also potential to connect work-study to career pathway occupational programming to provide work-based learning opportunities.
This initiative could benefit from leveraging data across systems to capture participants’ progress benchmarks. This could help track progress through shared use of data, selection of metrics, and a commitment to formative and summative assessment to inform continuous improvement.