Policy Advocacy

ALLIES seeks to inform and influence policy through both direct advocacy and the demonstration of best practices intended to influence policy reforms.

ALLIES has successfully advocated for policies that will meet the needs of adult English language learners at the local, state and national level:

• Locally, we seek to engage city and county government agencies in a conversation around immigrant integration and best practices for serving adult English Language Learners.

• ALLIES published a white paper in 2012 advocating for regional collaboration during the development of AB86. ALLIES was subsequently used as a model of cross sector collaboration considered in the development of California’s Adult Education Block Grant program. Today there are 70 AEBG consortia of community colleges and adult schools throughout the state collaborating along the lines pioneered by ALLIES in 2011.

• At the national level, ALLIES staff serves on the Blue Ribbon Panel for the Community College Consortium for Immigrant Education and participated in a panel discussion on multi-sector collaboration at the 2016 National Immigrant Integration Conference.

The 2012-2015 Silicon Valley ALLIES initiative  continues to be considered a model for effective collaboration between workforce development boards and adult education providers.