Goodwill’s Excel Centers Bring Older Students to the Classroom

The Annie E. Casey Foun­da­tion invests in strate­gies that sup­port high school alter­na­tives like Goodwill’s Excel Cen­ter mod­el. This approach, which offers tuition-free high school for adults, cur­rent­ly spans 47 loca­tions nationwide.

“Good­will is a long­time Gen­er­a­tion Work part­ner and the suc­cess we’ve seen from [its] Excel Cen­ter mod­el has been gen­uine­ly inspir­ing,” said Alli­son Ger­ber, direc­tor of Employ­ment, Edu­ca­tion and Train­ing at the Casey Foundation.

Each Excel Cen­ter cor­re­sponds to a state’s spe­cif­ic poli­cies and accred­i­ta­tion stan­dards. Core offer­ings of the approach include:

• a state-rec­og­nized high school diploma;
• access to life coaches;
• free, onsite child care and trans­porta­tion assistance;
• sup­port tran­si­tion­ing to col­lege and careers; and
• an empha­sis on con­tin­u­ous self-improvement.

“These schools are reach­ing out to an often-over­looked pop­u­la­tion of old­er learn­ers and help­ing them gain life-chang­ing job skills and cre­den­tials,” said Gerber.

The Excel Cen­ter Model

Excel Cen­ters work with stu­dents over age 18 who may not have grad­u­at­ed from high school for a vari­ety of rea­sons, including:

• home­less­ness;
• preg­nan­cy and par­ent­ing respon­si­bil­i­ties; or
• immi­gra­tion sta­tus.

Each cen­ter allows grad­u­ates to earn high school diplo­mas, indus­try-rec­og­nized cre­den­tials or even col­lege cred­its through dual enroll­ment. Each stu­dent also receives an edu­ca­tion­al expe­ri­ence that’s tai­lored to their indi­vid­ual needs.

“We focus on direct instruc­tion from a teacher in small class­rooms, so that our stu­dents get per­son­al­ized atten­tion,” said Sarah Thomas, senior direc­tor of the Excel Cen­ter Nation­al Office for Good­will of Cen­tral & South­ern Indi­ana. ​“Our role is to help each stu­dent deter­mine what their path to grad­u­a­tion looks like and what they want to do once they have that high school diploma.”

This per­son­al­ized approach may help explain why immi­grants and refugees are increas­ing­ly turn­ing to Excel Cen­ters for sup­port. In Indi­anapo­lis, for exam­ple, many cen­ters are work­ing with recent Burmese immi­grants who want to learn Eng­lish and begin a career.

“To ensure we can serve all stu­dents, we’ve incor­po­rat­ed class­room tools like Pock­etalk, which pro­vides in-the-moment inter­pre­ta­tion,” said Thomas. ​“We’ve also made sure trans­lat­ed copies of class mate­ri­als are avail­able to stu­dents who need them.”

What’s Next for Excel Centers?

Over time, Good­will has refined its Excel Cen­ter mod­el to iden­ti­fy the best ways to accel­er­ate high school completion.

“The first Excel Cen­ter opened in Indi­anapo­lis in 2010 with the slo­gan ​‘any time, any place, any pace,’ said Thomas. ​“After work­ing with that first class of stu­dents, we dis­cov­ered that they real­ly respond­ed to an envi­ron­ment where they had direct instruc­tion from a teacher and could inter­act with [their] peers face to face. We recon­fig­ured the mod­el to reflect these ele­ments and, in that same spir­it, we are con­stant­ly exam­in­ing what could be improved.”

Cur­rent­ly, the model’s design­ers are explor­ing how Excel Cen­ters can bet­ter serve learn­ers with jus­tice sys­tem expe­ri­ence.

“The Excel Cen­ters work with so many dif­fer­ent kinds of learn­ers, and it’s allowed the mod­el to grow along­side our stu­dents in an incred­i­bly organ­ic way,” Thomas said.

By 2030, Good­will hopes to have 85 Excel Cen­ters up and run­ning across the country.

Learn how the City Schools Nav­i­ga­tor Cen­ter is help­ing high school­ers tran­si­tion to college