Key Points: 

• Inmate education access grows with return of Pell Grant eligibility 

• State seeks to enhance prison post-secondary education programs

• Initiative starts process by pushing state-agency, cross-state collaboration

An initiative to assess and improve education opportunities for the state’s incarcerated population is breaking state agencies out of silos. 

Collaboration between the Arizona Board of Regents and the Arizona Department of Corrections, Rehabilitation, and Reentry, alongside national post-secondary education groups and four states, aims to explore and expand existing programming for inmates, with a focus on public safety and workforce development. 

“To be honest, I think all of it is ripe for growth,” Ashley Oddo, deputy director for the Department of Corrections, said. “Part of this initiative is mapping out what exists and then identifying those gaps, expanding access and really making sure that we’re not locking people up and expecting better outcomes without giving them the tools.” 

As it stands now, the state offers some limited postsecondary education programs through partnerships with Arizona State University, Maricopa County Community College, Rio Salado College and Pima Community College. 

The department further offers functional literacy, special education, high school diplomas and general education development, or GED, career technical education and apprenticeships. 

Oddo said at any time, about 20% of the incarcerated population is enrolled in an education program, while 50% are enrolled in work programs. 

On May 29, the Arizona Board of Regents, in collaboration with the Arizona Department of Corrections, Rehabilitation, and Reentry, joined a learning community with the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association, or SHEEO, and Kentucky, Louisiana, Minnesota and Virginia, with support from Ascendium Education Group. 

The one-year initiative will focus on first assessing existing prison education programs, then work to change policies, jump gaps in access and better align offerings with workforce needs. 

The initiative follows the implementation of financial aid via Pell Grant eligibility for incarcerated populations in July 2023. 

“Literally overnight, 700,000 people became eligible for Pell,” said Molly Lasagna, senior strategy officer leading the grantmaking efforts on postsecondary education and workforce training for incarcerated people at Ascendium. “We’re excited about this because the supply does not meet the demand right now.”

She noted the challenge now becomes sewing collaboration among state agencies to support the growth of post-secondary education opportunities. 

“Many state agencies are siloed. There’s just oftentimes not the kind of historical infrastructure at the state level for those agencies to be collaborating, especially when you’re talking about an agency whose focus is education and an agency whose focus is corrections,” Lasagna said. 

She continued, “We want to use this grant making to help them understand that actually we are all facing the same direction … When you start to have those conversations at the state level, it turns out that we may not all be using the same words to describe those goals, but the goals are the same.”

Roxanne Murphy, director of postsecondary attainment at the Arizona Board of Regents, said she had met with the Arizona Department of Corrections on June 11 to kick off meetings, a conversation she called “eye-opening.” 

Murphy said the approach is twofold, first in pushing information sharing between state agencies, and second to receive technical assistance and understanding how challenges manifest nationwide and in the four other participating states. 

John Lane, vice president of SHEEO, said the current climate can often create “invisible populations” in state post-secondary education attainment goals when incarcerated students are not fully accounted for. 

Murphy said Arizona runs into the same issue. 

“As a state, we necessarily haven’t talked about this population within being able to reach our state’s attainment goal,” Murphy said. “I do believe that this community of practice and really thinking of these individuals as part of our talent pipeline and that education piece will be part of the conversation.”

With a full technical meeting scheduled for June 24, Murphy, Lane and Oddo said specific goals are yet to take shape, but the main aim continues to be creating bridges between individuals incarcerated and greater educational opportunities. 

“When someone’s getting ready to leave our system, the education doesn’t stop there. It starts there, or it continues,” Oddo said. “That, to me, is investing in safer communities, stronger reentry outcomes and ultimately, smarter public safety.”