[AAACE-NLA] No adult left untested

[M Cecil Smith]

Judging from what I have read on this list and in a variety of print and
online publications over the past several months, folks in the adult
education field should count themselves fortunate that they don't get
more attention from the feds. The NAAL results notwithstanding, adult
education is unlikely to receive the kind of positive attention that it
so richly deserves. Certainly, under the current administration, federal
scrutiny will continue to remain on K-12 education--Misspellings has
already suggested as much in her statements following the NAAL release.
It strikes me as exceedingly bizarre that the feds would view the source
of the "literacy problem" in the US as residing primarily within public
schools (although entirely consistent with the Bush administration's
perception of public education).

It also seems inevitable that the US Dept of Ed is going to propose
something analogous to NCLB for higher ed. This week's Chronicle of
Higher Education, for example, indicated that there is likely to be a
proposal for testing of college and university students as part of the
renewal of the Higher Education Act. I can't think of a worse-case
scenario. A push for broad standards-based testing simply flies in the
face of everything that we know about adult development, and belies the
fact that, today, the majority of college students are non-traditional
(ie., older and part-time). Such students are unlikely to tolerate the
implementation of high-stakes test programs to validate their higher
education experience.

As Tom Sticht has suggested many times on this discussion list, adult
education should be seen as equal partner in the public education
system, along with K-12 and higher education. But given the current
nonsense in Washington, it may be a blessing that it is not.

Cecil Smith
  

M Cecil Smith, Ph.D.
Professor of Educational Psychology
Northern Illinois University
DeKalb, IL 60115
(815) 753-8448
(815) 753-8750 (fax)
mcsmith at niu.edu
www.cedu.niu.edu/~smith