[AAACE-NLA] OMB Rates Adult Ed "Effective"

[David Rosen]

AAACE-NLA Colleagues,

For those of you who remember the PART ratings of 2002, the  
information below from OVAE Thursday Notes, February 5, 2007, may be  
of some interest:

"OMB Rates Adult Ed 'Effective'

Assistant Secretary Troy R. Justesen announced today that the adult  
education State grant program OVAE administers has been rated  
“effective”—the highest rating a federal program can achieve—by the  
Office of Management and Budget (OMB).  Only two ED programs have  
earned this rating.  OMB uses a Program Assessment Rating Tool (PART)  
to look at factors reflecting program performance.  OMB recently used  
PART to re-evaluate the adult education State grant program.  The  
program moved from its 2002 rating of  “results not demonstrated” to  
“effective” in 2007 because it significantly improved performance  
measurement and outcomes.  Programs rated “effective” must set  
ambitious goals, achieve results, be managed well, and improve  
efficiency.  OMB uses the ratings to help develop funding levels for  
the President’s budget, and Congress uses them in analyzing programs’  
return on investment for funding levels each year.

Praise from PART

Praise from OMB includes these kudos from PART.  Adult education:

•	Recruits, retains, and assists eight times as many people from its  
target population—at a lower cost—than all other related federal  
programs combined.
•	Is achieving performance goals for high school completion,  
postsecondary education or training, and job retention.
•	Is managed well through new quality standards, common assessment  
tools, and improved comparability of grantee performance data.
•	Requires participants to advance the equivalent of two or more  
grade levels for a measurable learning gain, yet increased the  
percent of participants
         achieving learning gains consistently since FY 2000.
•	Is investing in randomized controlled trails to find instructional  
strategies to enable learning gains in less than 12 months.

To see more praise for adult education, click on http:// 
www.whitehouse.gov/omb/expectmore/summary/10000180.2006.html "


David J. Rosen
djrosen at comcast.net