NLA Discussion: Smaller state strategies, waiting lists

[Johnson, Alice]

Catherine King wrote:

>We end up spreading ourselves too thin and service suffers...It seems to me
if we can understand that, funders and policy makers can understand
that...perhaps if **some** knew the whole story, we might begin to see some
real change instead of a continuous recapitulation to the status quo of
obvious and gross ignorance of the real situation of adult education in the
United States...<

Catherine and NLA colleagues:

I agree -- of course policymakers and funders *can* understand it.  The
catch is someone needs to *tell* them.  If we as a field don't, who do we
possibly think will?

One of the things I realized when I worked on Capitol Hill is that it's not
that legislators don't care about literacy, it's that most don't really
*get* what it's all about.  Unlike the K-12 and higher education systems, no
members of Congress have been students in adult literacy programs, and there
is only one I know of (Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton of Washington DC)
who volunteers as a literacy tutor.  I wonder how many legislators have ever
even set foot in a literacy program?  Legislators are swamped with issues
and bombarded with invitations from constitutents and the fact of the matter
is few (if any) have the time or will make the effort to seek out additional
constitutents or organizations.  It is up to *us* to seek them out.  But if
we do invite them, many will come, learn, and support our efforts.

Let me give an example:  When I worked in the Senate, there was a very
senior, very powerful education committee staffer who wasn't against
literacy, but wasn't proactively for it either.  I tried for 5 years to
persuade him to support various literacy amendments -- and I gave him
reports and statistics galore to make the case.  Unfortunately, I didn't get
very far.  Finally, in the mid-1990's, a literacy program from his state
(Rhode Island) invited him and the senator for whom he worked to visit.  The
senator wasn't able to make it, but the staffer did -- and sat in on
classes, talked with students, and returned to Capitol Hill completely fired
up to support adult literacy.  In fact, he helped behind the scenes in
getting some of the significant increases in appropriations the very next
year.  And then he retired.  

There are 535 legislators on Capitol Hill -- all with a key staff member for
education issues -- and many more at the state and local level.  They are
*all* potential literacy champions, but in most cases they won't become
literacy champions unless we invite them to learn more about our field, our
students, and the incredible difference literacy programs are making.

If every adult education and literacy program in the country did just a
little (say, "adopts" one legislator or staffer to educate about literacy in
the coming year -- and does so by inviting him/her to visit your program and
following up every 2-3 months with a letter, phone call, and/or copy of your
newsletter), the overall impact would be tremendous.  

Alice Johnson
National Institute for Literacy


---------------------------------------------------------------------------
To UNSUBSCRIBE FROM the NLA list, send an e-mail message to
majordomo at world.std.com
Skip the header. In the body of the message type (only) unsubscribe nla

To SUBSCRIBE TO the NLA list, send an e-mail to majordomo at world.std.com
Skip the header. In the body of the message type (only) subscribe nla
---------------------------------------------------------------------------