NLA Discussion: Marginalization of the AELS

[John Comings]

Tom,

In Massachusetts, state funding increased dramatically during that 
time period:

Along with the federal share, the state government budget allocation 
for those three years were:

1996  $8,245,000
1997 $11,745,000
1998 $19,545,000

Also, data systems in MA improved, especially in 1998, and these 
improvements avoided a lot of the double counting that existed before.

New Skills for a New Economy (www.massinc.org) looked at the 1998 MA
data (this is after almost 10 years of a field-driven reform effort) 
and found that 50% of students made at least a one grade-level 
increase in skills, while a third made an increase of two or more 
grade-levels.  I heard recently that MA had the best or one of the 
best retention rates among all the states this year, and I believe 
their retention rates are probably more accurate than most.

In MA, ABE is moving from the margins to the mainstream, and that has 
happened, in large part, because practitioners and the ABE Director 
(Bob Bickerton) were committed to improving quality over 
increasing quantity.  MA now spends around $1600 per student per 
year, and the New Skills report found that this system is being 
effective with students whose goals are to learn English or to get a 
GED or other high school equivalency.  This was 75% of the total 
student population.

The student goals that are most difficult both to serve and to 
measure progress on are those of students who have NALS level 1 
skills who want to raise them to NALS level 2 or who have NALS level 
2 skills and want to raise them to NALS level 3.



John Comings
----------------------------------------
John Comings                     Phone: 617.496.0516
NCSALL -- Nichols House          Fax:   617.495.4811
7 Appian Way                     Email: John_Comings at harvard.edu
Graduate School of Education     Web:   http://gseweb.harvard.edu/~ncsall
Harvard University
Cambridge MA 02138



---------------------------------------------------------------------------
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
---------------------------------------------------------------------------