[NLA] ] a proposal to "save" the NIFL

[Gail Spangenberg]

I would like to associate myself with Tom's historical account of 
ALBSU, the NIFL, and DAEL.  If Tom's basic point is that there is no 
reason that NIFL shouldn't embrace literacy at all levels, as long as 
adult literacy does not become a secondary focus, then I also 
associate myself with that.  Last fall in writing to several members 
of Congress about the continuing importance of NIFL as a national 
leadership presence in adult literacy, I urged that as NIFL takes on 
additional programming for children, the internal operating structure 
be adjusted such that childen's programs have their own deputy 
director, and adult programming has its own deputy director .  I 
proposed this division of labor because it seemed to me then, and 
does now, that it  would make for clearer, more workable, and more 
sensible connections to the field.  Moreover, such a structure would 
make a profound statement about intention and perhaps help produce a 
more trusting environment.  I firmly believe that programs for 
children and programs for adults should not be in competition with 
each other, but viewed and treated as equally important and pursued 
on parallel tracks.  GS


>The Basic Skills Agency (BSA) in the UK and the National Institute for
>Literacy (NIFL) in the US: Parallels in Transforming From an Adult
>to a Life Span Literacy Education Focus
>
>Tom Sticht
>
>In 1976 the community-based, charitable, British Association of
>Settlements Literacy Project in the United Kingdom merged with a
>government-funded Adult Literacy Resource Agency. By 1980, this
>private/government agency had become the quasi-governmental, but still
>public charitable trust called the Adult Literacy and Basic Skills Unit
>(ALBSU).  ALBSU focussed upon adult literacy and basic skills work
>exclusively up until around 1992, which is the year I first began to work
>with the agency on family literacy. From then on ALBSU has worked not only
>on adult literacy but also family literacy which involved working with
>children’s literacy development, too. By 1996, ALBSU had changed its name
>to the Basic Skills Agency and was engaged in promoting children’s
>literacy development not only in family literacy programs but in primary
>school contexts as well. When the UK initiated its national literacy
>initiative in the late 1990s, the BSA was an integral part of the planning
>and work on literacy across the life span. Though the BSA is still an
>independent charitable trust, it receives the bulk of its funding from the
>government. It has demonstrated that an organisation that for many years
>was strictly focused upon adult literacy and basic skills development
>could successfully switch to a life span, "womb to tomb" approach to basic
>skills development and maintain a high degree of excellence in its work.
>
>It is my understanding that the ALBSU served somewhat as a model for those
>thinking about getting a national institute for adult literacy created
>under the National Literacy Act of 1991. The idea was to create a
>quasi-governmental agency that would focus upon adult literacy education.
>In its realisation, the National Institute for Literacy, though referred
>to as an "independent" federal agency was never the quasi-governmental
>agency that ALBSU (later the BSA) was/is. Further, it never had the
>resources, based on the relative differences in size between the UK and
>the US, that the ALBSU/BSA had and has. It also had no history of actually
>arising from the
>field and employing mostly a Director and staff that had started as adult
>literacy educators and worked their way up into leadership in the nation’s
>adult education and literacy system.
>
>Interestingly, the first permanent Director of the NIFL had his adult
>literacy experience as a government policy worker in writing the Even
>Start legislation, which immediately brought together adult and childhood
>literacy development. So at the very beginning of the NIFL, there was an
>interest in family literacy and that necessarily meant an interest in
>children’s literacy. This was the same situation that the ALBSU/BSA found
>itself in in the mid-1990s that ultimately lead to its getting deeply
>involved in children’s literacy in addition to its original focus upon
>adult literacy. But unlike the BSA, the NIFL never experienced a time when
>it was not focused to some degree upon children’s literacy in the form of
>family literacy efforts.
>
>Today, following the path taken by the ALBSU/BSA after 1992, the NIFL has a
>lifelong education and learning mission which includes adult literacy,
>family literacy, and  children’s literacy. In the US federal government
>today, only the Division of Adult Education and Literacy in the Department
>of Education has an exclusive focus upon adult adult education and
>literacy.
>
>
>
>
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-- 
Gail Spangenberg
President
Council for Advancement of Adult Literacy
1221 Avenue of the Americas - 50th Floor
New York, NY 10020
212-512-2362, fax 212-512-2610
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