[NLA] breaking news

[Dave Speights]

            The copyrighted following story appears in today's issue of
Report on Literacy Programs. If you would like to receive a copy of the
entire issue via e- or snail mail, please send your request directly to me,
not to the NLA listserv.
 
Performance Report to Congress
Indicates Huge Enrollment Drop
 
       More than 1 million people, most of them members of minority groups,
disappeared from Education Department statistics on state-by-state
enrollments in federally funded adult ed and family literacy programs after
the department imposed the National Reporting System (NRS) in 1999.
 
       After almost a year of delays, officials at the department's Division
of Adult Education and Literacy (DAEL) have finally released their
first-of-its-kind report to Congress on the NRS, a system intended to
measure the performance of all federally funded programs.
 
       RLP shared the report with eminent literacy consultant Thomas Sticht
for an exclusive, detailed analysis. Among his findings:
 
       * Total enrollment in Program Year 1999-2000 (fiscal year 1999) was
approximately 2.9 million - 1.1 million less than the 4 million the
department had previously reported for PY'97-98 (FY'97). Sticht calculated
that Californians represent 87 percent of the decline; Hispanics represent
56 percent; Asians and Pacific Islanders represent 23.5 percent; whites
represent 16.5 percent; and African-Americans represent 4 percent.
 
       * Local programs spent an average of $126.21 per student during
PY'99-00. Those in North Dakota spent an average of $509.45, while those in
South Carolina spent $46.48. Programs in four states spent more than $300
per student, while those in 12 states spent less than $100.
 
       * Nine states reported above-average student progress in literacy
skills at all seven performance levels covered by the NRS: Georgia,
Kentucky, Maryland, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oregon, Tennessee
and Utah.
 
       * Fourteen states reported below-average progress: Alabama,
California, Florida, Iowa, Kansas, Massachusetts, Missouri, Nebraska, New
Hampshire, New York, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas and Washington.
 
       * "Overall, there was no significant correlation between per-enrollee
funds and performance on the seven literacy achievement levels," Sticht
found. 
 
       * There was no correlation between funding and dropout rates. On
average, 25.5 percent of all students dropped out before completing
programs.
 
       * Likewise, there were no correlations between statewide performance
and the adoption of such popular reform schemes as Equipped for the Future
or managed enrollment.
 
Sticht: Numbers Are Highly Questionable
 
       Sticht does not believe the enrollment drop is real. Rather, he
believes it is a reflection of the large number of local programs that
pulled out of the federally funded grant system because they could not
comply with NRS requirements.
 
       "In an informal conversation I once had with [former DAEL Director]
Ron Pugsley, he mentioned that numerous programs in California had pulled
out," Sticht says. The veteran researcher remains quite skeptical about the
NRS overall.
 
       "It struck me that any kind of system you implement where suddenly
you go from 4 million down to 2.9, you've got to say something about that.
What happened? ...
 
       "Somebody, someplace, somewhere in the federal government should have
said something about it, and it's not in that report. The report acts as
though nothing happened before Program Year 1999-2000. That's why I had to
go back to the [DAEL Web] site and look at the '98 data. Congress didn't
have any idea [from the report] that [DAEL] had lost 28 percent of their
enrollment."
 
       Beyond the reporting problems, Sticht says the entire NRS is highly
questionable.
 
       "We really don't know exactly how good the measures are. Nonetheless,
these are the measures being put forward as indicators of achievement."
 
       Although the department forwarded an advance copy of the report to
Congress last November and sent a version to each state director of adult
ed, the Bush appointees who run the department would not share it with the
media or post it on a public Web site until now.
 
       The stated rationale was that Congress needed time to review the
report and perhaps comment on it before the department released the final
version, but department officials still decline to answer questions about
the report from RLP.
 
Public Report Mandated by Law
 
       The annual report to Congress is mandated by the Adult Education and
Family Literacy Act of 1998 (AEFLA, also known as Title II of the Workforce
Investment Act), which reauthorized federally funded adult ed and family
literacy programs for fiscal years 1999-2003. This fall, DAEL will report to
Congress on PY'2000-01.
 
       The act requires every state accepting such funds to adopt
performance measures for the local programs that will ultimately receive the
federal pass-through dollars. The measures must include: 1) skill
improvements in reading, writing and speaking English; numeracy; and
problem-solving; 2) placements in, retentions in or completions of
postsecondary education, job training, unsubsidized employment or career
advancement; and 3) receipt of high school diplomas or GEDs.
 
       States are also allowed to adopt additional measures, so long as they
are quantifiable and indicate progress or lack of progress toward
"continuous improvement." Each state was allowed to negotiate the specific
measures it would use when submitting its first annual report to DAEL by the
end of 2000. DAEL is required to make those reports public and disseminate
state-by-state comparisons.
 
       The state reporting process had detractors long before DAEL sent its
first report to Congress last fall. The criticism began almost one year ago,
when Pugsley said in his weekly e-mail newsletter that, "Most states met or
exceeded their [AEFLA] performance targets...." He immediately qualified
that rosy claim, conceding, "Many of the performance targets negotiated with
the department tended to be at the low end of the spectrum in this first
year."
 
       Contact: Tom Sticht, consultant (619) 444-9133, e-mail:
tsticht at aznet.net <mailto:tsticht at aznet.net> .
 
       Adult Education and Family Literacy Act, Report to Congress on State
Performance, Program Year 1999-2000 is available for free from the Education
Publications Center, (877) 433-7827 or (800) USA-LEARN; e-mail:
edpubs at inet.ed.gov <mailto:edpubs at inet.ed.gov> ; Web sites:
http://www.ed.gov/pubs/edpubs.html <http://www.ed.gov/pubs/edpubs.html>  or
http: //www.ed.gov/offices/OVAE <http://www.ed.gov/offices/OVAE> .  
 
 
Dave Speights, Editor
Report on Literacy Programs
Business Publishers, Inc.
8737 Colesville Road, Suite 1100
Silver Spring, MD 20910-3928
(301) 587-6300, ext. 349
FAX: (301) 587-1081
e-mail: dspeights at bpinews.com <mailto:dspeights at bpinews.com> 
 
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