[NLA] What caused the decline of the AELS?

[Thomas Sticht]

Research Note 			                        June 12, 2002. 
Tom Sticht

What has caused the decline of the Adult Education and Literacy System
of the United States since 1998?

In January 2001 and again in September of 2001 I called attention to 
drops  of some 1.2 million enrollments in the Adult Education and
Literacy System (AELS) of the United States,  from around 4.0 million in
1998 to some 2.9 million in 2000. I noted that we are nearly back to the
1985 figure of around 2.879 million enrollments. This is a loss of over
a  decade and a half  of progress in getting adults to access AELS.  In
September 2001 I said that,  though I have not heard about it, surely
someone, some organization inside or outside the government, is looking
into this huge loss of enrollments to find out what has happened.

Again, just this month, about 10 months after September 2001,  I
reported data on the large drop in enrollments from the AELS since 1998
and again I noted that I have found no official information about what
has caused this drop.  But though no official accounting of what caused
this large drop in AELS enrollments has been forthcoming from the U. S.
Education Department, or elsewhere, I have read and heard speculation
that many community based organizations (CBOs) could not or would not
meet the testing and other record keeping requirements of the National
Reporting System (NRS) and so they withdrew from the AELS, though they
may have continued their programs outside the funding stream of the
AELS. 

A recent examination of the change in personnel working in the AELS from
1998 to 2000 lends support to this conjecture. In 1998 there were 69,129
part time, 22,890 full time and 85,924 volunteer workers in the AELS
programs. By the end of FY2000, however, personnel had dropped in all
categories, to 63,318 part time, 20,382 full time, and 64,664 volunteers
workers. The decrease in part-timers from 1998 to 2000 was 8 percent,
for full timers 11 percent and for volunteers 25 percent, more than the
combined loss of part and full time personnel.   

Because CBOs make a great deal of use of volunteers, the large drop in
volunteers from the AELS seems to support the hypothesis that the
introduction of the NRS accountability requirements lead to a large
withdrawal of CBOs from the AELS and this may have accounted for a major
part of the drop in enrollments reported for the AELS from 1998 to
2000.  

California and the Collapse of the AELS

Of the total drop of 1,128,655 enrollments in the AELS from 1998 to
2000,  California accounted for 979,716 or about 87 percent of the
drop.  This prompted me to look more closely at California. I found that
from 1998 to 2000 the federal funds for California increased from $38.8
million in FY1998 to $47.5 in FY 2000, a 22 percent increase in the
federal state grant. However during this same time, full time personnel
working in California’s AELS dropped from 4330 to 3231 (25 percent),
part timers dropped from 10874 to 9837 ( about 10 percent), but
volunteers dropped an amazing 74 percent, from 8750 in 1998 to 2298 in
2000! This drop in personnel from 1998 to 2000 was accomplished by a
drop in enrollments of 72 percent of ESL enrollments, 68 percent of ABE
enrollments, but an increase of about 22 percent in ASE enrollments. 

Given California’s almost quarter of a century commitment to the
introduction of competency based adult education (CBAE), including the
development of the Comprehensive Adult Student Assessment System, its
leadership in the use of the internet and distance learning for
professional development (the Outreach and Technical Assistance
Network-OTAN), the 22 percent  larger budget from the federal government
in FY2000 over that of FY1998,  a drop in student enrollments from
1,435,341 in 1998 to 456,125 in FY2000, a 68 percent drop in students to
serve compared to a drop of only 14 percent in part time and full time
personnel combined, it might be thought that more funds could be
expended on instruction and that California would set its goals high and
achieve well compared to the rest of the U. S.  But that was not the
case, California set all seven of its target goals for learning below
the average target levels for the nation, and then failed to achieve 5
of its 7 goals. Further, all of its achieved goals were well below  the
national average achievement levels for the states combined. 

Recently I have learned of speculations that a large part of the decline
of the AELS in California was due to the fact that it  introduced a form
of performance based funding around the same time that the new NRS
accountability requirements were being introduced. This suggest that the
accountability requirements for performance based funding in California,
perhaps in combination with the NRS requirements, may have lead to the
withdrawal of many CBOs from California’s AELS, as suggested by the
large drop in volunteer personnel,  with the CBOs taking their students
with them, that lead to the large drop in enrollments in California and
hence to a large share (87 percent) of the drop in AELS enrollment
figures for the nation. Perhaps someone from California can offer some
insights into the relative effects of performance based funding and the
NRS on the large drop in AELS enrollments in California. 

But all of this is  speculation that I have formed from various
conversations and emails with people both inside and outside the federal
government. Since January 2001, when I first raised this issue, up to
the present time I have not found an official accounting of the loss of
over 1 million enrollments from the AELS. And to reiterate what I said
in September of 2001, I have seen no government reports offering an
explanation of either the dramatic drops in enrollments nor the dramatic
drops in personnel who work in the AELS, particularly volunteers, 
during a time when funding levels for the AELS actually increased from
over $345 million in 1998 to more than  $450  million in 2000.   

Interestingly, none of these drastic declines in enrollments and
personnel working in the AELS  were discussed in the recent report to
Congress on the progress of accountability in the AELS under the
WIA/AEFLA.
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