[NLA] What caused the decline of the AELS?

[AndresMuro@aol.com]

the following may have already been discussed, so I may be repeating it. I 
don't think that students  disappeared, however, after welfare reform, the 
rules for receiving afdc-tanf changed considerably and a lot of people lost 
eligibility. It did not happen that all people lost eligibility immediately, 
but, rather,  progressively (even though at first a lot of people lost 
eligibility immediately and had to go to work anywhere right away) . those 
people that lost eligibility were forced to find employment, any kind of 
employment regardless of the conditions. for this reason many students 
previously attending ABE like programs slowly dropped out of the programs. 
Also, before welfare reform, DHS case workers used to tell their clients that 
they needed to attend ABE classes. After welfare reform, this changed. Only 
those that were potentially employable were referred to workforce training 
programs.  many ex-ABE students are in minimum and less than minimum wage 
jobs trying to support themselves and their families. In addition, with WIA a 
lot of programs are targeting students that can show employment as an 
outcome.  Many students that are not seen as potential employees within a 
short period of time are not be targeted anymore.  With 
AFDC, case workers had 3 different dessignations for their clients. low, 
medium and high potential emplyability (service levels 1,2, 3). They would 
all be served and low and medium level clients were referred to ABE. With 
TANF, they still have the same designation, however, they serve people who 
are highly employable, and after a certain period people loose their 
eligibility forever. I probably don't have the classifications or the present 
rules for TANF exacltly right, but I am pretty close. I have anecdotal 
evidence of all this, from my students. however, I have not done a study of 
this.

andres



andresmuro at aol.com
Visit my art webpage at: http://www.geocities.com/andresmuro/artwork.html
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.literacytent.org/pipermail/nla-nifl-archive/attachments/20020613/d36616d7/attachment.htm