[NLA] What caused the decline of the AELS?

[David Joost]

Texas has been operating under the NRS system for the past three years. 
Before NRS, student enrollment had reached a high of 238,000 annually.

After NRS, the state enrolls just over 100,000 AEFL students each year.
The drop in enrollment came primarily from three areas.

	1. To meet performance measures, improved orientation practices 	   	  
have virtually eliminated the "casual student". 

	2. Duplication of student headcount on a statewide basis is 	   	  
nearly impossible even if they are attending class with 	   	   several
different AEFL providers.

	3. Funds have been redirected away from instructional activities 	  
and personnel and into activities and personnel associated 	          
with assessment, data collection and reporting. This has 	   curtailed
dramatically the number of classes providers are 	   able to offer.

Because NRS and state performance mandates were implemented with no
additional state funding, the cost per participant had risen from
$173/student in fiscal year 1997 to over $382/student in fiscal year
2001.

Do not lament the implementation of NRS and the corresponding drop in
enrollment because:

1. Without question, the remaining services after implementation are of
a much higher quality than previous.

2. We are using the reduction in enrollment resulting from NRS to tell
decisionmakers that we now know that there are at least twice as many
students out there that need adult education as we are able to serve
with our current funding. 

David Joost
President
Texas Council for Adult Education Cooperative Directors



Thomas Sticht wrote:
> 
> NLA list members: Just for the record I would like it known that I have
> not been playing a "numbers game" or any other kind of "game" when I
> have called attention to the drastic decline in the Adult Education and
> Literacy System (AELS) of the United States in recent posts.
> 
> To me it is intensly distressing to discover that the AELS, which I
> define as the set of programs funded wholly or in part by the state
> grants program of the AEFLA, the system that the National Coalition for
> Literacy has been trying to get $1 billion a year for, and that had an
> average growth of some 100,000 new enrollments per year for over thirty
> years, should suddenly in 1998 start a drop which by the end of FY 2000
> amounted to a 28 percent decline in enrollments. That's over 1.1 million
> enrollments that have have been lost and gone unaccounted for in any
> official record.
> 
> And though Developmental Education in higher education colleges and
> post-secondary vocational institutions are vitally important for
> millions of adults, these are not ABE programs and enrollments in such
> programs do not make-up for the precipitous loss of students from the
> AELS. Finding out what happended to these million students and what can
> be done to reverse this decline is not a game of any kind. It is an
> extremely serious problem and unfortunately I fear that no one  in the
> present administration is concerning themselves with it.
> 
> How can a million+ people just disappear?
> 
> Tom Sticht
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