[NLA] What caused the decline of the AELS?

[David Joost]

I never said I thought any of those things were "good". I'm simply 
relating what we have experienced here in Texas. I guess I did imply 
that the episode we have endured here would hopefully lead to a happier 
future. After all of our suffering, I have to believe it will. BTW. the 
national conversation now taking place, happen here 1-2 years ago.

Some of the drop in enrollment was cause by elimination of duplicate 
student count. They were most often duplicated because they were in 
multiple programs and multiple funding streams. Different providers had 
no choice but to report their enrollment based on attendence records. 
These providers had no idea if their students were in other provider's 
programs.

We now know because of individual student data management, that 
students may attend classes of several providers. But that is not where 
most of the drop in enrollment is rooted.

The "casual" student (I know, its not in the literature.) Were those 
that came to adult education classes and to see what it was all about. 
In the past, those students were enrolled and counted even if they 
stayed only a brief time. Now, before they are enrolled, students must 
be more thoroughly assessed and are given an orientation that informs 
them about where they are academically, what is expected of them 
attendence-wise and performance-wise. Realistic long and short term 
goal setting is done by their instructor with them and a generalized 
timeframe for accomplishing the goals are determined with 
them. "Casual" students rarely persist through this process and account 
for a large portion of the enrollment reduction here.

The other large reduction in enrollment resulted from the necessary 
redirecting of funds away from instruction and into reporting and data 
gathering. After paying for the infrastructure related to 
accountability, providers simply had less money to conduct classes and 
as a result enrollment dropped  significantly.

I believe, as do the rest of the directors here, that the students 
remaining in the current system while fewer in number, are getting a 
much better service than was offered under the previous system and we 
believe that's "good"

The math in question is inescapable. Based on historical enrollment 
figures, there are roughly twice as many students that are at a point 
where they want to try adult education as we are serving right now. 

However, this "next half" needs considerably more support and attention 
than does the "first half". Without more funds, our system will never 
evolve past its current service to those students that primarily face 
academic barriers and need very little other than an academic fix to 
succeed. The money simply isn't there to provide the necessary support 
for those facing other types of barriers. Even under the old 
system; "next half" students were enrolled, but got little else beside 
academic help. They simply padded programs' enrollment figures and made 
it look like we were serving thousands of more students. There was no 
accountability for what if any benefit they received from their 
attendence.

We know all 4 million undereducated adults in Texas aren't going to 
enroll in a class no matter how well funded, how well staffed or what 
support services are availble. We do know that we are serving about 
100,000 annually now and we used to enroll about 200,000 annually. So 
we know about another 100,000 are out there each year that are willing 
to give adult ed a try. We also know that without alot more money we 
will never be able to serve them and we need to.

One more comment on some of the other hypothesis regarding the drop in 
enrollment nationally. We in Texas still maintain service in rural 
areas and community organizations are still active participants in our 
system. In fact, we have more community organizations that are direct 
grant AEFL recipients than ever before. Volunteer organization 
participation was drastically reduced but now some creative solutions 
have been advanced that will bring them back into the system as well.


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