[NLA] Celebrating 35 years of the AELS/USA

[Thomas Sticht]

In his recent post Hal Beder said, "Let's stop thinking about adult
literacy as being Title II and let's consider what has to happen if the
whole system is to function well."
The system that Hal is referring to in New Jersey is depicted in an
attachment to his post and shows 23 funding streams from the federal
through the state governments and into providers of adult literacy and
basic education services, including school districts, community colleges,
CBOs, corrections and some others. As he notes, the WIA/AEFLA funs are
only a small part of the total of some $100 million the study he refers to
found for these literacy and basic education services in New Jersey.
As I looked over Hal’s chart I had a lot of empathy with (and sympathy
for) him and the others doing the study of the delivery system for adult
literacy and basic education in New Jersey. In 1989-90 I chaired the
California Workforce Literacy Task Force and in a report of November 1990
we identified some 13 federal/state programs with around $850 million that
delivered or could deliver adult literacy services. In 1990-91, California
got funding of some $11 million from the federal programs that is now the
WIA/Title 2 Adult Education and Family Literacy Act. So a lot more money
was being spent on adult literacy education beyond the state grants from
OVAE/DAEL.
In addition to the 13 programs we identified as adult funding streams,
other programs in early childhood also provided some funding for adult
literacy education but we could not in the time we had estimate how much
Head Start, compensatory education and such programs spent on delivering
adult literacy services. I noticed that these types of early childhood
programs are missing from Hal’s chart of the fund streams for adult
literacy and basic education, too.
So from the foregoing let me just make the point that I personally have
not been "thinking about adult literacy as being Title II", rather I have
focused upon the funding stream from the federal and state governments
that are joined in partnership through Title II (this is the Adult
Education and Family Literacy Act of 1998, Title 2 of the Workforce
Investment Act) to form a unique publicly funded education  system that in
2000, in the absence of an official name,  I named the Adult Education and
Literacy System of the United State of America (the AELS for short).
While recognizing the many other programmatic funding streams that
providers may tap to get funding for adult literacy education, and
recognizing the volunteer, charitable groups like the newly merged
LVA/Laubach organization, I have chosen to advocate not for "adult
literacy," because that seems too abstract to me, but rather for the
primary, publicly funded, taxpayer supported education system that has
developed  from the 1966 Adult Education Act and has as its explicit
mandate adult education and literacy development in all fifty states and
U. S. territories.
I don’t believe that a decision to focus upon one delivery system means
that governments (or individuals for that matter) should not be looking at
all of their programs that provide adult literacy and basic education, as
Hal reports New Jersey  has been doing, and as the group I chaired  in
California a dozen years ago did, with the aim of finding ways to more
effectively carry out the various missions that the programs have and to
improve the delivery system for adult education and literacy development.
But with my limited resources of time, energy, and funds, it seems most
productive for me to focus upon advocating for improving and enlarging the
primary adult education and literacy development system in the United
States than to take on the task of trying to pull together some 23 streams
of  government programs with all their constituencies and political
backers. This is a daunting task that I will leave to others, like Hal.
This Saturday, June 22nd, I am celebrating 35 years of the Adult Education
and Literacy System (AELS) of the United States with the New Mexico
Coalition for Literacy in Las Cruces, New Mexico. I’m looking forward to
meeting David Godsted, Executive Director of the NMCL,  and  some others
of the NLA list members at that meeting.
Tom Sticht




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