[NLA] Fall From the Summit Continues

[Catherine King]

Tom:

I was interested to read your report about the
Action Agenda and share your concern about
its implementation; however, I am unclear about 
your attitude about it.  You say:

"I have not seen anything telling how the Action 
Agenda managers will ***evaluate*** the achievement 
of the Acton Agenda 'quality' goals so they and
we will know that they are being achieved" (my
emphasis).   

Are you saying the Agenda is a definitive failure,
or on its way to being so?  Are you critiquing the 
notion of "quality" work and methods with those of 
post-positivist quantification methods of "evaluation"?  
And if so, what are the inherent problems with 
doing so?   I.e., reading developments in quality with
quantitative assumptions about what determines
***evaluation*** in the researchers eyes?

If not, and assuming that adults can learn and programs'
delivery improve and can, in fact, proceed nicely (not
be "falling") with or without assessments tools and 
quantitative outcome recording, do you have any 
suggestions about how to remedy the situation and 
problem as you understand it and have laid it out in your
note?   Or would you consider any evaluations or
assessments delivered in qualitative, narrative, etc., 
terms legitimately **evaluative**?

Regards,

Catherine King  

----- Original Message ----- 
From: Thomas Sticht <tsticht at aznet.net>
To: <nla at lists.literacytent.org>
Cc: <tsticht at aznet.net>
Sent: Saturday, March 09, 2002 1:39 PM
Subject: [NLA] Fall From the Summit Continues


> Research Note                               8 March 2002
> 
> The Action Agenda Midway Year 2: The Fall From the Summit Continues 
> 
> Tom Sticht
> 
> In September of 2000 the National Literacy Summit 2000 steering
> committee launched An Action Agenda for Literacy entitled "From the
> Margins to the Mainstream". The Action Agenda called for an education
> system of QUALITY services for adult students with ease of ACCESS to
> these services and sufficient RESOURCES to support quality and access.
> This adult education and literacy system was set as the national goal to
> be achieved by the year 2010. Unfortunately, at the end of the first six
> months of the second year into the Action Agenda, results in these
> aspects of the system are not encouraging.  
> 
> QUALITY: In the Thursday Notes for 6/14/01 from The Desk of Ronald
> Pugsley, Director of the Division of Adult Education and Literacy (DAEL)
> in the U.S. Department of Education it was reported that most states met
> or exceeded their Adult Education and Family Literacy Act (AEFLA)
> performance targets which they had established working interactively 
> with the DAEL. However, he went on to say,  " Many of the performance
> targets negotiated with the Department tended to be at the low end of
> the spectrum in this first year." I have not seen any reports from
> either the Department of Education or the Action Agenda web page for the
> second year of the WIA/AEFLA performance targets.  But it seems to me
> that if programs have continued to set their five year goals "at the low
> end of the spectrum," there is reason to doubt that any improvements in
> "quality," considered as programs helping adults reach higher levels of
> learning than what they were already achieving before the Action Agenda
> requirements were put in place , will be achieved in the near future.  I
> have not seen anything telling how the Action Agenda managers will
> evaluate the achievement of the Acton Agenda "quality" goals so they and
> we will know that they are being achieved. 
> 
> ACCESS: Last year I noted in a September 2001 NLA post that from 1998 to
> 2000, just three years, we lost 12 years of progress in enrolling adults
> in the AELS. For three decades there was fairly consistent growth in
> enrollments in the AELS, from around 370,000 in 1966 to 2,879,000 in
> 1985, to 4,100,000 million in 1997. In 1998, when the Workforce
> Investment Act, Title 2 Adult Education and Family Literacy Act was
> enacted, with the National Reporting System and its encouragement of
> some form of standardized testing for accountability, enrollments
> started to drop. In 1999 they fell to 3.6 million, a drop of some
> 500,000 from 1997, and in 2000 enrollments fell by an additional 700,000
> to around 2,900,000 million according to a message on the NLA list from
> Ron Pugsley in his Thursday Notes (8/22/01). This is a drop of almost 30
> percent, some 1.2 million enrollments,  from the peak of 4.1 million in
> 1997. I have found no data for FY 2001 enrollments nor have I found any
> discussion of the drastic decline in enrollments in the Adult Education
> and Literacy System (AELS) at the National Coalition for Literacy web
> site, the Action Agenda web site, the National Institute for Literacy
> web site, or anywhere else, either. Surely this massive decline in
> enrollments in the AELS  should be of major concern to those advocating
> for greater access to AELS services in the Action Agenda. 
> 
> RESOURCES:  In September 2000 the National Literacy Summit 2000 Action
> Agenda included  Action Agenda Priority 1: Resources, Outcome B: Action
> 2: "Persuade Congress to appropriate $1 billion annually to the adult
> education, language, and literacy system." Unfortunately, in February
> 2002 President Bush submitted his budget for State Grants for Adult
> Education for FY 2003 which provides the core federal funding for the
> AELS and requested funding of $575 million, which is the same as for FY
> 2002 and includes $70 million earmarked for the English Literacy and
> Civics Education programs. Adjusting for inflation, the President's
> request for the AELS reduces the purchasing power of State Grants for FY
> 2003 below that of FY 2002. Additionally, the President's proposed
> budget decreases Even Start Family Literacy funds by $50 million, and
> Incarcerated Youth and Offenders and Prison Literacy funds drop a
> combined $22 million to zero for FY 2003. As many as 20 job training
> programs are being dropped by the President, some of which provide
> workplace basic skills programs for adults. All this suggests hat fundng
> for the adult education, language, and literacy system may be sliding
> down from the summit unless the Congress can indeed be persuaded to
> increase the President's funding proposals. 
> 
> The Action Agenda Commitments
> 
> A visit to the Action Agenda web site indicates that there is a page on
> which  "commitments of the week" will be posted. As of March 8, 2002
> there were two commitments posted, and both of them appeared to be at
> least several weeks and perhaps months old. I could not find on the
> Action Agenda web site any information about how many and what kind of
> commitments have been made in the first six months of the second year of
> the Action Agenda. 
> 
> There is also a Calendar of events that shows where presentations about
> the Action Agenda will be given. The most recent entry on the calendar
> is dated September 26, 2001  and mentions a conference in Seattle,
> Washington. Whether other presentations about the Action Agenda have
> been given or planned for since six months ago cannot be determined from
> the posted calendar. Based just on what is on the web site, there does
> not appear to be much "buzz" about the Action Agenda going on in the
> field.
> 
> Lack of Action on the Action Agenda
> 
> Midway through the second year since the National Literacy Summit 2000
> committee released From the Margins to the Mainstream: An Action Agenda
> for Literacy in September 2000, it appears to me that the indicators for
> Quality, Access and Resources goals set in the Action Agenda are
> registering few to none of the "measurable gains" the Action Agenda
> calls for. Also, from the calendar of presentations and commitments
> pages of the Action Agenda web site, it is easy get the impression that
> at this time there is not much by way of action going on to advance the
> Action Agenda. 
> 
> There are 8.5 years left until 2010.
> _______________________________________________
> NLA mailing list: NLA at lists.literacytent.org
> http://lists.literacytent.org/mailman/listinfo/nla
> LiteracyTent: web hosting, news, community and goodies for literacy
> http://literacytent.org



_______________________________________________
NLA mailing list: NLA at lists.literacytent.org
http://lists.literacytent.org/mailman/listinfo/nla
LiteracyTent: web hosting, news, community and goodies for literacy
http://literacytent.org