[NLA] Fall From the Summit Continues

[Bickerton, Robert P]

Tom, et al,

There are several areas related to the Summit about which we should be
concerned and you have pointed out a few.  The one I am most concerned about
is how little momentum for change has been generated by the Summit -- and
I'm referring here more to the absence of momentum across our field than I
am to among policy and elected leaders and the public at large.  A close
second is the concern we share about stagnation in the level of resources
committed to "ABE" (literacy, ASE, ESOL, et al).  I believe this is in part
due to our attempts to achieve a "one size fits all" document.  I believe we
need to address the needs and concerns of our different primary audiences a
bit differently while maintaining a consistent conceptual and thematic
framework.  For example, this is particularly important when we consider
that what communicates effectively with policy and elected leaders is not
the same as what communicates effectively with the members of our own field.
Mushed together in the same piece, neither side will find the case
compelling.  Done well, they can be tied together like two sides of the same
coin and energize these key constituencies.  

However, when it comes to two of the domains you discuss, Quality and
Access, some of us would argue that in a scarcity environment, they are
inversely related, i.e., that with severely limited funding, more of one is
achieved by having less of the other.  This list has touched upon this issue
in the past.  I have always believed that the 4.1 million under-educated and
limited English proficient adults alleged to have been "served" in a year
was a destructive fiction.  There is an enormous difference between "served"
as in burgers/fast food and "served" as in provided with a genuine
opportunity to succeed and achieve one's dreams and aspirations.  When we
see figures like an average of "66 hours/student/year" we should have the
integrity and courage to admit that too many of the students we enroll in
classes scheduled for 150 to 500 hours or more per year are dropping out
with nothing more than damaged self-esteem (once again, for many) and a
detour from their pursuit of a dream that we can only hope doesn't start to
feel like a dead end.  Many subscribers to this list are aware that over a
decade ago in Massachusetts, we arrived at a difficult but firm consensus
decision to focus on quality, providing every enrolled student with a
meaningful opportunity to enroll by limiting access.  With $47 million in
combined state and federal funding this year, we will enroll 25,000 students
and struggle with over 14,000 on waiting lists.  I believe this dynamic
needs to be analyzed more carefully before concluding that the drop in the
number of students "served" is necessarily problematic in an environment
that continues to be defined by a disgracefully low level of resources.  

I have one other caution to share about the numbers Tom has pointed to.
Serious attempts to analyze these numbers should begin by asking how USDOE
assures the validity, reliability and comparability of the data it collects
from the states and summarizes in the reports it posts and distributes.  I
believe that this data has yet to achieve the level of quality needed for it
to be summed, averaged, or compared.  Absent the enforcement of rigorous
standards for the quality of data submitted by the states, I believe you
pretty much get what you'd expect when a spotlight is shone on some aspect
of performance.  When the spotlight was on access/"quantity," we got really
large numbers of students "served."  Now that the spotlight is on "impact,"
we are getting rapidly larger numbers of hours of instruction, educational
gains and goals achieved.  Before we draw any substantive conclusions from
all this, we'd better decide what "claims" can be reliably supported by the
data.  

Let's keep focussed on the issues Tom is pointing to:  are we in an era of
positive momentum with regard to quality, access and resources.  But let's
also make sure we're pointed in the "right direction" as we seek to increase
momentum and resolve these seemingly intractable challenges.  I will once
again submit that our first step is achieving agreement, re, what the "right
direction" actually is -- what I refer to as achieving a "common vision."
Otherwise we'll continue to wander in the desert for another 40 or more
years!

take care,
bob bickerton, MA director of adult ed




-----Original Message-----
From: Thomas Sticht [mailto:tsticht at aznet.net]
Sent: Saturday, March 09, 2002 4:40 PM
To: nla at lists.literacytent.org
Cc: tsticht at aznet.net
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.
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