[NLA] The Fall From the Summit of 2000 Continues

Mon May 13 10:17:25 EDT 2002

With all due respect, Tom, I find your allegations in the post below to
be a bit extreme.  The following statement in reference to wording
changes on the NIFL home page is quite a leap: "... the NIFL is no
longer considered as being "independent" in any sense and is now under
the strong control
of the Executive branch and has been commandeered to simply carry out
the wishes of the present administration."  Wow.  Does that conclusion
follow from this evidence?

Pursuant to the legislation that you cite and that established NIFL, it
reports jointly to the Departments of Education, Labor, and HHS.  It is
a government agency, after all.   Its Advisory Board was then and is now
nominated by the current administration.  This is not a change.  To that
extent, it has NEVER been fully independent from the government or the
administration in power.  However, I don't see why that has, or should,
preclude NIFL from doing valid and useful work on behalf of the field.

In a subsequent posting, Jose Cruz observed: " Well, for years and
years, many of us have discussed the need to educate 
legislators and other potential supporters about the various ways in
which our services help people."

We still have this need.  By Tom's numbers alone (previously cited here
and elsewhere) we are a dramatically underfunded field.  All the
evidence (whether scientifically validated or anecdotal) points to the
correlation between low literacy skills and other social and economic
problems: poverty, incarceration, substance abuse, you name it.  Yet we,
as a society, do not recognize that or put forth the required resources
to address the issue.  

I can't tell you how many times I have heard Members of Congress and
other funders say that we, as a field, do not deliver a unified and
consistent message about the relevance of our work TO SOCIETY.  Like it
or not, public and private funders require cohesive rationale in order
to justify investment.  It is not enough to say "fund us because we are
well-intentioned people doing good in the world."    

While I respect Tom's right, and others' as well, to critical inquiry, I
do not think that the inflammatory nature of this post helps our cause.

mailto:mtait at literacyvolunteers.org
Marsha L. Tait
President, Literacy Volunteers of America, Inc.
Chair, National Coalition for Literacy
P.O. Box 6506
Syracuse,  NY  13217
315-472-0001 X322
http://www.literacyvolunteers.org
http://www.natcoalitionliteracy.org/

-----Original Message-----
From: Thomas Sticht [mailto:tsticht at aznet.net]
Sent: Sunday, May 05, 2002 7:40 PM
To: nla at lists.literacytent.org
Cc: tsticht at aznet.net
Subject: [NLA] The Fall From the Summit of 2000 Continues

Research Note				 5-05-02
Tom Sticht

The Fall From the Summit of 2000 Continues:
NIFL Demoted From Leader to Pipeline

The Adult Education and Family Literacy Act of 1998, Section 242 states
that "the purpose of this section is to establish a National Institute
for Literacy that
(1) provides national leadership regarding literacy;
(2)  coordinates literacy services and policy; and
(3) serves as a national resource for adult education and literacy
programs?"

In keeping with the law, the Home Page of the National Institute for
Literacy used to say, "
"The National Institute for Literacy (NIFL) is an independent federal
organization leading the national effort toward a fully literate nation
in the 21st century."

On a visit to the NIFL Home Page on Sunday, May 5th, 2002, I noticed
that the Home Page now states, "The National Institute for Literacy
(NIFL) is a federal organization that shares information about literacy
and supports the development of high-quality literacy services so all
Americans can develop essential basic skills." 

Notice that the idea of being an "independent" federal organization is
gone. Now it seems that the NIFL is considered as just another federal
organization. This suggests to me that the NIFL is no longer considered
as being "independent" in any sense and is now under the strong control
of the Executive branch and has been commandeered to simply carry out
the wishes of the present administration. Consistent with this idea on
the present Home Page there is no statement about "leading the national
effort?". In fact, I couldn't find any comment on the web site
indicating that the NIFL offers any leadership regarding literacy.
Instead, at the "About NIFL" web page, under a section called "Primary
activities include", it starts off with: 

"NIFL acts as a policy information pipeline between the literacy field
and federal and state lawmakers. Through briefings, one-on-one meetings,
and other activities, NIFL serves as a resource to lawmakers responsible
for determining policy and funding issues related to adult education and
literacy. NIFL also keeps the literacy field informed of federal
legislative developments through regular publications called Policy
Updates and periodic analyses of literacy policy and implementation
issues affecting the states."

So, since the 1998 law, and apparently contrary to that law's intended
purpose for the NIFL, the present administration has transformed the
NIFL from an independent or at least semi-independent federal agency
providing leadership for the literacy field, to being regarded as simply
another federal organization whose primary activity is to act as a
resource to the administration providing a policy information "pipeline"
between federal and state lawmakers and the literacy field. 

A visit to the present NIFL web pages also reveals that, although the
NIFL was originally established to promote adult literacy education, it
is now apparent that references to adult literacy have been reduced, and
though there are still several activities for adult literacy education,
the Home Page and About NIFL page narratives do not emphasize adult
literacy. This reduction in the focus of the NIFL upon adult literacy
education has been previously noted by messages posted on the National
Literacy Advocates internet list that point out that the new advisory
board nominated by the President for the NIFL includes those whose work
has focused upon childhood literacy development and does not include
anyone whose primary field of work has been adult literacy education.

The reduction of attention to adult literacy education is also
noticeable in the lack of references and links to the National Literacy
Summit's Action Agenda for moving adult literacy from the margins to the
mainstream of education. It was previously possible to reach the
National Literacy Summit Initiative (NLSI) through the NIFL home page.
Now it is not. This reinforces the idea that adult literacy has been
de-emphasized as the NIFL has undergone a transformation from a
semi-independent organization focussed upon adult literacy education to
a tool of the present administration  to focus upon literacy development
in childhood in furtherance of its program to Leave No Child Behind.   

Along with the President's lack of a request for any more funds for
adult education and literacy for fiscal year 2003 than were available
for fiscal year 2002, there is also the lack of any apparent movement in
the National Literacy Summit Initiative (NLSI)  Action Agenda
discernable on the National Literacy Coalition's web pages at the
present time. Last year I commented on what was an apparent lack of
progress on the NLSI on its first anniversary in 2001, and all of the
foregoing seems to me to portend a further fall from the National
Literacy Summit of 2000, when the second anniversary of the NLSI  comes
around on International Literacy Day this September. 

It seems that if the NLSI Action Agenda is going to stimulate much
action in the present administration and Congress, the NLSI will have to
pump a lot more information through the NIFL pipeline to state and
federal lawmakers than they have up to now. 

And they better pump fast. I'm beginning to think that with the current
emphasis on scientific, evidence-based information about adult literacy
education, and the apparent lack of such information in the adult
literacy field, the well of acceptable adult literacy information may be
drying up!
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