[NLA] Alert: Is the NIFL Advisory Board Just the Beginning?

[Thomas Sticht]

David asks whether the issues about the NIFL Board of Advisors is just
the beginning. But of course it is not. Following is a listing of a
number of actions indicating the Adult Education and Literacy System
(AELS) of the United States is being downgraded as an educational
priority. Most of these actions have already been noted on the NLA list
at one time or another. 

A. At the White House & Department of Education.
1. The President asked for no more funding for the AELS in FY 2002 than
it already had in FY 2001.
2. The President asked for no more funding for the AELS in FY2003 than
it already had in FY 2002.
3. The President proposed a reduction in Even Start from $250 million to
$200 million from FY 02 to FY 03. 
4. The President proposed reducing funds for Incarcerated Youth
Offenders from $17 million in FY 02 to zero in FY 03. 
5. The President proposed reducing funds for Prison Literacy from $5
million for FY 02 to zero for FY 03.  
6. The President asked for a drop in funding for Community Technology
Centers from $32.5 million in FY 02 to zero in FY 03. 

B. At the NIFL
1. The new NIFL Board has been stripped of adult educators and/or
learners.
2. The NIFL has been reduced from offering "leadership" to being an
information "pipeline."
3. The NIFL has been reduced from being an "independent federal agency"
to being just another federal agency. 
4. The Literacy Summit 2000’s Action Agenda for advancing adult literacy
education has been removed as a link at the NIFL 
5. The NIFL has assumed activities aimed at children’s and adolescent’s
literacy instead of focusing exclusively upon  adult literacy education.

C. In the Congress
1. HR4092, part of the TANF reauthorization, contains a block grant and
waiver provision that seriously threatens the integrity of adult
education.
2. National Leadership Activities in OVAE/DAEL were reduced from $14
million to $9.5 million from FY 01 to FY 02.
3. Funds for Community Technology Centers were reduced from $65 million
in FY 01 to $32.5 million in FY 02. 
4. Even Start was level funded at $250 million from FY 01 to FY 02,
effectively reducing funding when adjusted for inflation. 

Only extensive lobbying by the National Coalition for Literacy and
others prevented level funding for the AELS from FY 01 to 02 and instead
lead to an increase of some $35 millioin in the state grants for the
AELS. This is something in which the advocacy field can take some
satisfaction. However, it pales in comparison to the many other actions
listed above as indicators of the administration's and Congress's actual
commitment to the AELS as a genuinely needed, valued, and effective
third publicly funded component of the education structure of in the
U.S. 

As things stand now, I have the feeling that the President,
administration officials, and members of Congress still think of the
AELS not as an education system, but, except for the need for English
langauge education,  as a mostly temporary program that will go away
once the pre-school, K-12 system is "fixed" and no child is left behind
in his or her reading skills. More distressing, I get the feeling that
many involved in adult education and literacy development share this
point of view. Aside from the obvious need for English language
education for new immigrants, I think that for most people who are aware
of it at all, the AELS is still viewed as a remediable, second chance
federal and state program, not an education system,  for the failures of
the public schools. 

Unfortunately, this idea is often reinforced by the very advocates upon
whom the fate of the AELS depends. In awareness campaigns that highlight
the failures of our K-12 system, and portray adult literacy education as
remediable reading instruction, these well-meaning advocates downplay
the many valuable educational subject matters that adults are taught in
thousands of classes across the nation each day. Life-saving health
topics, financial lessons in rent assistance, spousal abuse and remedies
for it,  and numerous other adult topics that the AELS teaches are
overlooked as attention is focussed upon the elderly woman or man who
did not learn to read, because of no reasons of their own, and who now
throw themselves upon the mercy of the government to fund some reading
tutoring for them. 

While I realize that the latter may be a necessary part of our advocacy
for funding for the AELS, I believe that it has been overemphasized in
the past and it has overshadowed our efforts to establish the AELS as an
educational system. Whether the field can unite itself and come together
behind the idea of an AELS as a permanent, tax-supported, adult
education system, or continue to go along with the idea of adult
literacy education as a more or less charitable, remediable reading
activity for adults that will disappear once the pre-school, K-12
systems are fixed, I do not know. 

This year I am speaking out in favor of the AELS as an adult education
system in six locations in the U.S., and I have done this in years past,
too. But I have gotten the feeling in these many visits with adult
literacy groups that I may be in a very small number (perhaps only one)
of advocates speaking out on behalf of an AELS as an adult education
system - not a remediable program. 

I hope I am wrong. But the recent decline from the Literacy Summit of
2000 that I have perceived does not offer me much hope for a strong
advocacy for the AELS as a world class, premier adult education system
for the United States. Am I wrong?

Tom Sticht
_______________________________________________
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