[NLA] OVAE Review

[Thomas Sticht]

Research Note September 6, 2002

"Buddy, can you spare a dime for adult literacy education?"

Tom Sticht
International Consultant in Adult Education

In 1993 the results of the National Adult Literacy Survey (NALS) were
released by the U. S. Department of Education with a headline shouting:

LITERACY LEVELS DEFICIENT FOR 90 MILLION U.S.ADULTS

With a sense of urgency Secretary  of Education Richard Riley decried the
situation and lamented that , "This report is a wake-up call to the sheer
magnitude of illiteracy in this country and underscore’s literacy’s strong
connection to economic status."

Despite this extraordinary wake-up call, the next year, in FY 1994, the
federal budget for the Adult Education and Literacy System (AELS) of the
United States (the State Grants under what is today title 2 of the
Workforce Investment Act of 1998) stayed the same as the year before at
around $255 million. In the next year it dropped to $252 million and then
dropped again to $247 million.

Fast-forward almost a decade later, on September 6, 2002, the U. S.
Department of Education released the first edition of OVAE Review, an
electronic bimonthly update from the Office of the Assistant Secretary for
the Office of Vocational and Adult Education (OVAE). In the opening column
by Dr. Carol D’Amico, Assistant Secretary for OVAE, she sounded a
hauntingly familiar cry of alarm, "In 1992, the National Adult Literacy
Survey found that as many as 90 million adults have skills that will limit
their ability to find full-time employment, earn high wages, or vote." She
went on to say, "
for those adults who have already fallen through the
cracks of our educational system, now is the time to improve the quality
of adult education services, so that we equip adults to meet the same
standards for college readiness that we set for high school graduates in
reading and mathematics
.  ensuring all adults -- regardless of their
backgrounds -- are equipped with literacy and numeric skills to succeed in
today's marketplace. It is never too late to learn."

Unfortunately, in an also hauntingly familiar response to the
extraordinary claim that as many as 90 million adults have life limiting,
nation threatening, low literacy skills, the President’s budget request
for the AELS for FY 2003 was the same as for FY 2002, an inflation
adjusted drop in funding per enrollee from the already obscene level of
less than $200 per student, and their were no requests for increases in
funding to help "improve the quality of adult education services" either.

For a decade there have been what appear to me to be disingenuous cries of
alarm about poor adult literacy abilities in the United States from the
federal government and others. If anyone – the President, Congress,
Governors, State Legislators, Military, Business or Union Leaders –
actually believed that 90 million adults had such poor literacy levels
that America was at risk in global marketplaces and, we should note, in
our defense and homeland security posture, something serious would be
done. But we don’t see defense and security being turned over to
faith-based or other community-based groups to mobilize volunteers to
train our military, airport screeners, etc., but apparently its OK to meet
the economic and security threats of the adult literacy crisis with these
volunteer, charitable groups. 
 anyone so long as they don’t want money
for good works!

Like the workers of the Great Depression of the 1930’s, today’s clarion
call from those in need of adult literacy education is, "Buddy, can you
spare a dime?"

But unlike the 19930s, so far today it looks like there is no New Deal
heading their way.





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