[NLA] Year 2 of the Action Agenda

[Thomas Sticht]

Research Note
12 September 2002

Year 2 of The National Literacy Summit of 2000 Has Passed:
Has There Been Any Action on the Action Agenda?

Thomas G. Sticht
International Consultant in Adult Education

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, after the first two years into the Action
Agenda, results in these aspects of the system are not encouraging.

QUALITY: I have found no information to form a basis for a judgment as to
whether or not in the last two years there has been an increase or
improvement in the quality of services for adult students in the programs
of the Adult Education and Literacy System (AELS) of the United States,
i.e., those programs funded in part by State Grants from the WIA/AEFLA act
of 1998, or any other programs such as those of ProLiteracy Worldwide,
libraries, corrections, workplace, etc.

ACCESS: From the peak of 4.1 million in 1997 enrollments in the AELS
dropped to around 2.9 million in program year 1999-2000, the last year for
which I have data. This is a drop of almost 30 percent, some 1.2 million
enrollments.  At 2.9 million, we are nearly back to the 1985 figure of
around 2.879 million enrollments. This is a loss of over a decade of
progress in getting adults to access the Adult Education and Literacy
System of the United States of America. Presumably the programs that
served the 1.2 million adults who are no longer in the AELS are sill
operating, but outside the framework and funding of he AELS. Indeed, there
have been news stories about long waiting lists for adult literacy and
language programs. At the present time, though, it looks like the Action
Agenda item of ACCESS is failing with respect to increasing access to and
enrollments in the AELS, and there are no data of which I am aware to
suggest it is succeeding outside the AELS. I do not know if the DAEL,
NIFL, NCSALL, NCL or any other organization is looking into the issue of
ACCESS.

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." In 2002 both the President and
Senate have requested $575 million for FY 2003 for the AELS. This is the
same as for FY 2002.

The Action Agenda Commitments: Is the Field Uncommitted?

In a year 1 report of progress in the Action Agenda,  some 163 commitments
were made by 69 organizations for action they were going to take in future
years to further the National Literacy Summit 2000 Action Agenda. In year
2, however, I have checked the National Literacy Coalition’s web pages for
the Action Agenda and found only three commitments by the NCL for year 2,
and these are the same as in year 1. There is no year 2 report of
commitments like that of year 1. Further, the NIFL has dropped a link to
the Action Agenda from its web site and no loner refers to it on its home
page, suggesting a drop in the NIFL’s commitment to the Action Agenda. 
Likewise, there is no link to or discussion of the Action Agenda at the
NCSALL web page to the Action Agenda.

At the present time, then, it seems to me that during 2002, the National
Literacy Summit 2000 has not had much action from the field or from any
national leadership that would help achieve the Action Agenda’s goal of
moving the adult education, language, and literacy system, however
defined, from the margins to the mainstream of education in the United
States. Instead, it appears that since the Action Agenda was released at
the Literacy Summit of 2000, there has been a downhill decline in action.

This leads me to wonder if there is actually much interest anymore in the
Action Agenda among either the original sponsors and formulators of the
Agenda, or the rest of the adult literacy education field, either?

Well, we are at the start of year 3, and there are still several years to
go before we reach 2010. Perhaps things will pick-up in these out years.










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