[NLA] Return on Investment

[Eileen Eckert]

Andrea said:
"It is not  the contribution to the economy that I am getting at, though 
maybe others are.  I am considering what the return on investment is worth 
to the individual--ability to afford health insurance?  That would be a nice 
return if so."

Heidi pointed out the the ROI is different for people of different 
races/ethnicities, and George also pointed to the many facets of "returns" 
on investment. I see what you're all saying. I guess the ROI language makes 
me uneasy. To me, it connotes a purely financial perspective on education, 
with the investment being the investment of taxpayer money rather than 
learner time, and the return being increased productivity and employment, 
reduction in welfare, etc. In another message, Andrea said something to the 
effect that as a taxpayer, she wants to know that the programs her taxes 
support are effective. In his original question, I understood Ira to be 
asking for research on the ROI, with the idea that there might be some 
documented "average" economic gains as a result of participation in literacy 
education.

It seems to me this is the question of accountability again. If we accept 
the broader concept of ROI as returns to the learner on their investment of 
time and energy, then aren't we more likely to both see and document such 
returns if we know what each individual participant wants, what returns they 
are looking for, and how they use their developing knowledge and skills, 
instead of trying to account for any gains through scores on standardized 
tests?

To whom are we accountable? I would argue that by holding ourselves 
accountable to each learner who participates in a program (and sharing that 
responsibility with them, so that our accountability is not control or 
charity), we would be more likely to contribute to and document meaningful 
gains. It seems that programs that do so are more and more likely to do it 
at the cost of any federal money and its attached strings. So, does federal 
money become a barrier to true accountability?

For a compelling view of becoming accountable, I urge everyone to read 
Shirley Wright's article, "Learners First," in the June 1999 issue of Focus 
on Basics. The URL is http://www.gse.harvard.edu/~ncsall/fob/1999/wright.htm

and here's an excerpt:

"Our program had missed the boat on accountability. We were highly 
accountable to our school system. It said that 16 credits equaled one high 
school diploma, and we would never issue a diploma to someone who had not 
met this requirement. The system said that an "A" meant achievement. We gave 
out lots of A’s. So why were our adult learners still unable to find 
employment? Why were they still on welfare? Why couldn’t they remember 
anything that we had taught them? In our small town, we saw students often 
and asked them about the impact that attending our program had made in their 
lives. Participation had, in many cases, not made a difference and had not 
improved their quality of life.

"Our program team, which consisted of the director (me) and four teachers, 
began to scrutinize what we were doing and why. We asked ourselves: Who are 
we really accountable to? Our answer was that we were accountable to our 
learners first and to the system second. With that in mind, we began to 
build a new program, one that focused on the learner while satisfying the 
state and federal government as well as our local school district. We are 
still in the process of making this change, and it is working extremely 
well."

My point is that accountability loses its meaning when it is imposed and 
orchestrated from the outside (at the state or federal levels) rather than 
generated from the inside, and that we lose the richness of the effects (and 
maybe even the effects themselves) when we do not recognize, reflect on, and 
articulate or document the differences that education makes in people's 
lives.






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