[NLA] "breaking news"

[SanStr@aol.com]

Art, Debbie, and all,
I must confess, as a "ground level" person for the last seventeen years, I'm disturbed by a few things that have surfaced in this discussion. 

First of all, I have yet to have a student leave our program because of initial testing and the subsequent discussion related to his/her progress and/or skill levels. In my experience, students want regular feedback on their learning and are quite capable of putting standardized test scores into perspective, especially when they're presented as just a piece of the assessment puzzle. During the student orientation process, for example, I think it's important to tell learners what we know about the relationship between intensity of participation and learning gains. I think it's also important to talk about what standardized test score don't tell us about learner progress and skills. Adult learners tend to respond very positively to data as a basis for their decision-making. In my opinion, self-esteem grows out of persistent struggle and the resulting achievement. As an adult learner, myself, I know I feel best about those things in my life I've worked hardest to achieve. 

Customer satisfaction is also an important indicator of program quality. In fact, it's an outcome measure in Title I and, as a result, we've begun collecting this data from our learners for the first time. This year we learned that our learners are especially frustrated with not having enough texts for them to take home or keep (testing issues never even came up as an issue). We're not going to solve our resources problem overnight, but our program improvement team is working on ways to increase the resources available to our learners next year. We believe it will enhance the quality of our services.

I have complete confidence in the performance data I reported to Pennsylvania's Bureau of Adult Basic and Literacy Education last year. In fact, Pennsylvania gets its GED attainment data by running our state level student database against the state level GED database and then issues program performance numbers from the data match. My local data is so strong that I appealed the numbers I received from the state-level data match (there was a time lag that resulted in a 16% difference in our figures) and succeeded in getting my performance data changed.

As a local program director, I take ownership of my data very seriously and strive constantly to improve our ability to capture the quality of the services we offer. Yes, there are always opportunities for subjective decision-making and error. One of the ways we deal with this is to make the data available to everyone in the program on a regular basis and to make performance improvement a team endeavor. Last year, my program improvement team increased our enrollment by 16% in our two-county area. It wasn't easy, but we did it. This year, we're trying to hit a 50% pre/post rate (up from 42% last year). At the end of April, we were at 48%, so as the year draws to a close, we're all working frantically to catch those learners with 50 or more hours that we haven't seen for post-testing (Pizza and Post-test Night was NOT, by the way, a great strategy). 

I will agree wholeheartedly that standardized test scores alone, and the National Reporting System, do not begin to capture the quality of the services we offer, but that doesn't mean this information isn't valuable. This year, for the first time, our program is preparing a "Report to Our Community." In this report we will offer our data on enrollment, retention, pre/post rate, learning gains, GED attainment, and customer satisfaction along side of testimonials from our leaners. We're proud of our data and we want to share it with our community and our learners. 

Given available resources, I think it is possible to derive a valid picture of the AELS system. The NRS Framework may not be enough, but I see no reason to throw away the baby with the bathwater.

Sandy Strunk
Supervisor of Adult and Family Literacy Education
Lancaster Lebanon IU 13