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EFF project both at NIFL in terms of its being either a flagship project
of the NIFL,  or the flagship reform effort in the broader field of adult
literacy education today.

As far as the NIFL is concerned, it appears to me that EFF is just one
more project alongside LINCS, which may actually be the NIFL’s flagship
project in terms of the numbers of people involved and perhaps in the
amount of budget costs involved, Bridges to Practice, which is
disseminating information about learning disabled adults, and several
other smaller projects like the Directory of Literacy Services, some
policy reporting, etc. With a budget of just over $6 million, I would
guess at least $1 to $2 million must go for overhead (facilities
maintenance, utilities, rent, personnel payroll, benefits, travel,
retirement, etc), this leaves only some $4 to $5 million for program
activities. Spread across its various adult literacy activities, any one
NIFL program is small potatoes indeed, even in the realm of governmental
adult literacy work.

If we use the number of communications on the NIFL discussion lists as one
indicator of how extensive the EFF reform effort is, one might conclude
that it is not very extensive. As of August 4th the NLA list had over 1300
messages posted for the year, the ESL list had over 1000 messages posted,
while the EFF had only 210 messages posted. This does not seem to me to
suggest a major reform activity that has the field all a-buzz and working
like busy bees to incorporate the EFF framework into the 3 to 4 thousand
programs in the AELS. And if the impact of a program is indicated by the
interest of DOE or the Congress in evaluating it, as in the Even Start
program, then EFF does not seem to be of much interest because to my
knowledge no one has asked for an evaluation of the project and there has
been no presentation of evaluation studies to indicate that EFF actually
improves adult literacy programs anywhere.

Overall, the NIFL adult literacy work is very limited in comparison to the
work coming out of the DOE, OVAE/DAEL. The latter has some $9.5 million
for National Leadership Activities, which is almost twice what the NIFL
has for adult literacy education work. And if there is one governmental
flagship project that is actually driving real re-forming of the adult
literacy education field, it is the National Reporting System (NRS). Like
it or not, this is the real flagship for adult literacy education reform
in the nation today.

The NRS is so powerful a reform effort that it drove out programs serving
over 1,000,000 enrollees from the Adult Education and Literacy System of
the United States because they could not meet its stringent accountability
requirements that are re-forming the way adult literacy education
providers account for the effectiveness of their programs. While I find
this an appalling impact of the NRS activity, it certainly indicates that
the NRS has re-formed the AELS extensively. So powerful is the NRS
flagship that even EFF has been reformed so that it is now seeking to
develop an assessment  system for its framework that is compatible with
the NRS requirements.  So the NRS has changed the direction of the EFF
project, and not the other way around.