Testimony to the Committee on Appropriations
Labor, Health and Human Services and Education Subcommittee
Submitted by Bob Bickerton
Massachusetts Associate Commissioner of Education
&
President
of the National Council of State Directors of Adult Education
14 April 2005
Thank you for this opportunity to testify on behalf of funding for our nation’s Adult Education and Family Literacy program. This program, funded as Title II of the Workforce Investment Act, enables the states to educate almost three million undereducated and limited English proficient adults each year. I am testifying on behalf of the National Council of State Directors of Adult Education (NCSDAE). The members of the NCSDAE are the individuals responsible for overseeing the adult education program in each of the 50 fifty states, territories, and outlying areas.
There’s a great deal we should be talking about when it comes to adult literacy, adult secondary education, and English classes for immigrant adults. This program addresses a wide array of public policy priorities and it does so with remarkable efficiency and effectiveness. I understand and appreciate, however, the huge task ahead for the members of this Committee, so I will focus my remarks on the following four points:
In the process, I hope to shed some well deserved light on a program that generally labors in obscurity and to dispel some misunderstandings that have recently emerged.
1. OUR NATION’S INVESTMENT IN ADULT EDUCATION
The current appropriation for adult education grants to states is $569 million. This federal investment leverages an additional $1.6 billion in matching funds from the states although most of that matching share (83%) is attributable to just 10 states. Hence, more than almost any other education program, federal funding drives the adult education program in the majority (80%) of states.
What does this federal investment buy? The following individuals live in Massachusetts but the benefits they derive from the adult education program reflect the experiences of their counterparts in the other 49 states:
· Greg dropped out of high school to work when his dad suffered a disabling stroke. When he turned 23, he didn’t have a job but he did have a child on the way. Greg earned his GED (high school equivalency diploma) and got a job at a local bank.
· Lucia has two young children and works in housekeeping at a hotel. She is pursuing a job that provides health insurance and wants desperately to give her children the better life that her new country can offer. First, she needs to learn the English language. She enrolled in an intensive family literacy program, is deeply involved in her children’s school, and has mastered enough English to apply for citizenship and begin a medical secretary training program.
· In addition to helping their children with homework, the parents in Lucia’s family literacy program also benefited from classes provided by the program’s partners including preventive health sessions on nutrition, managing diabetes, and how to counter the negative effects of television on young children.
· Sally was struggling with basic literacy and represented the third generation of her family to receive public assistance (TANF). Now, after two and a half years of literacy classes at her local community adult basic education program (ABE), she can read her local newspaper and write the advertisements that the real estate company she now works for has published in that same paper. Now she continues with her adult education classes at night.
· Tyrone, a high school “graduate,” was released from a county house of corrections two months ago. During his nine month sentence he “studied math until my head hurt” – math covered in middle school that he never learned. Upon release, he continued to study algebra and geometry at his local community ABE program and will enroll in a community college to study computer networking in September.
· Mike owns a metal manufacturing company in his home town, a mid-sized city. He bought out a specialty machine shop in another state and decided that rather than operate it from a distance, it was time to “give something back” to the community in which he’d been so successful. He moved the equipment to his home town and started advertising for workers he could train to operate these complicated new machines. I met him nine months later when he was about to give up on finding workers with the strong basic skills foundation needed to begin the training. He told me that he “would never make the same ‘mistake’ again” (i.e., moving a plant and increasing jobs in his home town); clearly an inadequately skilled workforce has resulted in a serious lost opportunity for this struggling working class city.
*
Intergenerational Literacy * Math * High School Diploma * English Language
* *
Citizenship * First Job * Self Sufficiency * a Better Job * Preventive
Health * *
Public Safety / Reduced Recidivism * Transitions to Training and Higher
Education * *
Economic Development * Increased Competitiveness * These
are not only benefits to the individuals who enroll in adult education,
they are public policy priorities that affect all sectors of our
communities and our economy.
2. THE DEMONSTRATED EFFECTIVENESS OF ADULT EDUCATION
There are serious misperceptions about the performance of adult education programs. While all education and training services are being held to higher standards of performance accountability, NO program has done more in this regard than adult education AND the results are quite remarkable.
Adult educators working in programs supported with federal and state funding are deeply committed to services that are research based, that are accountable for results, and that use data to continuously improve services. The anecdotes in part one of my comments no longer need to stand on their own – they are part of a well documented database with rigorous standards for what can and cannot be counted. Nationally, the program is held accountable for standards related to student participation and outcomes. The measures include:
· Student enrollment, instructional intensity, and retention captured in a student level, auditable database.
· Student learning gains as determined by valid, reliable and comparable standardized assessment instruments.
· Student attainment of a high school diploma (or equivalent), employment, enrollment in a training program and/or higher education as determined by valid, reliable and comparable procedures (increasingly the use of data matching with other state databases of known quality, e.g., the state’s employment database).
[NOTE: Several states, like Massachusetts, have implemented an even broader array of performance standards, e.g., benchmarks in becoming a citizen, benefits to children whose parents are enrolled in family literacy, etc.]
This data has been faithfully
transmitted to the U.S. Department of Education that, in turn, has negotiated
ever more rigorous levels of performance for each state over the past five
years. So, how did the adult education
program end up with a rating of “results not demonstrated” from OMB’s “PART”
assessment?
The answer lies in the lack of coordination between two federal agencies and NOT in any deficiencies in performance by adult education programs! In fact, the PART assessment acknowledges it has the performance data documented by the adult education program but then does not use it, assigning instead a score of “0” for “Results,” NOT because of any issues related to data quality or rigor but because the cognizant federal agency (Education) used percents instead of the numeric targets used by OMB for PART!
The national and the state adult education programs can provide abundant, rigorous performance data and are prepared to do so at your request. This program delivers.
3. THE CONSEQUENCES OF DISINVESTMENT
The President’s budget proposes a 66% cut in funding for the adult education program and for eliminating the Even Start for Family Literacy program. The administration has concluded that it can no longer support these programs because the “results are not demonstrated.” We applaud this results driven process, however, this “conclusion” about the adult education program is based on incomplete data and faulty assumptions that are internal to the administration and not attributable to the thousands of dedicated and effective adult education programs and teachers.
Reducing the adult education appropriation by $369 million will throw half a million undereducated and limited English proficient adults out of their classes. Reducing this appropriation will diminish an effective but fragile infrastructure of adult education services that is already stretched far too thinly and that in many states already confronts long waiting lists for services; e.g., the current adult education system in Massachusetts serves an average of 24,000 students per year while striving to enroll students from a waiting list of over 25,000!
The argument has been made that these cuts do not affect English language instruction for immigrants because the “English Literacy / Civics” part of the appropriation has been level funded. This is not correct. The EL/Civics appropriation only covers 12% of enrolled students, however, 46% of the students enrolled in the state grants part of the program (slated for a 66% cut) are English language learners! Hence, hundreds of thousands of Latino and other immigrant adults striving to learn English would be forced out of their adult education classes.
There are few alternatives for our target population of 90 million undereducated and limited English proficient adults as identified by the last “National Adult Literacy Survey;” an updated national assessment will be released next Fall. Some have suggested that the Community Colleges can pick up the slack using increased funding for Pell Grants, however, this approach cannot succeed for three reasons:
· The Community Colleges are postsecondary institutions and the adult education program focuses on more basic skills.
· To be eligible for Pell Grants, students must meet the “ability to benefit” provision; students without a high school diploma or basic English communication skills are generally deemed to not meet this provision.
· Pell Grants are only available to students in community colleges for three years. Hence, in the best of all worlds, undereducated and limited English proficient students would only have one year for remediation and then two years to complete their associate’s degree – something the data demonstrates that few typical high school graduates are able to do.
Others have suggested that Education Reform, including the provisions of “No Child Left Behind” will render investment in adult education moot. One hundred percent effectiveness is a goal, not a reality. For example, while Massachusetts has succeeded in getting 95% of its high school seniors to meet high standards for graduation, this still leaves an average of 6,000 students who do not qualify for a high school diploma each year. These 6,000 are joined by thousands of other youth who dropped out before completing high school as the “incoming class” for our adult education programs.
Further, the “workforce replenishment rate” of individuals moving from education to work is about 2% per year. Even if we achieve 100% success, it will take 50 years for NCLB and state education reform efforts to fill most of the jobs in our economy with highly skilled graduates and this still doesn’t account for who will teach English literacy to those who immigrate to our nation.
Disinvesting in adult education doesn’t make sense for millions of undereducated and limited English proficient American adults, it doesn’t make sense for competitiveness and economic prosperity, and it doesn’t make sense for the quality of life of our communities.
4. KEEPING THE AMERICAN DREAM ALIVE
Some states have calculated a “Return On Investment” (ROI) for adult education based on the future earnings potential and reduced costs (e.g., public assistance) of graduates; these studies have shown a 3:1 return of benefits for each public dollar expended. These studies cannot capture what will happen if millions of Americans lose hope of ever being able to pursue the American Dream. It is unfortunate that we’ve become so familiar with this simple idea that it has entered the realm of “cliché.” We are, however, entering an era when many services that millions of Americans depend upon are at risk of losing public support. Given our current budget projections, some loss of services appears inevitable.
We cannot retreat from our investment in adult education for one very simple and powerful reason: it is one of the few programs that can “expand the pie” and bring a better life within reach for all of us. At current funding levels, adult education can only enroll three million of the 90 million adults who lack an adequate foundation of basic academic and English language skills. The “unmet need” is staggering – for individuals, communities and businesses in your district, your state, and across the nation. We call upon Congress to INCREASE its investment in adult education and keep the American Dream alive for all of us.
I will be happy to provide members of the Committee with additional data and any other information that may prove useful in your deliberations. I can be reached at 781-338-3800 and at rbickerton@doe.mass.edu