K-12

“They want to learn because they know that it’s benefitting their children.”

/ The Old Crank

No time these days to maintain this site on anything close to a regular schedule, but I thought I’d break my long silence to log this quote reported in the Celina Record, (in Texas), about the influence of adult education in children’s educational success, a favorite topic of this blog:

[Jill Roza, the district’s director of adult education services] was the assistant principal at Celina Intermediate School. She said that she had frequently encountered parents “who didn’t feel comfortable coming into the school system if they didn’t speak English,” which made it difficult to “get them the information they needed for their children to be successful” in school. “Many did not have a firm foundation in their own language,” she recalled, “and so I wanted to do something that would create that harmony between the community and the school and would make them feel much more comfortable coming into a school setting.”

Roza added: “Watching them come into class with their supplies, they are so excited and they want to learn because they know that it’s benefitting their children. Many of them will say,’I want to help my child with their work.’”

Warning of the Day

/ The Old Crank / 2 Comments

From John Huppenthal:

The state’s top education official warned Wednesday that Arizona schools could be inundated with tens of thousands of immigrant children at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars if President Obama enacts some kind of amnesty.

But John Huppenthal conceded he has absolutely nothing to back that up. In fact, Huppenthal acknowledged that federal law already requires Arizona — and all states — to educate children regardless of their immigration status. That, he said, means the children who he fears might be granted amnesty likely already are here and in Arizona schools.

“Perhaps,” he said, saying there is no way to know “all of the implications” of what the president might order. (my emphasis)

It’s true. For all we know the President will announce the rollout of some kind of mutant clone army to escort illegal aliens across the boarder and into our schools. Best to prepare for the worst you can make up imagine.

Graduation Rates of Students With Learning Disabilities Stunningly Low in Some States

/ The Old Crank

The National Center for Learning Disabilities (NCLD) just released a report called report that has some pretty interesting statistics on the drop-out rates of students with learning disabilities, or SLDs. According to NCLD, nationwide, the current dropout rate for SLDs is 19%. But 22 states have dropout rates higher than the national average, led by South Carolina, where a startling 49% of their SLDs drop out of school before earning a diploma.

I haven’t looked into this a while, but for years I’ve been surprised/concerned that there isn’t a firm, widely agreed-upon estimate of the percentage of enrolled adult education students with learning disabilities. (If anyone can point me to this, please do.) But if the dropout numbers for SLDs are this high, it stands to reason that many of these folks find their way into adult education classrooms.

Via Education Week

Legislative Analyst’s Office Recommends Restructuring of California Adult Education Funding

/ The Old Crank

EdSource published a good story earlier this week about the continuing effort by advocates in California to fix their broken adult education funding system. As I’ve written previously, (here, for example), a budget mechanism implemented in 2009 known as “categorical flexibility,” has allowed California school districts to divert funds from adult education to support its K-12 programs. Altogether, the LAO estimates that over $450 million in state and federal government funds—more than half of the funds that used to be available—have been diverted out of California’s district-run adult schools since the categorical flexibility law was passed.

California’s Legislative Analyst’s Office (LAO) recently issued a report that recommended a return to a dedicated funding stream for adult education—on other words, remove it from the list of programs that can be poached for other purposes.

Unfortunately, the article makes it clear that there still isn’t a clear legislative path towards implementing that recommendation.

Don’t miss Bob Harper’s comment on the article, which I think makes a good point:

If it’s the intention of the Governor that adult literacy, English language acquisition and immigrant integration, basic skills related to readiness for work or college, are no longer critical services, then that needs to be made plain in policy discussions, and not be the desultory by-product of budgetary reform. In such policy discussions it would be hard to ignore the historic role that adult education has performed for California, and to discuss in what form that needed service continues.