Adult Literacy

No Harm, No Foul

/ The Old Crank

(Updated Below)

Republicans in the House would like you to know that they haven’t really been hearing much about the sequester from their constituents.

From Roll Call this morning:

[W]hile the impacts are starting to appear in local media across the country, particularly near military bases, rank-and-file Republicans generally say they aren’t feeling much pressure yet, and they expect the sequester will simply stay in place.

“I think, generally speaking, people haven’t noticed,” said Rep. Tom Latham, R-Iowa, noting that the flap about canceled White House tours is one exception.

“I’m not hearing anything at home, really,” said Rep. John Campbell. The California Republican said he’s been asked about the sequester more by the press than constituents. He said he heard from one contractor who said, “You know, we may lose a contract over this, but we’ll survive.”

Campbell said Republicans going home for the Easter break are going to be focused instead on touting the GOP plan to balance the budget.

I’m not surprised that many House Republicans haven’t heard much from their constituents about the sequester. Republican members of the House (and only Republicans were interview for this story) often represent wealthier districts where, in fact, the sequester probably won’t have much of an impact.

But this does raise the question: During the upcoming House and Senate Easter recess (March 25th – April 5th), what will members (on either side of the aisle) hear about it? Do grassroots organizations have their folks prepared to meet with lawmakers during the break? Have folks back home just resigned themselves to the idea that the cuts are here to stay? Will stories that are “starting to appear” in the local media become more frequent?

There could be a lack of urgency about the sequester because many programs have not been affected yet. WIA Title II Adult education funding, for example, will not be cut until July 1st, because like many (but not all) education programs, it’s forward funded. So adult education programs aren’t going to see the effects until new grant awards are made over the summer. Plus, depending on how states decide to distribute the cut, I suppose some programs may not even see much of a decrease.

But it’s still important, I think, to speak up about the importance of federal support for adult education in our communities now, even if the sequester effects haven’t settled in yet. Remember also that sequestration is a multi-year process, and will work very differently next year. Instead of across-the-board cuts to every program, in 2014-2021 the cut will be in the form of overall budget caps. Congress and the administration will then have to figure out how to live within those reduced caps. In other words, after 2013, there are no automatic, proportional cuts to discretionary programs like adult education. It will be up to the President and Congress to decide how much to cut from each program. They could even eliminate funding altogether for some. (For those interested in the gory details, I recommend the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities latest paper on how this all works.)

I also continue to fear that over time, pressure on states to find money to shore up other places where the sequester is affecting their budgets is going to result in reduced state support for adult education, much in the way that California school districts have been snatching funds from adult education to support K-12. Which means that this is also an important time to let state lawmakers know how important adult education is in your community.

The media pays a lot of attention to the political wrangling between the administration and Congress over making some kind of deal to roll back the sequester, but without strong constituent pressure—and soon—I can’t figure out why we should expect that anything will actually be done.

Update: More on the same theme, from Brian Beutler at TPM:

It’s been nearly three weeks since President Obama issued the sequestration order. Across the country, newspapers carry reports of furloughs, airport closings, children kicked out of Head Start. The consequences are beginning to snowball. But lawmakers have reacted to the bad news with a collective shrug.

In the same week Congress is expected to pass government funding legislation that effectively locks in sequestration until the end of September, an unexpected reality is dawning on Washington: as bad as sequestration is, and was intended to be, it’s not bad enough to do what it was designed to do.

That’s left Democrats resigned to malfunctioning and underfunded government in perpetuity, and Republicans confident they can weather the coming months and turn sequestration spending levels into a new normal. (my emphasis)

Obama Administration: SKILLS Act Fails to Meet the Needs of Adults With “Literacy and English Language Needs”

/ The Old Crank

(Updated below)
STATEMENT OF ADMINISTRATION POLICYIn case you missed it, here is the Obama administration’s official response (known as a “Statement of Administration Policy”) to the SKILLS Act. The Republican-led bill to reauthorize the Workforce Investment Act recently passed in the House, but is likely dead-on-arrival in the Senate.

The administration says the SKILLS Act “would eliminate, or allow the consolidation of, many targeted programs, without providing the critical assistance needed by vulnerable populations,” including “adults with literacy and English language needs.” (my emphasis)

UPDATE: Acting Secretary of Labor Seth Harris also released a statement last week that was critical of the SKILLS Act. He doesn’t mention adult literacy specifically.

Could Immigration Reform Draw Greater Attention to the Legal Needs of Low-Income Immigrants?

/ The Old Crank

Kirk Semple, writing for the New York Times’ City Room blog, reports that a federal appellate judge in New York is proposing an “immigrant justice corps” program that would recruit and train young lawyers to assist illegal immigrants navigate the pathway to legal residency status and citizenship—under the assumption that the immigration reform legislation anticipated sometime this year will provide one. Most expect it will.

The judge, Robert A. Katzmann, envisions something that would look a lot like AmeriCorps VISTA and the Peace Corps. According to Semple, the program would recruit 50 young immigration lawyers every two months for two-year periods of service. Like the programs modeled on Teach for America I wrote about a couple of weeks ago, it would give graduating law students an opportunity for work in what is a tight job market right now for lawyers. Katzmann estimates that he would need $5 million to support the program for a year. Authorizing a few million dollars of federal money in the immigration reform bill itself to provide legal assistance to those trying to meet the requirements of the law should be a no-brainer, but in the current budget-cutting climate, that may not be possible.

As Semple notes, Judge Katzmann has been a longstanding critic of the quality of the legal representation provided to immigrants, and was the leader of a group in New York group that proposed a plan last year to create a network of legal service providers to represent low-income immigrants in the New York City region.

One of the biggest problems facing immigrants in any legal proceeding is lack of English proficiency. I’ve seen firsthand defendants brought before judges in criminal courtrooms, for example, who don’t read or speak English and have no experience navigating the U.S. legal system. Last year, I noted on this blog that the National Center on Access to Justice (NCAJ) at the Cardozza School of Law had concluded that many courts “have little or no way to communicate with the growing number of Americans who have only limited proficiency in English.” As a result, “innocent people have been sent to prison, children have been sent to foster care unnecessarily, and women have found it impossible to get court orders to protect them from domestic violence.” As I argued in that post, this is a problem not just for non-native English speakers but for native English speakers with low levels of literacy as well.

I agree with Judge Katzmann that the problem of inadequate legal representation for immigrants (especially low-income immigrants) will acquire even greater urgency once an immigration reform bill is passed, but the problem isn’t limited to immigration status issues. Perhaps his proposal will draw greater attention to the need to address language access and low literacy in our justice system generally.

SKILLS Act Approved by the House – Now It’s Off to Die in the Senate

/ The Old Crank / 1 Comment

If you follow this legislation closely, you already know this, but in case you missed it: the House of Representatives, to no one’s surprise, approved the House Republicans’ Workforce Investment Act (WIA) reauthorization bill, H.R. 803 (known as the SKILLS Act) on Friday, pretty much along party lines. Only two Democrats voted in favor: Rep. Matheson (UT) and Rep. Barrow (GA).

Fourteen Republicans voted against:

Paul Cook (CA)
Gary Miller (CA)
Paul Broun Jr. (GA)
Thomas Massie (KY)
Justin Amash (MI)
Walter Jones Jr. (NC)
Frank LoBiondo (NJ)
Jon Runyan (NJ)
Christopher Gibson (NY)
Michael Grimm (NY)
Peter King (NY)
Michael Turner (OH)
Jim Bridenstine (OK)
David McKinley (WV)

Rep. Tierney (D-MA) offered the Democrats’ substitute bill, H.R. 798, as an amendment, but again, not surprisingly, it didn’t pass.

Interestingly, the two Democratic House members vying for John Kerry’s former Senate seat, Edward Markey and Stephen Lynch, both sat out the vote.

The bill will now go on to find a nice hole to crawl into in the Senate. The Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee is reportedly working on a bipartisan WIA reauthorization bill, and thus it is extremely unlikely that the SKILLS Act, having received virtually no Democratic support in the House, will ever see the light of day on the Senate floor.

It was a bit frustrating (for me, anyway) to see this bill introduced at this time, since it’s going nowhere in the Senate. Because WIA is so critical to adult education funding, adult education advocates couldn’t ignore it, but I fear that it served as a distraction from immigration reform, where I think there is better opportunity right now to generate some new awareness and support in Congress for adult education.