Adult Literacy

Assistant Principal at New Haven Adult and Continuing Education Center: “People who have no money will never be able to actually take the GED”

/ The Old Crank

In case you missed it, NPR aired a story last week about the concerns over the high cost of the 2014 GED this morning. The report was filed from an affiliate in Connecticut, and featured interviews with students/staff at the New Haven Adult and Continuing Education Center.

That particular program was a good choice: Toni Walker, the Assistant Principal, is also a Connecticut state representative. Walker’s comments on the potential increase in cost gets to the heart of the issue:

“It [the cost] is going to be prohibitive … People come here with pennies and nickels, bringing us change to pay for their GED,” Walker says. “So it’s going to be a class issue. People who have no money will never be able to actually take the GED.”

MA Secretary of Education: Return on Investment for Adult Literacy “Huge”

/ The Old Crank

Massachusetts Secretary of Education Secretary Paul Reville, in a blog post from last week:

We know that parents and families are a student’s primary teacher and play an indispensible role in the development of children’s cognitive, social and emotional development. Programs like this one equip families with the skills they need to help children succeed in school and go beyond that to increase adults’ competitiveness in the job market so they can earn a living and support their family.  The return on investment here is huge, yet there are over 450 families still on the waiting list for this program alone because of a lack of resources for Adult Basic Education.

I cannot emphasize enough the enormous difference that effective adult education programs can make in the lives of families.  I felt it in the emotion of the parent testimonies that day and saw tangible results of this program in doors now opened to adults and families through it.  There are currently an estimated 1.1 million adults in Massachusetts in need of Adult Basic Education Services and less than 5% of that population is having those needs met.  We can and should do better. (my emphasis)

It’s encouraging that an education official at this level is arguing for adult education’s return on investment so forcefully. It’s also refreshing—and from a policy perspective, I think this is ultimately going to prove to be more effective—that he views adult education as an investment in families and communities, and not just “workers.” I think this puts job skills, as an outcome of adult education, in the proper context, as one of several outcomes of adult education that work together to strengthen families and the communities they live in.

One other really critical point: Reville’s post was inspired after a visit to a family literacy program in Chelsea, Mass. This is why it’s really important to invite public officials to visit programs so that they can see the impact for themselves. I’d like to believe that every cabinet-level state education official makes a visit to an adult or family literacy program at least once a year. If that’s not the case, it’s something we need to work on.

Read his entire post here. It’s really excellent.

h/t @WorldEdUS

English-Only Laws Are Divisive and Ludicrous

/ The Old Crank

Fredrick Kunkle wrote a story for The Washington Post earlier this week about a proposed English-only ordinance in Carroll County, MD. Kunkle finds it curious that English-only would be much of an issue in a county where only about 2.6% of the resident are Latino. There is no mention in the article of the recently enacted Maryland DREAM Act, and whether the controversy over that measure over the last year or so might have anything to do with the timing of this proposal.

Later in the story we learn that the ordinance wouldn’t actually do anything:

Kim Propeack, political director of CASA of Maryland, said the proposed ordinance’s only significance is its symbolism. Federal and state laws require that services they fund must be accessible in languages besides English. It’s also meaningless in the private sector, where businesses that are eager to win new customers have embraced bilingualism.

“On a policy level, this is just ludicrous,” Propeack said. “You have to wonder what they’re really trying to say.”

Two paragraphs later, we have our answer:

“Send them all back where they came from,” said store owner Shane Fitzgerald, 33.

One other point that can’t be made enough, apparently. If universal, free, English-language instruction were suddenly made available to all, and everyone who wanted to learn English enrolled tomorrow, (and plenty of people would) that would not remove the obligation to provide government services and information in multiple languages, because it actually takes some time to learn a new language. And you’d need to keep those services and information resources accessible to non-English speakers even after all your current residents have learned English, because more non-English speaking people will be coming along right behind them.

That is, unless you take the position that non-English speakers simply don’t have the same rights as those who do.

There just isn’t any remotely legitimate policy interest behind English-only laws. The government has an obligation to treat people equally and fairly, and not every one of us at any given time speaks/read/understands English. It’s pretty simple.

Most non-english speaking people want to learn English. The way to support people to do this is to invest in programs that will help them to learn. I don’t know about Carroll county, but recent reports are that Maryland has an adult education waiting list at any given time of about 1,200-2,700 people. (And a report from a few years earlier had that number at about 5,000, with the vast majority waiting for ESL services.) Waiting list numbers always underestimate the actual demand for services, because many people have given up looking, or can’t find a suitable program in their community to begin with.

h/t @JohnSegota

Great Question

/ The Old Crank

Thomas Abraham, writing for The New York Times, asks:

[Why are] global health programs… fragmented along disease-specific lines, rather than addressing multiple diseases and helping to strengthen basic health services. The same children who need to be vaccinated against polio also need to be reached by other immunization programs, receive bed nets from the malaria program, and benefit from nutrition and safe-water initiatives.

While donors have often pledged to work together to integrate disease initiatives, the way global health programs are structured makes integration, or even cooperation, difficult.

Most aid and donor funding is earmarked for specific health issues; the campaigns in turn are required to meet specific targets related to the diseases for which they have received money.

Thus the malaria program has no real interest in helping polio immunization, since this is not what its funding is for. The polio program similarly has no stake in helping measles immunization, which it would see as a distraction from its primary aim of eradicating polio.

Could the same be said about literacy here in the U.S.? There are a lot of different programs working to improve literacy in this country, but these programs are also fragmented—in this case, along age-specific or need-specific lines. Some programs are focused on getting books to kids, while others provide tutors for adults, and others concentrate on showing parents how to enhance the development of their children’s early literacy skills—to cite three examples.

Further, I’d argue that these efforts are not structured in a way that makes integration between them easy. Efforts to improve children’s literacy don’t usually coordinate with programs for adults, groups that work to get books to kids don’t necessarily connect with efforts to engage parents, and groups that work to engage parents don’t necessarily work with adult literacy groups. And so on. Even within adult education, community-based organizations are sometimes working separately from institutional programs at community colleges or public schools. We’re often competing for the same dollars, too, and often from the same funders.

If I were to design, from scratch, a community-based model to improve literacy skills, I’d provide incentives for all of these groups to not only coordinate, but to organize that collective effort around the specific needs of community members.

via The NYTimes.com.