Adult Literacy

Will New Administration Immigration Policy Increase Demand for GED Classes?

/ The Old Crank / 1 Comment

(Updated Below)

The Migration Policy Institute has increased their estimate of the number of unauthorized immigrants who may be eligible for temporary relief from the threat of deportation under the new Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) initiative. After taking a look at the more detailed eligibility guidelines released by the Department of Homeland Security on August 3rd, they now think that as many as 1.76 million unauthorized immigrants may be eligible (up from 1.39 million).

The DACA initiative will offer, on a case-by-case basis, a two-year grant of reprieve from deportation as well as work authorization for unauthorized immigrants who were under the age of 31 as of June 15, 2012, who entered the U.S. as children, and who can demonstrate that they meet certain other criteria, which you can read about here.

What changed? Among the list of eligibility requirements first released in June, when the policy was announced, was the requirement that applicants had to have a high school degree or have earned a GED—or be enrolled in school now. Last week, DHS clarified that those under 31 years of age lacking a high school diploma or a GED not currently enrolled in school will also be eligible, as long as they have re-enrolled by the date of their application. MPI estimates that this adds as many as 350,000 unauthorized young adult immigrants (ages 16 and older) without a high school degree or GED to the list of potential beneficiaries of this program, provided they meet the rest of the eligibility requirements.

It will be interesting to see if this results in an uptick in demand for GED and adult ESL services in the coming months.

UPDATE 8/28/12: While researching a post for D.C. LEARNs today, I read through the DACA guidelines a little more carefully. As noted above, to meet the DACA education requirements, an applicant must have graduated from high school or obtained a GED certificate, or must be “currently in school” on the date of application. The USCIS guidelines published here make it clear that their definition of “school” is fairly broad and includes most kinds of adult education programs. I’m planning to write a separate post about this in the near future.

UPDATE 8/29/12: This article from New America Media (NAM) notes that in Arizona, Proposition 300 bars state-funded schools from offering free GED classes to undocumented immigrants, so meeting the educational requirements of DACA by enrolling in a free GED program will not be an option for those living in that state.

Responding to Budget Cuts in Adult Education

/ The Old Crank

Last week, the Council for the Advancement of Adult Literacy (CAAL) released In A Time of Scarce Resources: Near Term Priorities in Adult Education, a 34-page summary and analysis of responses submitted by more than two dozen “adult education leaders” about “priority areas in adult education at a time when resources are scarce.” (Not that they are plentiful most of time.) According to CAAL, “the main purpose of the paper is to motivate adult education planners, service providers, and policymakers to recognize the need to focus on highest priority next steps to take in this period of extreme funding constraints.”

Those surveyed, according to CAAL “stress[ed] that we can achieve a great deal, despite stagnant funding, if we set priorities and are all traveling in the same direction toward a comprehensive shared vision for the future.”

But is this true? You can obviously prioritize and work more efficiently to make do with what you have in almost any circumstance, (which is where a report like this one is useful), but I think we let policymakers off the hook when we say that “we can achieve a great deal” when budgets are drastically reduced, as they have been in many states in recent years. People in this field work so hard to figure out how to move forward with scarce resources—in doing so, my fear is that scarce resources are all we are ever going to get.

House and Senate Adult Literacy Resolution Roundup

/ The Old Crank

Congressman Jared Polis (D-CO) is introducing a resolution in the U.S. House of Representatives to recognize the second full week in September as National Adult Education and Family Literacy Week. (As a D.C. resident, I was pleased to see that Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton is a co-sponsor of the resolution.)

If you would like to ask your member of Congress to sign on as a co-sponsor as well, the National Coalition for Literacy (NCL) has all the information you need in order to make that ask. The deadline is tomorrow, July 31st.

In addition, Senators Patty Murray (D-WA) and Lamar Alexander (R-TN) have introduced a similar resolution in the Senate, and are also looking for co-sponsors among their Senate colleagues. For this one, the deadline is Wednesday, August 1st. For some reason, I can’t find this information on the NCL web site, but here is an e-mail NCL sent out last week with some helpful instructions on how to contact your Senator about it:

Senate Alert: Invite Senators to Cosponsor Resolution Dedicating National AEFL Week 2012!

Recently, Senators Patty Murray (D-WA) and Lamar Alexander (R-TN) introduced a senate resolution dedicating the week of September 10, 2012 as National Adult Education & Family Literacy Week! Already Jim Webb (D-VA) and Bernie Sanders (I-VT) have signed on as cosponsors to this measure. Would you like your U.S. Senator to support adult education and family literacy by cosponsoring this resolution?

If so, then please call his or her office today, requesting your U.S. Senator sign on as a co-sponsor.  Deadline to co-sponsor: Wednesday, August 1st

Instructions:

  1. Call your U.S. Senator’s office. Ask to speak to the legislative staff who covers adult education. Find the phone number here: http://bit.ly/Senate-AEFLWeek12
  2. Ask, “Will you please ask Senator __________________ to cosponsor a Senate Resolution recognizing the week of September 10 as National Adult Education & Family Literacy Week? The deadline to officially sign on as a cosponsor is August 1.”
  3. To cosponsor, legislative staff should call Jordan Smith on Senator Murray’s staff or Peter Oppenheimer on Senator Alexander’s staff. Offer to send the staffer acopy of the draft resolution.
  4. Talk about why it is important for the Senator to show his/her support as well as the success of local programs and impact of adult education in local communities. While NCL shares the “national picture” with Congress, only you have the local and personal story.
  5. Follow up as appropriate.

Also worth noting: Congressman Hansen Clarke (R) and Tim Scott (D), both of Michigan, introduced a House resolution at the very end of last month “[e]xpressing the sense of the House of Representatives that bolstering literacy among African-American and Hispanic men is an urgent national priority.”

The resolution, if approved, would, among other things, “affirm the goal of reducing adult illiteracy by 50 percent in these target populations and by 25 percent throughout the United States” over the next ten years; encourage local, State, and Federal agencies—as well as the private sector—to engage in “literacy promotion initiatives;” and encourage Federal agencies and private firms to support community-based organization programs and the use of trained volunteers to work with the target populations. (my emphasis).

Congressman Clarke also wrote a piece for the Huffington Post on Friday advocating for increasing resources for adult literacy programs—but without mentioning any specific support for legislation that would actually increase federal funding for adult literacy. Here are his recommendations:

First, rather than reducing school hours and facilities due to budget cuts, we must keep our schools open later and reopen libraries to serve students who are struggling to read. Second, we should boost funding for community-based organizations like Reading Works and ProLiteracy Detroit that provide adult literacy training. Such programs are understaffed and oversubscribed, with 74 percent of organizations nationally maintaining waiting lists. Third, we should reform our prisons to give inmates the tools they need to become successful members of the workforce. We can start to do this by providing more resources to teach literacy in prisons and by rewarding inmates who read more.

Will State TANF Waivers Improve Coordination Between TANF and Adult Education?

/ The Old Crank

(Updated Below)

A couple of weeks ago, the Obama Administration announced that it would begin allowing states to apply for waivers to current TANF rules so that they can “test alternative and innovative strategies, policies, and procedures that are designed to improve employment outcomes for needy families.” LaDonna Pavetti of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities recently wrote a blog post in which she argued that the granting of these waivers, which has apparently annoyed some Republican members of Congress, will strengthen welfare reform. She believes the increased flexibility will permit states to not only design more effective strategies for helping recipients prepare for, find, and retain jobs, but also “measure their accomplishments in more meaningful ways than the current system allows.”

One of her arguments is that waivers will provide states with greater flexibility to align their TANF employment programs with other employment, training, and education initiatives:

The TANF work requirements are very narrowly defined and often are inconsistent with the requirements in other job training and employment programs.  If HHS allows states some flexibility to increase the effectiveness of their TANF work programs and activities, states will be able to maximize coordination among TANF and other programs including the Workforce Investment Act, Adult Education, and Vocational Rehabilitation. This will help to streamline programs and make it easier for unemployed parents to be served by the program best suited to help them secure and retain employment and increase the effectiveness of the bigger employment and training system. (my emphasis)

It will be interesting to see whether any states use this opportunity to improve coordination between TANF and adult education services. It seems to me that this could also be a potential opportunity for adult education advocates and TANF advocates to work together to improve educational opportunities for TANF recipients.

UPDATE 7/30/12:  Greg Kaufman, writing about the proposed waivers in his “This Week in Poverty” blog for The Nation, argues that these waivers represent modest reform only, and argues that what is needed is something more along the lines of Congresswoman Gwen Moore’s RISE Act:

Can you imagine the outcry if there were good, aggressive reforms offered by Democrats—the kind found in Congresswoman Gwen Moore’s RISE Act? Among the smart changes Moore calls for are: adjusting each state’s block grant for inflation so it’s no longer frozen at 1996 funding levels, unchanged for the past 16 years; allowing education and job training to count towards work requirements; providing childcare for all work-eligible parents; and prohibiting time limits of less than 60 months.

Now that would indeed be the end of welfare reform as we know it. Or at least the end of some of its most egregious failures—and the beginning of a system with the interests of poor people at its heart.