Adult Literacy

California Continues Disinvestment in Adult Literacy

/ The Old Crank

As expected, California’s latest revenue expectations were short of what was needed to prevent automatic state spending cuts to to libraries, universities and schools for 2012, including $15 million in library funding.

Last Saturday, the Napa Valley Register reported that The Literacy Center of Napa City-County Library would be losing all of its state funding (about about $48,000). While this will not result in the closing of the center, it does represent a total withdrawal of state support for library-based community adult education in the county.

The Literacy Center coordinator Lisa Smartt, who has worked in literacy for 30 years, said she and her colleagues have watched in disbelief as funding for their special literacy programs has continued to shrink.

“We’ve been shaking our heads,” Smartt said. “We never thought we would see this.”

The State Library has been the main source of funding for the library’s Literacy Center since 1985. The bulk of the funding paid for the workbooks and other materials used by the center.

The Literacy Center, located inside the Napa City-County Library, offers free one-on-one tutoring for adult learners who need help with their basic reading, English as a second language, GED preparation or math skills. These learners include native speakers, students learning English as a second language, the learning-disabled and others who “just fell through the cracks,” Smartt said.

“In these difficult economic times, more people have been using the Literacy Center to improve their job skills,” Kreimeier said, adding that the center receives numerous referrals from Workforce Napa.

For the Literacy Center to remain open, Smartt will have to find more creative ways to secure funding.

Fundraising is a challenge for the Literacy Center because, as a government agency, it can’t compete with Napa’s nonprofits for local grants. This limits the center to seeking support from private donors as well as state and federal grant programs — which often have a wide pool of applicants.

To maintain a robust program, the Literacy Center requires about $60,000 per year. This does not include the salaries of its three staff members, which are supported by the county, Smartt said. Currently, the center is operating on less than $30,000 per year.

Smartt is trying to look at the positive side of the budget cuts. The “blessing” in all of this, she said, is “we get to reinvent ourselves.”

The Literacy Center will be shifting its focus to one-on-one literacy services at the library — specifically GED preparation and employability tutoring. Almost all of the general outreach programs will be eliminated, including Families for Literacy, Homework Assistance, and the jails program where literacy tutors worked one-on-one with inmates.

I appreciate the positive thinking that one must maintain when faced with the elimination of a major funding source. But it’s also clear from the last paragraph that cutting services—including family literacy services and services to inmates—is part of that reinvention.

According to the paper, Smartt believes that “any country that wants to remain competitive should make literacy a top priority.” The question is whether policymakers in California and elsewhere actually believe this—and if not, why not?

American Academy of Pediatrics Encourages Pediatricians to Collaborate With Community Groups to Strengthen Families

/ The Old Crank

The American Academy of Pediatrics issued a policy statement on Monday that reminds pediatricians of the growing body of research linking brain growth and development in infants to the relationships they form during early childhood, and how exposure to family stress (including stress resulting form poverty and related issues) during the early stages of childhood development can lead to mental, intellectual and physical problems later in life. The AAP statement recommends that pediatricians “develop their expertise in assessing the strengths and stresses in families, in counseling families about strategies and resources, and in collaborating with others in their communities to support family relationships.”

That last recommendation is particularly helpful, I think, for those interested in building stronger links between community-based adult and family literacy programs and pediatric caregivers. The authors suggest that pediatricians become more familiar with the variety of different community-based family support program models, and they include skills training and literacy education among the types of programming that “promote parental competencies and behaviors that contribute to parental and infant/child/adolescent health and development:”

Many comprehensive, community based family support programs have been established around the country. These programs aim to support family relationships and promote parental competencies and behaviors that contribute to parental and infant/child/adolescent health and development. The best programs offer a spectrum of services that involve informal and structured groups. Topics may include information on child development, personal growth, family relationships, parenting education, peer support groups, parent-child activities, early developmental screening, community referral and follow-up, job skills training, and/or adult education, especially language and literacy education. (my emphasis)

Among the recommendations: “Pediatricians should work to identify, develop, refer to, and participate in community-based family support programs to help parents secure the knowledge, skills, support and strategies they need to raise their children.”

In addition:

Pediatricians should actively participate in sustaining the social capacity of their communities through their personal participation in local recreational, social, educational, civic, or philanthropic activities and associations. By participating in community-based family support programs, pediatricians can provide technical advice on health and safety aspects of services, serve as a source of professional information for families, and best to contribute to the healthy development of children, families, and communities.

Reading this, I wondered how often pediatricans are recruited to serve on the board of directors or as advisors to local community-based literacy organizations.

 h/t Los Angeles Times

A Charter School Network in New Orleans Increases Parental Involvement – By Offering Adult Education

/ The Old Crank

I was doing some research on charter schools and came across an adult literacy program that specifically targets the parents of children enrolled in a charter school network in New Orleans. According to the Web site of the New Beginnings School Foundation, the Capital One Foundation Adult Literacy Center of Greater New Orleans was set up to serve the “parents of the more than 1,400 students enrolled at Capital One-New Beginnings Charter School Network schools and the greater community served by its schools.”

What got my attention was the link that was being made here in this community between participating adult education and parental involvement in the schools, an issue I have written about recently. In a recent announcement, Dr. Vera Triplett, CEO of New Beginnings Charter School Network, says that “[t]he adult literacy program has helped to bring more parents into the schools,” where they “get to see what their children are doing everyday, and how hard the school is working to help them achieve academically.”

Multiple Attacks on Adults Without High School Diplomas

/ The Old Crank

This week I’ve been writing about H.R. 3630—specifically the provision in the bill that would deny UI benefits to individuals without a high school diploma unless they are enrolled in classes that will lead to a GED or another “state-recognized equivalent.”

Unfortunately, this is not the only legislation before Congress this week that would undermine adult learners without a high school diploma if approved. Early this morning, the House appropriations committee posted a version of their proposed Fiscal Year (FY) 2012 omnibus appropriation package, and it proposes to eliminate Pell grant eligibility for less-than-half-time students and students without high school diplomas (known as “ability to benefit” students). (Page 791 of the section pertaining to the Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education, posted here.)

Many people without high school credentials attend postsecondary education, particularly via community colleges. I can’t easily get my hands on current data on this, but as far back as 2003-04 students without high-school degrees accounted for 2% of all college students, 3% of community college students and 4% of students attending for-profit colleges—and surely that number has gone up since then. Pell is one of the few—I believe possibly the only—federal financial aid available to them.

There appears to be a growing trend in Congress toward cutting off federal educational support for adults who need it the most.