Education – General

The Problem With Defining Adult Education Outcomes Too Narrowly

/ The Old Crank

Nice article in the Stamford Advocate on an ESL program based at a Stamford, CT elementary school that includes a weekly family literacy night:

“Its wonderful,” said Stark Principal Mark Bonasera who stopped by to attend the event. He said the program has really helped the school, kids and families. It brings the parents into the school and really makes them part of the community, he said, and it also helps parents help their children with work.

Elsa Martinez, 47, said this is the first time she’s really had a chance to learn the language. She and her husband came to America from Peru 18 years ago and started a family. Both had jobs and she didn’t have time to learn to write the language. She said as a house cleaner, she didn’t have to speak the language very well, but did know it well enough to understand people.

Shortly after her daughter Emily Soruluz was born about five years ago, Martinez, who is married but kept her maiden name, said she stopped working. And when Emily entered kindergarten this year, Martinez entered school, too.

Neither spoke English, but on Wednesday they were both doing well. “Absolutely,” Martinez said, when asked if the program was also a help to her daughter. “I’m available to help her.

“She said she wasn’t able to do that for her son, who is 17.

And Emily is doing well, she entered kindergarten unable to read or speak English, but on Wednesday she was reading her part with a strong voice and eagerly answering questions, much like the other students. (my emphasis)

You’ll note that Elsa Martinez appears to no longer the in the workforce. But surely no one would argue that the outcomes here—a parent fully engaged and able to assist in their child’s education, improved reading and classroom engagement on the part of the child—aren’t desirable public policy goals. Yet, in my experience, many policymakers (and funders) continue to insist that the goal of adult education should be exclusively measured in terms of occupational outcomes.

Thankfully, such narrow framing is not embedded in the law that governs most federal adult education spending (Title II of the Workforce Investment Act, or WIA), but if you think siloing off adult education from children’s education is a bad idea, you’ll want to monitor current WIA reauthorization efforts for changes that would force communities to break off the connections they are building between federally funded adult literacy education and (especially) early childhood education, and encourage them to seek ways to better leverage WIA Title II with other federal education investments and goals. Washington’s current infatuation with pre-K education is a good place to start. If the goal for pre-K is to ensure that more kids are ready for K-12, then why wouldn’t you want to look at the primary source of federal support for programs that help low-skilled parents improve their literacy for ways to leverage those efforts? I’ve never understood why you can’t do that kind of cross-generational leveraging while at the same time strengthening the linkages between WIA Title II programs and workforce development for those adult learners in the workforce.*

Granted, I have no idea if the program in the story above received any federal support, but the point is still the same, from a broad public policy perspective—why shouldn’t it?

*An alternative would be to find another place in federal legislation for adult literacy funding that is not directly related to occupational outcomes, but I’m not sure how that would work—either politically or in practice.

Let’s Have More Readers AND More Coders

/ The Old Crank

Readers of this blog know that I’m very sympathetic to the view that policymakers, from the President on down, do not pay nearly enough attention to U.S. adult literacy rates. So I really appreciate the sentiment behind arguments like this one—especially the idea that we’d get a bigger payoff if we focused our efforts (and dollars) on those in poverty and/or those who are struggling the most.

But I don’t understand why encouraging kids to take up computer programming can’t be part of this efforts. I feel pretty confident that Computer Science Education Week is not the reason we have low adult literacy rates in this country. It’s true that literacy skills are important foundational skills for other disciplines, including computer programming. But that doesn’t mean that they have to literally come first, before anything else. For some computer-loving reluctant readers, literacy instruction in the context of learning about computer science and programming is probably going to be a really good way to reach them. I’m as pro-literacy as you can get, but I don’t want to be in a position of debating whether kids should be learning coding or reading. The question is whether we are providing all children with opportunities to learn about whatever it is that grabs them—and yes, preparing them with the foundational skills to take advantage of those opportunities, but also, I think, continuing to embed sound literacy instruction into every discipline as they move along.

It’s also worth noting that the latest estimates we have about adult skills (Iglesias is using the old NAAL data in his post) show that adult math skills are an even bigger problem than adult literacy, and so encouraging interest in computer science or other math-related subjects might be prudent for this reason as well.

The Skills Message Washington Will Ignore

/ The Old Crank / 1 Comment

There hasn’t been a formal announcement yet, but multiple sources inform me that Senator Harkin (D-IA) and Rep. George Miller (D-CA) will be unveiling their long-anticipated preschool education bill, based on President Obama’s Preschool for All proposal, on November 13th  or 14th—with, in all likelihood, a really big Capitol Hill event to go along with it.

I mention this because the next big PIAAC report release—the OECD’s in-depth analysis of the U.S. data—is set for release on November 12th (see: www.piaacgateway.com). It’s a near certainty that the hoopla over the preschool bill—a major priority of both the President and Sen. Harkin—will completely preoccupy the administration that week, and dominate the attention span of both lawmakers and pundits.

I also wonder if the introduction of this legislation also makes the prospects for Workforce Investment Act (WIA – the source of most federal adult education funding) reauthorization a little shakier, although there is a going to be a major push this month by advocates to get the Senate bill that was passed late last summer to the Senate floor for a vote this fall. But the preschool bill makes the already overstuffed House and Senate education agenda even more crowded, as almost every major piece of federal education legislation is overdue for reauthorization. Higher education is getting a lot of attention at the moment, for example.

And that’s on top of all the wrangling on the budget, and other high-profile items, like immigration reform. (At a conference I attended yesterday at Georgetown Law School, while it was made pretty clear that the prospects for an immigration reform bill getting through this Congress still aren’t all that great, work continues on immigration bills in the House—and clearly some Republicans want to keep this issue in the spotlight.)

So, if you’re an adult education advocate, be prepared for a frustrating week mid-November. You’ll be hearing a lot from pre-K proponents about the economic benefits of investing in preschool. Meanwhile, the new evidence showing that the basic skills of the current American workforce significantly lag behind much of the rest of the industrialized world will largely be ignored. If you believe that the American economy can’t wait another 15 or 20 years for pre-K to provide us with a more highly skilled workforce, you are going to have to make your voices  louder than ever over the next few weeks and months.

Finally, I mentioned this the other day, but it bears repeating: the countries that get this right don’t make it an either/or proposition: they invest in early education and provide meaningful lifelong learning opportunities for adults too. From OECD’s initial summary analysis of the findings (page 13):

The impressive progress that some countries have made in improving the skills of their population over successive generations shows what can be achieved. These countries have established systems that combine high-quality initial education with opportunities and incentives for the entire population to continue to develop proficiency in reading and numeracy skills, whether outside work or at the workplace, after initial education and training are completed.  (my emphasis)

A Few More Thoughts About PIAAC

/ The Old Crank / 1 Comment

I’m spending a little more time with PIAAC today in preparation for a webinar I’ve been asked to participate in tomorrow. So I thought I’d post a couple of random, non-exhaustive (but possibly exhausting) thoughts about not only the data but also the media coverage of the survey—which has a large influence, I think on how to view this new data in terms of advocacy.

First, it’s important, I think, to remember that PIAAC is a measure of skills. One of the most prominent issues that emerges from the PIAAC data is that, in the U.S., many adults with a high school or even a postsecondary education still lack strong basic skills, and lag behind their counterparts in many other countries. This serves as a reminder that we have to be careful in adult education not to conflate credential attainment with skills—they’re not the same thing. It’s not unusual, for example, to hear someone talk about how adult education addresses skills by increasing the number of GEDs or diplomas acquired, or the number of students who have gone onto college. That works if you believe credentials are accurate proxies for skills, but the PIAAC data calls into question whether attaining those credentials (and we do a relatively good job compared to other countries in handing out credentials) provides all those receiving them with a good education and strong, marketable skills. We probably need to evaluate more closely the actual skills people acquire at every age and in whatever course of study they’re in, rather than just focus on credential attainment—or at least look more critically at whether our credentials are sufficient proxies for skills.

This might, in turn, spark a renewed interest in skill acquisition and program quality in adult education programs at all levels. It’s never made any sense to me to assess an adult education program primarily in terms of credential attainment anyway—so maybe PIAAC will encourage us to look more closely at what students are actually learning, not just the degrees they are earning.

A second, related point: if you look at the media coverage, U.S. performance on the PIAAC was largely portrayed as an indictment of our entire education system. Despite the fact that the PIAAC was concerned with adult skills, there seems to be little awareness in the media that an adult education system actually exists in this country. (I realize that we are far from taking a true systematic approach to addressing adult literacy in the U.S., but there is a system—for better or worse—that you can point to, even if it is severely underfunded and fragmented.)

The one good thing about the fact that no one in the media seems to be aware that an adult education system exists is that, to my knowledge, U.S. adult education programs were spared any criticism in the wake of these findings. This is important, because, like past literacy surveys, the PIACC tells us nothing about the performance of  U.S. adult literacy programs. It’s a survey of the general population, not adult literacy students. It’s safe to say that there hasn’t been much change in adult skill levels among the general population since the last adult literacy survey, but that doesn’t tell us anything about the job that adult literacy programs have been doing during that period. Sadly, the U.S. adult education system serves so few people, it simply couldn’t be having a discernible impact—good or bad—on overall skill levels, if you’re taking the entire population into account.

But this lack of visibility does present something of a blank slate for advocates in which to make the case that U.S. adult education programs are contributing in a positive way to increasing adult skills.

Third, while there is a lot in the data for those who have jumped aboard the universal pre-K bandwagon, OECD’s summary analysis of the findings actually emphasizes a multi-pronged approach to improving skills that includes both quality early education and lifelong learning opportunities for adults (page 13):

The impressive progress that some countries have made in improving the skills of their population over successive generations shows what can be achieved. These countries have established systems that combine high-quality initial education with opportunities and incentives for the entire population to continue to develop proficiency in reading and numeracy skills, whether outside work or at the workplace, after initial education and training are completed.  (my emphasis)

Fourth, there’s also a lot here about linking skills development strategies with economic development strategies in general. The PIAAC data could open up more opportunities to draw labor market analysts and economic development experts into a discussion about the role of adult education in the economy. Businesses, too.

As far as the data itself goes, something that jumped out at me is the alarming gap in skills in the U.S. that runs along racial lines, and also between native-born Americans and immigrants. I don’t think you can have a serious policy discussion about skills in this country without acknowledging and addressing the racial component in these findings.

Finally, the numbers on math skills in the U.S. across all demographic categories are particularly grim. If this doesn’t inspire the U.S. (and states) to make a big adult numeracy push in the near future, I don’t know what will.