Federal Policy

Adult Education Funding in 2014: Why an increase Isn’t an Increase

/ The Old Crank / 1 Comment

(Updated Below)

I was talking to someone last Friday who was a bit confused by this post—specifically, by what I’m counting when measuring the federal investment in adult education—and I thought a followup post might be helpful to others who might be confused as well.

Again, to start with, I’m looking at WIA Title II/AEFLA only. That is by far the biggest source of adult basic education/literacy funding in the federal budget. (In fact, I’m pretty sure it’s the only line item you’ll see in the federal budget where adult literacy is mentioned.)

The U.S. Department of Education produces a lot of different tables and charts related to the programs that they fund. Sometimes it takes a little work to figure these out—and that work is made much harder if you are not familiar with the programs in question.

For example, this set of tables, last updated on January 23rd of this year, is the latest Department compilation of funding levels for each program it funds, based on the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2014 (where one will find the final appropriation amounts set by Congress for FY 2014).

The question posed to me last week was why my chart shows I’ve been claiming no change in WIA Title II funding from FY 2013 to FY 2014. Apparently the Department of Education claims there was an increase of about $3 million. Which is technically true if you look at the entire subtotal for adult education (see chart below), but that’s not the number you want to look at when trying to figure out how much the federal government is investing adult education programs. My chart is looking specifically at the line item for adult education state grants, which is where all the money for local programs actually comes from. The other line item that makes up the aggregate subtotal for WIA Title II/AEFLA funding is national leadership activities—money used by the Office of Career, Technical, and Adult Education (OCTAE) for a variety of national projects: standards development, curriculum material, research, etc. It’s conceivable that some of this money may find it’s way into the hands of local programs (for a demonstration project, for example), but it is not by definition money that is used to support local program services. So for the purposes of tracking federal adult education funding that actual goes to programs, I track the state grant program, which is where that money comes from.

You can see in the Department’s chart below that, yes, the total line time for adult education did in fact rise by $3 million, from $574,667,000 in FY 2013 to $577,667,000 in FY 2014. But the key number is in the second to last column, under the line item “Adult basic and literacy education State grants,” which as you can see shows an increase of exactly zero between FY 2013 and FY 2014. The increase in funding for adult education in FY 2014 was entirely allocated to OCTAE for national leadership activities.

(Click on the graphic to see it full size.)

adult-ed_overview_budget_budget14_14action_pdf

One other possible source of confusion: in the tables above, the Department simply lists “Adult basic and literacy education State grants” without noting that a certain percentage is set aside specifically for states to fund ESL/civics programs. Which makes sense, as this is not a separate program but a set-aside. Sometimes, however, the Department breaks that out in their tables. for example, in their “State History Tables by Program tables. here, there are two tables you need to look for in order to get the total for the state grant program for each year: “Adult Basic and Literacy Education State Grants” and the table that follows, “English Literacy and Civics Education State Grants (Excluded from Adult Basic and Literacy Education State Grants)”

You have to add up the totals in each of those tables to get the aggregate total for state grants for that year.

UPDATE 3/10/14: Ugh. I hate having to make a clarifying correction to a post that was in part meant as a clarification to begin with. In the 5th paragraph above, I mistakenly implied that my inflation chart included the FY 2014 appropriation. It doesn’t. It stops at 2013. The question referenced the chart in relation to a point I had made somewhere else (Twitter?) about the FY 2014 appropriation not including an increase for AEFLA state grants.

None of that has anything to do with the substance of my post, but it might have been confusing to anyone you clicked on the link to the chart looking for the FY 2014 appropriation. More on the FY 2014 appropriation here.

Second Chance Act Reauthorization Adds Support for Adult Education

/ The Old Crank

Looking for a small federal policy win for adult literacy? Then I invite you to take a look at The Second Chance Reauthorization Act of 2013, a bipartisan (!) bill recently introduced in both the House and the Senate containing language that appears to open up a Department of Justice grant program to adult education/literacy providers by making it explicit that such services qualify.

Signed into law on April 9, 2008, the Second Chance Act (P.L. 110-199) authorizes federal grants to government agencies and nonprofit organizations that provide support strategies and services designed to reduce recidivism. There are two grant programs associated with this legislation, both administered by the Office of Justice Programs in the U.S. Department of Justice: the Bureau of Justice Assistance awards Second Chance Act grants serving adults, and the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention awards grants serving youth returning from the juvenile correction facilities.

Last November, a bill to reauthorize the Act (S. 1690) was introduced in the Senate by Sen. Portman (R-OH) and Sen. Leahy (D-VT), along with an identical bill in the House (H.R. 3465), introduced by Rep. Sensenbrenner (R-WI) and Rep. Davis (D-IL).

The reauthorization bill(s) offer more explicit language regarding the types of transitional services that may be provided by grantees funded under this grant program. It explicitly identifies education and literacy as one of the transitional services that may be provided by grantees. I know zippo about how/why this language got in there, but if the bill passes with this provision intact, it seems to me it presents an interesting opportunity for adult education providers.

The document below (click on it for a PDF) highlights the pertinent section. The new language is in bold.

Second Chance Reauthorization Act of 2013

Federal Adult Education Funding: Updated Table/Chart

/ The Old Crank / 1 Comment

I recently updated a chart I made back in May of 2013 showing AEFLA (i.e. WIA Title II) spending over time since 2002, in both nominal amounts and inflation-adjusted dollars. The reason for the update? We now have final CPI figures for 2013. The result isn’t much different from my original, which used the rate of inflation as of April 2013, but I thought it was important to update the chart with the final 2013 figures.

The bottom line is pretty much exactly why I estimated back in May: in terms of real dollars, the federal investment in adult education has dropped by nearly 23% since 2002.

AEFLA Spending 2002-2013 - Inflation Adjustments

(Click on the chart for a larger, less fuzzy version.)

As I noted when I put this together in May, for FY 2010, I did not include the one-time adjustment made by the Department of Education to make up for several years of underpayment to some states—that anomaly wasn’t carried over and shouldn’t be interpreted as growth.

An Immigration Reform Strategy That Includes Investments in Skills for All

/ The Old Crank

Jared Bernstein looks at the impact of immigration on poverty in the U.S., and concludes that it doesn’t have much of an impact on poverty trends over time:

The fact that immigration isn’t placing much pressure on poverty rate trends suggests that if we want to reduce those trends, we’re less likely to get there by trying to reduce immigration.  A far better strategy would be to improve the earnings capacity–the skills, the availability of decent paying jobs, the work supports—available to all low-wage working families, regardless of their nativity. (my emphasis)

This was more-or-less the premise we started from when I worked with the National Skills Coalition on this set of immigration reform recommendations. That is, we looked at  immigration reform as an opportunity to begin overhauling the federal workforce development system across the board (including investing in more skills training and adult education). In fact, immigration reform seemed to me at the time to be the best chance to get something resembling workforce development legislation passed in the near term (even if prospects for WIA look a bit better right now), because, at least in the case of last year’s Senate bill, there were some significant dollars attached for education and training.

I also wonder if embedding immigration reform inside a broader education and workforce development strategy might be helpful from a political perspective, by placing it in the context of a political issue with a broader constituency. It might also give some structure by which to diffuse the argument that immigration reforms will result in immigrants taking away jobs from U.S.-born workers. (I know that a lot of people have made the case for immigration reform in the context of broader economic growth , but I’m not sure among that this connects very well with the general public in the way that jobs and job training does.)