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.)

North Carolina Justice Center on the GED

/ The Old Crank

I’ve been trying to keep a special eye on policy papers outside the adult education world related to the GED revamp, particularly those that come at the issue from a civil rights, social justice, or economic policy point of view. Here’s one from the North Carolina Justice Center that came out back in November that I missed. It’s a good summary of the potential challenges that the new test may pose to low-income adults. It closes with a critical point:

While these challenges are significant, the changes to the GED test also offer an opportunity for states to reflect on ways to better meet the needs of this target population. (my emphasis)

This has been a point that I’ve been stressing (I hope) since the Pearson VUE partnership spurred several states to look for GED alternatives last year. Whatever you think of the GED and its new competitors, the rapid evolution of the HSE testing marketplace does appear to be forcing policymakers and state officials outside of the adult education office to spend some time actually thinking about the needs of this population. Whether this leads to more investment in adult education and/or policies designed to assist more adult learners to succeed is still an open question.

h/t Adrienne Harreveld

Here We Go Again

/ The Old Crank

I’ve written before about the inherent problem with instituting an adult education requirement in order to qualify for a government benefit (as have others), but in light of this recent Labour proposal in the U.K., it’s worth repeating the basic problem with this kind of proposal: it’s only fair, and only works as policy, if access to adult education is free and universal. There are other problems, potentially, with adding new requirements to benefits already earned (which is the case with unemployment benefits in the U.S.) but such proposals are fundamentally flawed at the start if a lack of available adult education opportunities make the education requirement impossible for beneficiaries to meet. If Labour is also proposing a massive new investment in adult education and training (and I mean truly massive), that’s one thing, but it’s not clear from this piece in The Telegraph  that such an investment would be accompanying the new education requirement in their proposal:

People receiving Jobseeker’s Allowance would be forced to sit a basic skills test within six weeks of signing on or face being stripped of their benefits, Labour will say, in a move designed to challenge the Tory’s popular welfare policies.

Anyone who does not show basic competency in literacy, numeracy and IT will be sent on training programmes.

Labour believes that around 300,000 people could be sent on courses every year. If they refuse, they will be denied welfare.

Maybe I’m completely uninformed, and the U.K. has 300,000 empty seats in their adult education and training programs. But if not, I’m not sure how this plan is supposed to work.

Note also that expanding a system to accommodate 300,000 more learners is not just a question of pumping more money into programs. To achieve anything close to universal access to adult education, you’d have to think through a strategy that puts in place some combination of physical program and/or on-line learning that is distributed in such a way that it is truly accessible by all, and you’d also have to figure out some way to ensure that individuals could carve out the time and distraction-free space to successfully engage in learning (all of which might require additional investments in broadband access, transportation, and childcare—just to name three examples).