A Family Focus Aids Enrollment and Retention at Adult Education Program

/ The Old Crank

A short news item in the Wilkes Journal-Patriot (which enjoys a far greater readership than their rival paper, the justifiably reviled Wilkes Ledger-Traitor*) notes that the local adult literacy agency, Wilkes Literacy, has recently expanded its programming to include more services for children as well as adults. Not because they are moving their focus away former serving adults, but because this helps them serve adults better:

“The idea is to get the children involved, and then their parents will come for classes too,” said Dennis Johnson, executive director of Wilkes Literacy.

“Plus it is hard for parents to come if their children don’t have a place to go,” said Johnson. “Now children and parents come at the same time.”

So, here again, a program on the ground gets it: with a family/community focus, more come through the door and more of them stay. So how do we ensure that federal and state policy encourages (or at least does not get in the way of) common-sense programming like this— programming that makes it possible for adults who are parents to attend adult education classes, and thus leads to better enrollment and retention numbers?

*Editor’s Note: There is no newspaper call the Wilkes Ledger-Traitor.

House Appears to Have No Interest in Fixing Green Card Backlog

/ The Old Crank

An article in yesterday’s New York Times makes the important point that while the plan to provide a pathway to citizenship for unauthorized immigrants received more attention, a much bigger chunk of the Senate’s comprehensive immigration reform bill is concerned with reforming legal immigration—which includes not only measures to clear the current green card backlog, but also to shift the immigration system to more of a merit-based system focused more on education and job skills.

But here again, the House is having none of that:

None of several smaller measures recently approved by House committees deal with fixing the visa system, and a bipartisan House bill similar to the Senate’s has stalled. For many House conservatives, the increase in legal immigration under the Senate plan is nearly as objectionable as the promise of citizenship for immigrants here illegally. (my emphasis)

What’s in the Senate Labor-HHS-Education Appropriations Bill for Adult Education?

/ The Old Crank / 1 Comment

For those who follow federal adult education policy, there are a few items of interest in the Senate Labor-HHS-Education Appropriations Committee’s Fiscal Year (FY) 2014 Appropriations bill, which was approved by the full Appropriations Committee last week.

Adult Education Basically Level-Funded

The Senate calculated their FY 2014 spending totals under the assumption that the budget sequester for FY 2013 and beyond will be lifted. With that in mind, the Committee recommended $608,105,000 for Adult Education programs—essentially level funding as compared with FY 2013. It’s actually a little less, and the reason is a little complicated: The Continuing Resolution (CR) that extended the federal budget at FY 2013 levels (after Congress was unable to pass a budget) included an across-the-board budget cut of 0.2%. So while the Senate ignored the more substantial sequester cut, it used the budget less .2% as their baseline for FY 2014. In other words, the FY 2014 appropriation would be the same as FY 2013’s, with the .2% cut, but without the sequester cut.

Of that amount, $593,803,000 would be set aside for Adult Education State Grants, with $74,559,000 set aside to “help States or localities affected significantly by immigration and large limited-English populations to implement programs that help immigrants acquire English literacy skills, gain knowledge about the rights and responsibilities of citizenship, and develop skills that will enable them to navigate key institutions of American life.”

The rest of the funds ($14,302,000) would be dedicated to national leadership activities, and it includes a bump up of $3,000,000 “to support new awards for prisoner reentry education models that build on the success of the Promoting Reentry Success through Continuity of Education Opportunities [PRSCEO] competition.” PRSCEO, surely a front-runner for the 2013 Worst Acronym Award, was funded last year with money that was  transferred from the Department of Justice under an interagency agreement.

New “Dual Enrollment” Program

The Committee would also allocate funds for a new $22 million dual enrollment grant initiative “that supports CTE career pathways and targets local workforce needs.” Adult education providers would be eligible to serve as a partner on these, and adult education students would be eligible participants, although funding could not be used to supplant other federal, state, or local public funds used for adult education and literacy activities.

Note that if this program were to become law (far from certain), it would create a new federal source of WIA grant funding for adult education programs/students—but one not flowing through Title II.

Here’s what the Committee has to say about this new program in their report (see page 187):

Dual enrollment programs enable high school students and adults without a high school equivalency credential to pursue post-secondary education and earn course credit that can be applied to a college degree or credential. Research shows dual enrollment programs are associated with gains in college enrollment and credit accumulation and higher grades. The Department will make competitive awards that help establish or expand dual enrollment programs through partnerships among institutions of higher education, LEAs that operate high-need public schools or adult education providers, and State and local agencies responsible for secondary and adult education and workforce training. This funding will provide students with support services, including tutoring, assistance completing financial aid applications and selecting courses, mentoring, career counseling, and assistance transferring from 2-year to 4-year institutions of higher education. Funds will also support activities designed for students with limited proficiency in English or from groups traditionally underrepresented in postsecondary education, individuals with disabilities, students who are homeless or in foster care, or disconnected youth. (my emphasis)

The Committee goes on to say (on page 199) that these funds are also intended to “support tuition, fees, and supplies for low-income students enrolled in dual enrollment programs who would qualify for Pell grants but are not eligible because they do not have a high school diploma.” This would be something of a replacement for the recently eliminated “ability to benefit” rule under Pell, although only for those enrolled in one of the dual enrollment programs funded through this initiative.

The program would be funded by carving out $5 million from CTE national programs, and a total of $17 million of Higher Education Act money (specifically, GPRA Data/Higher Education Act Program Evaluation funding). Fifteen million of the higher education money would support the program itself, while $2 million would be set aside for the evaluation.

Realistically, since the money here is being carved out of CTE and higher education funding, there is a reasonable question as to how much money would actually flow to adult education providers under this initiative. Yet there’s a heavy emphasis in the bill language on serving adults without high school credentials, a population that is mostly associated with Title II programs under WIA. If this program were to come into being, it would be interesting to see how it would be implemented and administered.

Report from Department of Labor on Strategies for Serving Those With “Low Literacy”

Citing their continued concern about “the low level of literacy and numeracy skills among adult workers,” the Committee requests a report from the Department of Labor, no later than March 1, 2014, on their progress in “educating the workforce system on the effectiveness of adult literacy and basic skills programs that have successfully implemented strategies for delivering basic literacy instruction together with occupational training.” They further recommend that best practices on how “to help adults with the lowest literacy levels improve their overall skills and employment opportunities” be widely disseminated.

It May Not Matter All That Much

It’s worth noting that the prospects for any of the above to be signed into law is iffy at best. For one thing, leaders in the House of Representatives are assuming that the sequester is continuing, so the corresponding House appropriations subcommittee has a much smaller pot of money to work with for its Labor-HHS bill. It’s possible that the adult education budget could be significantly chopped in a House bill.

The House subcommittee has not yet scheduled a markup of its bill, however, and the conventional wisdom is that it may not ever do so. In theory, each appropriations  bill is supposed to be passed and been signed into law by September 30th, the end of the fiscal year, but that hasn’t happened in a long time. Instead, it’s much more likely that the House and Senate will hammer out some kind of CR on the FY 14 budget in September. The CR might be for all of FY 14 or it might be a short-term CR that would be followed up by another negotiation of a government-wide “omnibus” spending bill sometime later. It’s hard to say what the spending levels will be under those scenarios, or whether any of the provisions above will survive.

E-Rate Also an Adult Education Issue

/ The Old Crank

An E-Rate increase has gathered some momentum over the last several months. The White House recently joined the effort by issuing a proposal (“ConnectED”) that basically outlines a vision for expanded connectivity powered by new E-Rate funds (in a nutshell: “to have 99% of American students connected to broadband Internet within five years”). More information here.

E-Rate is an interesting issue from a government education spending point of view because it’s not a legislative matter (that is, it doesn’t require Congress to act)—it only requires FCC approval.

Most of the attention on E-Rate is focused on K-12 schools, but it’s worth keeping an eye on from an adult education policy perspective as well, because public libraries are covered by the program. Faster/better connectivity at public libraries provides a benefit to adult leaners—particularly those enrolled in library-based adult education programs, of course, but also self-studiers (a population that adult education policy folks often forget about—a story for another day), or any learner enrolled in a program anywhere who uses their local public library for supplementary study outside of class. Back in June, ALA issued statement in support of the administration’s ConnectEd proposal that noted the role that library broadband connectivity plays in adult education:

“At any given point in the day a library can enable: a student live-chatting with an online tutor for homework help, a parent communicating with his child’s teacher via the online course management system, a high school student taking an Advanced Placement course online, a small class taking an online GED training course, students of all ages participating in real-time distance learning and a professional completing a recertification course. These are just a few of the Internet-based services the E-rate program helps support in America’s libraries. Virtually all public libraries provide no-fee access to computers and the Internet, including WiFi.” (my emphasis)

What would be even better, of course, would be an E-Rate program that allowed community-based adult education programs to apply for the discount as well as schools and libraries.