Graduation Rates of Students With Learning Disabilities Stunningly Low in Some States

/ The Old Crank

The National Center for Learning Disabilities (NCLD) just released a report called report that has some pretty interesting statistics on the drop-out rates of students with learning disabilities, or SLDs. According to NCLD, nationwide, the current dropout rate for SLDs is 19%. But 22 states have dropout rates higher than the national average, led by South Carolina, where a startling 49% of their SLDs drop out of school before earning a diploma.

I haven’t looked into this a while, but for years I’ve been surprised/concerned that there isn’t a firm, widely agreed-upon estimate of the percentage of enrolled adult education students with learning disabilities. (If anyone can point me to this, please do.) But if the dropout numbers for SLDs are this high, it stands to reason that many of these folks find their way into adult education classrooms.

Via Education Week

The Real Conspiracy

/ The Old Crank

Maybe all of the President’s recent troubles are really part of a clever plot to get immigration reform through Congress. From Roll Call yesterday:

[I]t’s possible that such opportunities to knock Obama will actually serve immigration well. Flipping the current conventional wisdom, the IRS, DOJ and Benghazi scandals give even the most moderate Republicans the opportunity to attack the president, thereby insulating themselves from conservative attacks.

See: Obama’s Troubles Won’t Harm Immigration Bill

Final Estimated Federal Funding for Adult Education for Fiscal Year 2013

/ The Old Crank

(Updated Below)

On April 30th, the Department of Education released funding tables (by program and by state) for FY 2012 and FY 2013 appropriations, and FY 2014 estimates. As a result, we now know the final estimated total allocation for WIA Title II (or AEFLA) Adult Basic and Literacy Education State Grants for FY 2013: $563,954,515. This includes $70,811,239 for English Literacy and Civics Education State Grants. That’s a cut of about $31 million dollars of federal support for adult literacy in comparison with FY 2012. (But it’s worse than that when you adjust for inflation—see below.)

Fiscal years 2012 and 2013 are based on currently enacted appropriation bills, and the amounts listed for FY 2013 include the effect of the sequester and an across-the-board cut in the final appropriation. FY 14 estimates are based on the president’s proposed budget, and barring a miracle, those estimates are well over what we’ll actually see in the final FY 2014 appropriation.

These tables also include the estimated state allocations. I’ve pulled those out for you here:

State AEFLA Allocation rev05-13-13State Allocations: Adult Basic and Literacy Education State Grants: FY 2012 Appropriations, FY 2013 Appropriations, and FY 2014 estimates
State AEFLA ELCivics Allocation rev05-13-13State Allocations: English Literacy and Civics Education State Grants (Excluded from Adult Basic and Literacy Education State Grants): FY 2012 Appropriations, FY 2013 Appropriations, and FY 2014 estimates

These tables were updated yesterday, but no changes were made to the WIA Title II grants, at least as far as I can tell.

As I mentioned above, federal funding for adult education is even more grim once you adjust for inflation. Based on these figures, I took a stab at estimating the buying power of $563,954,515 in 2002 dollars. I used that figure because the last time I saw this calculated, 2002 was used as the baseline. I plan to follow up at some point with a longer post on calculating the effect of inflation, and the effect of using different baselines (and maybe even different methods, too) but for now this seemed like a good place to start. (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, so I left it out.) (Note: this chart was updated 02/18/14.)

AEFLA Grants to States 2002-13 Graph

Using the most recent CPI (March), I calculate that $563,954,515 equals about $435,855,607 in 2002 dollars. Again, that’s a rough estimate, using the March CPI (for the other years I can use an annual average), but it’s close enough. The main takeaway here is that pre-sequestration the field was receiving somewhat stable, more-or-less flat, funding (that’s the blue line)—even, arguably, with the 2013 cut—but once you adjust for inflation (the red line)  you can see that the field has actually lost about 23% in real dollars in comparison with the appropriation of 2002.

Finally, don’t forget that other federal programs that are vital to adult education programs (Community Development Block Grants, CNCS/AmeriCorps, grants from USCIS, etc.) were also subject to sequestration cuts.

That’s a lot to chew on. Take a look and let me know if you have any comments or corrections.

UPDATE 2/18/14: This table has been updated to reflect the final 2013 CPI numbers.

Sequestration Quote of the Day

/ The Old Crank

“Austerity, including sequestration, is the economic version of medieval leeching.”

—Jared Bernstein, in a New York Times op-ed from May 3rd

In which case, we might as well just go ahead and appoint this guy to run the federal reserve.

By the way, Bernstein’s ideas about how to stimulate more job growth in the U.S. are worth reading if you are interested in such things. He’s following up with some Q&A’s on the subject over at his blog, starting with this post.