adult literacy

Is the Potential Elimination of Adult Education in Los Angeles Our Wisconsin Moment?

/ The Old Crank
latimes-march14

Photo of the front page of the March 14th edition of the Los Angeles Times, from the Save Adult Ed! Web site.

About a year ago, Steven Greenhouse of the New York Times described the effort by Governor Walker of Wisconsin to slash the collective bargaining rights of his state’s public employees as a potential “watershed for public-sector unions, perhaps signaling the beginning of a decline in their power — both at the bargaining table and in politics.”

The situation in Wisconsin galvanized the labor movement and resulted in a massive protest that engaged people from around the country. I’ve been thinking about those protests the last couple of months as I’ve been following the school budget situation in Los Angeles, where the school board has decided to completely shut down adult education unless new revenue or teacher pay cuts are accepted. Eliminating adult education in L.A. would cut off adult education services to well over 300,000 people.

There are a lot of differences between the crisis in L.A. what was happening in Wisconsin a year ago in many, many fundamental ways. For one thing, the effort to dismantle public sector unions in Wisconsin was connected to an organized, long-standing national political agenda, and to my knowledge there is no political party with a specific agenda to dismantle adult education. Secondly, adult education ever had the political clout or recognition that organized labor has. But I do think an argument can be made that the attempt to shut down adult education in L.A. is a similar “watershed” moment for the field, both because of the scale of the protests (500 people at the rally yesterday), and, possibly, the ramifications. If adult education services at this scale, and with such visible, active support, can simply be dropped—if the city and the school board, in other words, gets away with doing this—does this send a message to policymakers across the country that they can get away with it too? Granted, adult education has never been in a very secure position in most states; as noted by CLASP, several states have been cutting funding for adult education dramatically the last few years, and Arizona dropped state funding altogether in 2010.

But eliminating a program of this size is, I believe, unprecedented (by comparison, according to CLASP, Arizona’s 2010 cut dropped services for 40,000 people). For this reason, it feels like a dangerous line in the sand that the adult education field should not allow to be crossed, similar to the way in which labor leaders realized that the fight in Wisconsin last year had ramifications that went well beyond Wisconsin state borders.

Here is a video of the guy with the megaphone above. He was living under a bridge before he learned English:

Dallas Independent School District Drops Adult Education

/ The Old Crank

According to this story in the Dallas Morning News, the Dallas Independent School District is planning to drop their adult education program, which has provided free GED and English as a second language classes for 38 years.

According to the story, the DISD decided to drop the program in order to focus on pre-K through 12 students. Moreover, while the program is grant-funded (state and federal—presumably Workforce Investment Act—funds), they are no longer able—or willing—to fund the administrative expense of managing the grant:

“That’s really where we want to continue spending our efforts,” Daniels said. “Certainly, it’s no secret that we have lost a number of administrative positions, and while this is a grant-funded program, there would need to be some administrative oversight from our staff. So we decided that it would be best for everyone if another fiscal agent took on the grant.”

DISD’s adult education program is the third-largest in the state, serving about 7,000 adult students each year. The Texas Education Agency is now in the process of searching for another school district or organization to take over the program.

Georgia Senate Passes Bill Requiring Food Stamp Recipients to Participate in Educational Activities

/ The Old Crank / 2 Comments

It was widely reported yesterday that the Georgia Senate passed SB 312, a bill that would require food stamp recipients to earn their GED, pursue technical education, attend personal development classes of some kind, or enroll in adult literacy classes. The text of the original bill can be found in this earlier post. I took a quick look this morning and I don’t see any significant amendments to the bill as introduced, but you can investigate  for yourself by following the history of the bill here (bottom of the page).

According to USA Today, the bill exempts people under 16 or over 59; the mentally or physically disabled; people working at least 30 hours a week; students; participants in alcohol or drug rehabilitation programs, caretakers for a dependent child under six years of age or for an incapacitated adult or people receiving unemployment benefits. The Georgia Department of Human Services would create a five-county pilot program before taking the initiative statewide.

But I don’t see any reports, or any language in the bill or amendments, suggesting that an increase to adult education funding is included as part of this initiative. The intent of the bill, according Sen. William Ligon, the bill’s sponsor, was “to help underemployed Georgians get the professional development training they need to better themselves.” I would have assumed that an initiative intended to—and that likely will—increase demand for adult education services would include additional funding for those services. Perhaps there are separate efforts underway to make more funding available.

Another source reports that the Georgia Department of Audits and Accounts estimates the pilot program will cost $23 million, and statewide implementation expected to cost $772 million. But I don’t think those costs include additional state investment in adult education services. I’d love to be wrong!

Of course, there is also a question as to whether it’s fair or makes sense to mandate unrelated and possibly (for some) unrealistic requirements to a program that is designed to provide a very minimal level of food security to poor people. There are often good reasons why people are not be able to participate in training programs or adult education, including lack of transportation and/or lack of appropriate services.

Low literacy as an “Access to Justice” Issue

/ The Old Crank

Earlier this month, the American Bar Association (ABA) released a set of Standards for Language Access in Courts to help U.S. courts do a better job addressing the needs of people with limited English proficiency. According to the National Center on Access to Justice (NCAJ) at the Cardozza School of Law, many courts “have little or no way to communicate with the growing number of Americans who have only limited proficiency in English. As a result, “innocent people have been sent to prison, children have been sent to foster care unnecessarily, and women have found it impossible to get court orders to protect them from domestic violence.”

Hot on the heels of this groundbreaking document comes this excellent article on a similar but largely ignored issue: courts are equally ill-equipped to deal with individuals with low literacy.

Valerie Mutton, a lawyer and freelance journalist from Ontario, wrote the story for the Canadian Press about the family court system in Toronto, but I can assure you from personal experience that the issue is also present in American courts. (Mutton was awarded a grant from ABC Life Literacy Canada to research literacy issues in family courts in Canada.)

Mutton found that the number of people handling their own cases in Canadian family courts has been growing in recent years—and many of these individuals lack the literacy skills to complete the paperwork involved and explain their cases to a judge:

At the busiest family court in the country, located in Toronto, justices Harvey Brownstone and Stanley Sherr see a high percentage of cases involving people who are representing themselves. About half are people for whom English is not their first language.

“As you see legal aid cutbacks, increasingly we see a decline in the number of people with lawyers,” said Sherr. “That was a layer of protection for those who have literacy problems.“ (my emphasis)

Mutton writes that Canadian family courts see low literacy as an “access to justice” issue—and they appear to treat it seriously, like language access. Some courthouses have staff on hand who will assist those who say they have trouble with reading or writing—assuming they come forward. Often, they don’t. Not just because of shame or embarrassment, but also out of fear that it will hurt their case:

For example, in child protection cases, where the possibility of losing parental rights is very real, people may be even more reluctant to mention low reading skills for fear that it makes them look like a bad parent. But with much of the evidence given in writing, not speaking up about low literacy can have devastating consequences.

Cheryl Stephens, a Vancouver-based expert on literacy and comprehension issues in the courts (do we have experts on literacy and courts in the U.S.?) told Mutton that judges in Canada receive training on the issue, but lawyers and others who work within the court system are not often aware of the scope of the problem and need to be educated about it.

(I should add that it’s not just in courtrooms where those with low literacy are at a disadvantage when it comes to exercising their legal rights. In fact, the legal needs of many low-income people with low literacy are more likely to involve accessing government benefits like Social Security, disability, unemployment insurance, and food stamps—accessing these benefits may require navigating a bureaucratic maze, but usually don’t involve a trip to see a judge.)

The ABA language access standards begin with this principle:

“As a fundamental principle of law, fairness, and access to justice, and to promote the integrity and accuracy of judicial proceedings, courts should develop and implement an enforceable system of language access services, so that persons needing to access the court are able to do so in a language they understand, and are able to be understood by the court.”

Standards and practices to address the issue of low literacy in our court system could also be developed under the same fundamental principle. The ABA standards for language access are a first step towards achieving uniform fair access to justice for those with limited English proficiency—and could pave the way for fair access to those with low literacy as well.

But in both cases, the problem is not just a lack of standards and practices, but a lack of resources needed to implement the changes that are needed. Federal funding for the Legal Services Corp., which distributes federal grants to civil legal aid programs nationwide, has been cut from $420 million in 2010 to $404 million last year and $348 million for 2012. According to a recent report from CLASP, “Civil legal aid programs turned away at least as many clients that they served in 2011 and will turn away even more in 2012.”

It was budget cuts to legal aid that led to a greater awareness of the problem of low literacy in Canadian courts, as increasing numbers of  people with low literacy were forced to represent themselves in court without the assistance of an attorney. In light of the legal aid cuts here, I don’t see any reason to believe that the U.S. legal system is not experiencing a substantial increase in the number of people with low literacy struggling to access justice here.