Today’s Education Week featured a story about reactions to President Obama’s State of the Union address by members of Congress. In this article, Rep. Virginia Foxx, (R-N.C.) is quoted as saying, “I don’t believe the federal government has any business being involved in education.”
Rep. Fox is the Chair of the House Higher Education Subcommittee. This subcommittee is also tasked with oversight over adult education.
Earlier this week Roll Call reported that Rep. Todd Platts (R-PA) would not be seeking a seventh term in the House of Representatives. Platts was elected to represent the 19th District of Pennsylvania in 2000, succeeding longtime Rep. William Goodling.
Rep. Goodling, a former chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee, was the author of the federal Even Start Family Literacy program, and continues to be a strong proponent of family literacy.
Rep. Platts continued in the tradition left by his predecessor. In April of 2009, for example, Rep. Platts and Rep. John Yarmuth (D-KY) wrote a letter to the Chairman and Ranking Member of the House Appropriations Committee urging them to include $150 million for Even Start in the House FY 2012 appropriations bill. (Even Start’s funding had dropped to $66 million annually by this point.)
Even in 2011, when there was tremendous pressure on Republicans in the House to cut programs, Rep. Platts continued to fight for Even Start. In February, he wrote a letter to House Appropriations Committee Chairman Harold Rogers in support of retaining Even Start funding in the FY2011 Continuing Resolutions (CR) bill. (Unfortunately, Even Start funding was ultimately eliminated in the short-term CR that Congress passed in mid-March.) In May, when the House Education and the Workforce Committee met to consider the first of several ESEA reform bills, (HR 1891), Rep. Platts moved to strike the repeal of Even Start that was contained in the bill. Ultimately, his amendment failed, but it was encouraging to see a Republican on the commitee fighting for this program.
Back in December, when Rep. Dave Camp introduced H.R. 3630, he issued the following statement:
The unemployment program must do more than simply send out checks – it must help people get back to work. The commonsense reforms House Republicans and I proposed included items like requiring those who receive unemployment benefits to actually look for work and work toward a GED if they don’t have a high school diploma. The reforms also would provide states with the ability to administer drug screening programs if they so choose. Democrats only wanted to send out more taxpayer-funded benefits. Republicans want to get these Americans the training and resources they need to move from an unemployment check to a paycheck.
Putting aside the issue that imposing an educational credential requirement would, in Robert Greenstein’s words, “violate the basic compact that the UI system has embodied” since it began, there are tens of thousands of adult leaners in the U.S. today who would love to do nothing more than enroll in a GED class if they could. But, as noted by myself and others, virtually every state in the country has waiting lists for adult education programs, and many states have cut back on adult education services. There are around 160,000 people on waiting lists for adult education services in federally-funded programs alone.
Rep. Camp claims that Republicans want to provide Americans with “the training and resources they need” but this bill does not do that. At best, it creates a desperate increase in the demand for that training while providing absolutely zero new investments for them, leaving many laid off workers with no way to meet the requirements imposed by this new restriction.
A few weeks ago I wrote about a House proposal that would deny UI benefits to workers without a high school diploma or GED unless they were enrolled and making progress in a course of study designed to lead to a GED or another “state-recognized equivalent.” Congress eventually passed a two-month payroll tax cut and UI extension bill without this restriction, but I can’t think of any reason why House Republicans will not try to re-introduce this idea when they begin negotiations on a full-year UI extension later this month.
Yesterday afternoon I was encouraged to see that the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) has issued a paper on this issue and posted an article by Robert Greenstein strongly condemning the idea. Greenstein calls it “appalling even by current Washington standards.”
Greenstein’s piece, posted on CBPP’s Off the Charts blog, explains the basic injustice of the proposal:
The proposal would deny UI benefits to hundreds of thousands of workers — many of them middle-aged — who have worked hard, played by the rules, and effectively paid UI taxes for years and who then were laid off due to no fault of their own.
This would violate the basic compact that the UI system has embodied since its creation under President Roosevelt in 1935 — that people who have amassed a sufficient record of work, and on whose behalf UI taxes have faithfully been paid, may receive UI benefits for a temporary period if they are laid off and are searching for a new job.
Greenstein and the other authors of the CBPP report also make a good point that I did not consider in my original analysis: the new restriction would impact large numbers of older laid-off workers (according to CBPP, in 2010, half a million workers age 50 or over who received unemployment insurance lacked a high school diploma), and that for most of these workers, returning to high school or studying for a GED makes little sense.
They go on to note, as I did, that there are not nearly enough classes available in the U.S. right now to meet the current demand for adult education classes.
But as I wrote earlier, my view is that the bill that was introduced in December (H.R. 3630) would also deny UI benefits to some workers even if they are enrolled in adult education, because the bill required that those without a diploma or GED would have to be enrolled specifically in classes “leading to satisfaction” towards a diploma or a GED. This would appear to exclude those at very low literacy levels, who, even if enrolled in adult education, typically do not have the skills to enroll in GED or high-school level courses.
The bill also required more than just enrollment—it required workers to demonstrate “satisfactory progress” towards a diploma or GED without articulating how “satisfactory progress” was to be demonstrated. Again, I think the ambiguity and confusion that would result on how to do this would likely place even those fortunate enough to be enrolled in adult education at risk of being denied benefits.
CBPP also agrees with my assessment that the waiver language in H.R. 3630 was vague and inadequate. I think this point is going to be crucially important as the debate goes forward—I can easily envision lawmakers pointing to the availability of the waiver as justification for approving the restriction.
It’s encouraging to see CBPP attack this ill-conceived idea so vigorously. I am concerned, as I have written previously, that this proposal is just one example of an increasing effort to deny benefits and resources to undereducated, low-income adults.
Literacy & Policy 