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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.

Los Angeles School Board Votes Tomorrow on a Cut that Could Deprive Thousands of Children the Support They Need to Succeed in School

/ The Old Crank / 1 Comment

Tomorrow the Los Angeles Unified School District Board may vote in favor of a budget cut that could result in thousands of children being deprived of the support they need to succeed in school. As permitted by California state law, the board is set to vote Tuesday on a proposal to cut most of the $200 million in state money earmarked for adult education in order to address the district’s $557 million deficit.

As I noted last December, school districts all over California have been shifting dollars away from adult education to shore up K-12 budgets for the last several years because of a provision in the California Budget Act (CBA) which allows school districts to do this when budgets are tight. Los Angeles is the highest profile example to date.

The choice here is not about decimating the adult education system in Los Angeles so that the status quo in K-12 education can be preserved. It’s about choosing a course of action that would be disastrous for many K-12 students as well. As noted in this article on the impact of the cut on one particular adult community school in the district, the loss of adult education impacts not just the adults but the educational success of the children of those adults who are parents or caregivers.

Administrators and faculty at South Gate Community Adult School believe that cutting adult education will affect students at the K-12 campuses, and especially in areas with a high immigrant population. In those communities, parents are learning skills at the adult schools that allow them to help their children academically.

“This morning, we had role play, where a parent was at a conference with their child’s math teacher,” said John Liddle, teacher of English as a second language at South Gate Community Adult School. Using such situations to learn English interest immigrant parents, who want to understand their children’s school experience in the United States. “We use topics that are of high interest to [adult] students, such as health, jobs and parenting,” he said.

Dario Aleman, 41, was a medical doctor in Cuba before arriving in the United States in May 2010. Learning English is very important to him since he hopes to become fluent and renew his medical license. However, the adult classes also help him as a parent, since he can better prepare and help his 6-year-old son.

“If you prepare adults, the adults will then prepare their children,” said Aleman, who is also taking computer skills classes. “We want our children to be excellent [students] in the future.”

It gets worse: According to the article above, adult schools in the District served about 100,000 K-12 students with “catchup” classes so that they could graduate on time from high school.

The scope of the cuts has been so great in California that, arguably, the CBA is the worst piece of legislation for adult education in the entire U.S. over the last several years. If the LAUSD goes through with this cut, I don’t think it will be arguable anymore. Even worse, as research continues to emerge linking the education success of parents and caregivers to children’s success in school, the negative impact on school success generally may be felt in California for a generation.

Great Example of Why House UI Proposal Makes No Sense

/ The Old Crank

Yesterday’s Las Vegas Sun published an excellent article by Tovin Lapan on the increasing demand for adult education classes among the unemployed in Las Vegas. The article includes a photo gallery of the long lines of people waiting to sign up for ESL classes at the Community Multicultural Center (CMC).

“We’ve seen an increase in demand for ESL classes in the last few years,” said Lyn Pizor, Community Multicultural Center director. “We typically run waiting lists in all ESL classes, and in the last two or three years those lists have gotten longer. There just aren’t enough spaces to serve the population.”

The majority of those in line, including Melchor, spoke of the need to learn English so they can find a new job. Many said they would pursue GED classes, a new offering at the center, after their English skills were up to par. (my emphasis)

The problem in Las Vegas, it appears, is not that the unemployed need motivation to enroll in adult education, but that there is not sufficient resources to meet the demand.

According to the article, CMC receives the bulk of its funding through the Workforce Investment Act (WIA). WIA Title II is the primary federal source of adult edcuation funds for adult education programs in the United States. Congress, which has not significantly increased fudning for Title II over the last decade, is now debating whether to cut off UI benefits earned by unemployed workers without a high school diploma or GED unless they are enrolled in a class to obtain one—even if they can’t enroll in one because Congress (and states) don’t adequately fund adult education to meet the demand.