Return-Path: <nifl-workplace@literacy.nifl.gov> Received: from literacy (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by literacy.nifl.gov (8.10.2/8.10.2) with SMTP id fAELNU005582; Wed, 14 Nov 2001 16:23:30 -0500 (EST) Date: Wed, 14 Nov 2001 16:23:30 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <p05001902b8188fe0bae1@[146.186.96.31]> Errors-To: listowner@literacy.nifl.gov Reply-To: nifl-workplace@literacy.nifl.gov Originator: nifl-workplace@literacy.nifl.gov Sender: nifl-workplace@literacy.nifl.gov Precedence: bulk From: Barb Van Horn <blv1@psu.edu> To: Multiple recipients of list <nifl-workplace@literacy.nifl.gov> Subject: [NIFL-WORKPLACE:352] Functional Context Education For Welfare-to-Work Programs X-Listprocessor-Version: 6.0c -- ListProcessor by Anastasios Kotsikonas Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" ; format="flowed" Status: O Content-Length: 6129 Lines: 112 Tom Sticht <tsticht@aznet.net> sent the following to me to post for subscribers: Research Note 13 November 2001 Functional Context Education For Welfare-to-Work Programs Barbara Van Horn recently posted information from the following report about welfare-to-work. " How Effective Are Different Welfare-to-Work Approaches? Five-Year Adult and Child Impacts for Eleven Program." By Gayle Hamilton et al, Manpower Development Research Corporation (MDRC). November 2001. The report summarizes the long-term effects of 11 mandatory welfare-to-work programs on welfare recipients and their children. Among other things, it compares employment-focussed programs to education-focussed programs and both of these to a no program control group. Random assignment to groups was used. Overall, Van Horn’s extract from the report indicates that the authors conclude that the study provides more support for the advantages of employment-focused programs than for education-focused ones. However, it is also stated that, "These results should not be taken as an indictment of the benefits of education and training in general in welfare-to-work programs. Non-experimental work done as part of the NEWWS Evaluation has suggested that obtaining a GED and, especially, obtaining a GED and then receiving some type of vocational training, can result in employment and earnings gains for those who achieve these milestones.(1) However, in the context of mandatory welfare-to-work programs, few people make it this far, for many reasons, including: people leave welfare and therefore do not stay in welfare-to-work programs, and thus education or training classes, for very long; adults supporting families cannot afford an up-front deferment of employment and earnings that may or may not have a longer-run payoff; and only a small minority of welfare recipients report that, if given a choice, they prefer to go to school to study basic reading and math over going to school to learn a job skill or going to a program to get help looking for a job.(2) It should be noted as well that none of these programs made assignments to or emphasized college." The report goes on to say that, despite the successes of these programs, no program met the long-range goal of making enrollees substantially better off financially. Most program group members continued to have low incomes from various combinations of earnings, the EITC, welfare, and Food Stamps. In fact, among individuals who lacked a high school diploma or GED as of study entry, some programs had the five-year result of making them financially worse off. The report then concludes, "These findings suggest that the challenge of the future is to identify other types of programs or initiatives that can provide welfare recipients with better and more stable jobs, increase their income, and improve the well-being of their children." A Role for Job-Oriented, Functional Context Education (FCE) in Welfare-to-Work Regarding the need to "identify other types of programs" cited in the foregoing report, in Cast-off Youth: Policy and Training Methods From the Military Experience (Praeger, 1987), colleagues and I derive FCE principles and provide a prototype Electronics Technician’s program for redesigning vocational and literacy education to integrate the two types of programs. This does away with the idea that an adult first has to acquire basic skills up to some level prescribed by the voced program before they can get into the desired job training. Instead, by redesigning both the voced and basic skills programs, and integrating them, adults can get into job-training for higher paying jobs that they were previously considered unqualified to be trained for. In Passports to Paradise: The Struggle to Teach and to Learn on the Margins of Adult Education (ERIC, January, 1998), colleagues and I identify and describe a vocational English as a Second Language program in the San Diego Community College District that integrates ESL and Electronics education and in ten weeks of 6 hour days places over 90 percent of students in jobs in the electronics field. The program also made more gain in general literacy (the ABLE test) than a conventional ESL program did. There are other examples of moving from the idea that first one has to get x levels of basic skills and can then get the desired vocational training they really want and need. By following FCE principles and redesigning both voced and basic skills programs we can offer adults faster tracks to good jobs paying self-sufficiency levels of pay. This approach may be a way to meet "the challenge of the future is to identify other types of programs or initiatives that can provide welfare recipients with better and more stable jobs, increase their income, and improve the well-being of their children" that the new welfare-to-work evaluation report calls for. It seems that the time is ripe to follow FCE principles and give adults access to well-paying jobs through well-designed, integrated basic skills and job training programs. Russ Tershey, founder of the Center for Employment Training in San Jose, CA, where they have been offering integrated basic skills and job skills training for decades, used to say that the only other piece of paper worth more than a GED was a good paycheck. If done properly, FCE training might produce both a good paycheck and movement toward educational credentials and advancement into higher education for adults after they get a good job. It will take a lot of cooperation and work on the part of both voced and basic skills teachers, but the rewards could be many fold. It seems to me that it is at least worth a good, solid try. -- Barb Van Horn (M.Ed., Reading) Co-Director, Institute for the Study of Adult Literacy Co-Director, Goodling Institute for Research in Family Literacy College of Education, Penn State University 102 Rackley Building, University Park, PA 16802-3202 BLV1@PSU.EDU (e-mail) 814-865-5876 (phone) 814-863-6108 (fax) "Moving adult literacy from the Margins to the Mainstream"
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