Virginia,

Could you share with us your insights into what has made these family 
literacy programs so successful?  Does it have to do with quality 
improvement?  Professional development for instructors & staff?  Standards 
for teaching and assessing?  Other factors?  An integration of these?

Thanks,
Aaron

  At 12:07 PM 5/16/2006 -0700, you wrote:

>Well I think Tom is on the right track here.  I never saw better learner

>gains than the ones in strongly implemented family literacy programs. As

>I have tracked those families 16 years later, some of the children have

>had children and guess what: literacy is integrated into the lives of

>all the generations, from computers to internet to involvement in

>schools, playing with children and volunteerism.  We (educators) seem to

>have a difficult time giving up turf issues and thinking big and whole

>and complete systems.

>

>Our families in adult education are some of the most mobile in the

>nation.  They move often and rarely address all the issues involved in

>this process: stress, school changes, resource allocation, planning,

>budget, etc.

>

>Horay! For life cycle education policy!

>Va

>

>-----Original Message-----

>From: contentstandards-bounces at nifl.gov

>[mailto:contentstandards-bounces at nifl.gov] On Behalf Of Aaron Kohring

>Sent: Tuesday, May 16, 2006 12:08 PM

>To: AE Content Standards

>Subject: [ContentStandards 148] Adult Education and Mobility

>

>Posted on behalf of Tom Sticht.

>

>

>**************************************************************

>May 15, 2006

>

>Adult Literacy Education, Geographical Mobility, and Children's School

>Achievement: Toward A Life Cycles Education Policy

>

>Tom Sticht

>International Consultant in Adult Education

>

>Four decades ago a colleague and I published a paper discussing

>relationships of geographical mobility, dogmatism, anxiety, and age (The

>Journal of Social Psychology,1966). In surveys with undergraduates in a

>college psychology class, we found that students who reported only 1-3

>changes in residence (average 1.88) scored lower on measures of

>dogmatism

>and anxiety, and were older at the time of their first move (average 7.3

>years) than a high mobility group (7-20, average 10.48 moves) with first

>time moves at age 2.9 years.

>

>Additional analyses indicated that early age of first move (before age

>5)

>was more related to anxiety while numbers of moves were more associated

>with the cognitive/personality variable of dogmatism, i.e., a resistance

>to

>change in a belief system. Additional research in the 1960s and earlier

>also

>pointed to the idea that more mobile populations have higher rates of

>psychoses, neuroses, psychopathological personalities, and other types

>of

>personality disorders among children and adults.

>

>Forty Years Later

>

>Moving forward forty years, there is a growing body of research showing

>that

>geographical mobility as well as mobility in changing schools is related

>to

>numerous problems that children have with schools, including lowered

>achievement in learning and higher dropout rates (Hanna Skandera and

>Richard Sousa ,http://www.hooverdigest.org/023/skandera.html, 2002 No.3;

>Virginia Rhodes, Kids on the Move: The Effects of Student Mobility on

>NCLB

>School Accountability Ratings 2005

>http://www.urganedjournal.org/articles/article0020.html)

>

>Recent studies even suggest a significant, positive correlation between

>the

>mobility of students and the schools that are failing to make the grade

>with the No Child Left Behind objectives. One factor that seems likely

>to

>moderate the effects of mobility is the socioeconomic status of the

>children's parents, including the education level of the parents. Better

>educated parents provide more stabile environments -mentally,

>emotionally,

>and geographically- for children and hence are more likely to reduce

>anxiety levels of children, and promote cognitive/personality traits of

>less dogmatic thinking that welcomes new ideas encountered at school.

>

>Toward a Life Cycles Education Policy

>

>In 1990, International Literacy Year, Barbara McDonald and I wrote a

>UNESCO

>report showing that increasing the education levels of girls and women

>in

>various nations produced positive outcomes of lower fertility rates,

>better

>childbearing, healthier childbirth, better child rearing, and better

>educational achievement.

>

>Given the important influences that an adult's education level plays on

>both

>cognitive and non-cognitive aspects of children's development and

>educational achievement, we need to move from thinking about education

>in

>terms of how it affects just one life cycle, to thinking about how it

>affects multiple life cycles. Attempting to intervene on the lives of

>children alone, even starting at birth, to improve their development and

>educational achievements is too late. We need to start by thinking about

>the intergenerational effects that the education of parents can have not

>only on the ability of the parents to support themselves and their

>children

>better in an economic sense, but also how the parent's increased

>education

>can affect the cognitive and emotional development of their children.

>

>This shift from focusing on how education affects one life cycle to a

>focus

>on how it affects more than one life cycle is what I mean by "life

>cycles"

>education policy. It requires that we recognize that adult literacy

>education is not merely a second chance at education for millions of

>adults. It may well be the first chance for education for millions of

>these

>adult's children.

>

>Thomas G. Sticht

>International Consultant in Adult Education

>2062 Valley View Blvd.

>El Cajon, CA 92019

>Tel/fax: (619) 444-9133

>Email: tsticht at aznet.net

>

>

>

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