Steve,

The official web site for the Office of Vocational and Adult Education 
(OVAE) of the U.S Department of Education that provides the actual stats 
on enrollment over the years can be found at 
http://www.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ovae/pi/AdultEd/aedatatables.html 

If you check these figures for State-Administered Adult Education Programs 
for 2004-2005, the total enrollment in adult education for the United 
States is:  2,581,281 with the ESL enrollment as:  1,142,749. 

I don't know where those previous figures for California were obtained, 
because the total enrollment for 2004-2005 for adult education in 
California was 591,893 and ESL 429,024. 

Nancy
*********************************************************
Nancy R. Faux
ESOL Specialist
Virginia Adult Learning Resource Center
Virginia Commonwealth University
3600 W. Broad Street, Suite 669
Richmond, VA 23230-4930
nfaux at vcu.edu
http://www.valrc.org
1-800-237-0178



"Steve Kaufmann" <steve at thelinguist.com> 
Sent by: englishlanguage-bounces at nifl.gov
01/09/2008 10:53 AM
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Subject
[EnglishLanguage 2046] Re: New Study on NRS Level Gain Using BEST Plus






Some of the factors that I think should also be measured and which I did 
not see in the survey are,

amount of calendar time elapsed from the beginning of the survey, or 
pre-test point, to the end, or post-test point. 
absences from class as a percentage of course class commitment
hours of listening to radio or watching TV in English, as self-reported
hours of interaction in English with native speakers, as self-reported 
hours spent listening to English on CD/MP3 player, as self-reported
hours spent reviewing vocabulary, reading, or studying English at home, as 
self reported

The survey states that
"In 2003-2004 (the year for which the most recent data are available on 
students in federally funded programs), 1,172,579 students were enrolled 
in federally funded adult ESL classes; 36% of these students attained an 
educational level gain after a course of instruction (U.S. Department of 
Education, Office of Vocational and Adult Education, 2006)." 

Yet Margaret Park reports that
"Our California Department of Education serves 1.5 million students per 
year, 75% of whom are enrolled in ESL classes.  The 1.2 million adults 
enrolled in all federally-funded ESL classes seems a bit low, however I 
may be incorrect in my assumption."

This suggests that there is a much larger group of adult ESL learners in 
the US, larger than 1.2 million. To judge by our situation here in 
Vancouver, there are long waiting lists for immigrant ESL courses. In 
addition, many more who would want to take these course are too busy to do 
so and do not apply. 

I would like to know the improvement rates for adult ESL learners who do 
not go to a course at all, those who, for one reason or another, do not 
attend class. I suspect that the number in this "self-study group" is 
large, and that their results will be mixed, varying from significant 
improvement to no improvement at all. It would be interesting to see the 
impact of the different factors I listed above on results. 

I would be interest to see what can be done to make the self-study 
activities as effective as possible, and how to better integrate them with 
the more formal ESL instructional activities. This would mean providing 
testing, and other forms of recognition for these informal self-learning 
activities, as well as guidance on how to make self-study as effective as 
possible, given the obvioius time constraints faced by most adult ESL 
learners. 

Perhaps this is already being done, I do not know.

Steve----------------------------------------------------
National Institute for Literacy
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