July 3, 2008

Reach Wider and Deeper While Reaching Higher: Comments on Some Comments on
the Report of the National Commission on Adult Literacy.

Tom Sticht
International Consultant in Adult Education


In February of 2000 I prepared a paper for the National Literacy Summit,
entitled "The Adult Education and Literacy System of the United States:
Moving From the Margins to the Mainstream." In this paper I argued that the
Workforce Investment Act (WIA) should be renamed the  Adult Education,
Literacy and Workforce Investment Act (AELWIA)  to recognize the many
returns to investment in adult education and literacy beyond workforce
development.

Now this year, in June 2008, in a paper entitled "Reach Higher, America:
Overcoming Crisis in the U.S. Workforce" a National Commission on Adult
Literacy calls for renaming the Adult Education and Literacy System the
Adult Education and Workforce Skills System (AEWSS). The AEWSS appears to
propose combining the programs of the Workforce Investment Act Title 1 (job
finding and preparation) and Title 2 (adult education and family literacy)
into one system with enrollments of some 20 million adults annually with
funding of some $20 billion by the year 2020. The report calls on Congress
and state governments to make postsecondary education and workforce
readiness the new mission of the AEWSS.

Overall appreciation for the broad outline of the Reach Higher report has
been expressed by both the National Council of State Directors of Adult
Education (NCSDAE), who oversee the large majority of adult education and
literacy programs funded in part by Title 2 of the Workforce Investment Act
of 1998, and ProLiteracy Worldwide, the nations largest association of
community based organizations that provide adult literacy education.

But both these organizations also cautioned against focusing too much on
workforce skills. For instance, a news article about the Reach Higher
report on the Proliteracy web site has a sub-heading stating "ProLiteracy
Urges Inclusion of Lowest Level Learners, Not Just Low-Skilled Workers".
(http://www.proliteracy.org/news/index.asp?aid=301).

The NCSDAE has prepared a response to the Reach Higher report that similarly
cautions against a too narrow focus upon workforce development and states
that the Reach Higher report "emphasizes the critical importance of
workforce development to such an extent that it risks a national response
that narrows the focus of adult education to this one dimension alone. This
would be a mistake, not only because it would disconnect policy leaders and
students energized by the pursuit of other policy priorities (e.g., family
literacy and its potential to advance pre-K-12 education reform), it could
also preempt state efforts to tailor adult education programs and services
to local needs/priorities.
New legislation should reflect workforce needs but not at the detriment of
other issues."
(www.ncsdae.org)

These two organizations have reiterated the concerns I expressed eight years
ago in my 2000 paper regarding the inclusion of the Adult Education and
Literacy System (AELS) as a sub-title (Title 2 Adult Education and Family
Literacy Act) of the Workforce Investment Act of 1998. In my opinion, the
Adult Education and Literacy System (AELS) should be considered
super-ordinate to a workforce development system because workforce
development is, as the NCSDAE has argued, just one of several services that
the AELS undertakes in providing education for adults.

The recommendation of the Reach Higher report to make postsecondary
education and workforce readiness the new mission of the AEWSS also raises
the specter of an education and job training system in which those adults
who are least developed in language, literacy, and numeracy may be
relegated to second class services. This appears to underlie the concerns
of Proliteracy in urging that the least literate adults not be excluded
from the full benefits of a new adult education system.

It was to make certain that workforce development did not "swamp" the
several goals of adult education and that the least literate not be
overlooked that I called for renaming the Adult Education and Literacy
System the Adult Education, Literacy, and Workforce Development System.

The National Council of State Directors of Adult Education, Proliteracy
Worldwide, and the National Consortium for Literacy report that they are
all studying the Reach Higher report and will work with Congress and state
governments to bring about an equitable adult education system that meets
the needs of America's most disenfranchised citizens, including those in
and those wishing to enter into the world of work.

More on  this later. In the meantime, adult educators may want to engage
adult learners in reading and discussing the Reach Higher report as an
exercise in critical literacy.

Thomas G. Sticht
International Consultant in Adult Education
2062 Valley View Blvd.
El Cajon, CA 92019-2059
Tel/fax: (619) 444-9133
Email: tsticht at aznet.net