Good morning, PLI List Subscribers,
As you know, Cheryl Keenan, Director of the Division of Adult Education and Literacy at the U.S. Department of Education, has agreed to be our guest poster for the month of March. Cheryl's topic will be "A National Vision for Program Leadership and Improvement in Adult Basic and Literacy Education."  Since the list has just relaunched this week, Cheryl and I have agreed to run her posting the week of March 15th -- just to be sure folks have had time to subscribe and all the glitches are out of the technology :-). 
In anticipation of this discussion, it might be a good time to talk about questions you might like to have Cheryl address. For example, having worked a great deal with program improvement in Pennsylvania, when I was first asked to moderate the list, I was interested in the connection between Leadership and Program Improvement and how that was being viewed by NIFL and the Center for Literacy Studies (who runs the LINCs Special Collection). I was also interested in what folks meant by "program improvement" and how that was distinct from some of the other NIFL Discussion Lists.

Over the past few years, I've had the opportunity to collaborate with several states on "program improvement." One of the things that stood out for me early on, is that we don't all mean the same thing when we talk about program improvement. For some adult educators, program improvement means improved state performance on the National Reporting System. For other adult educators, program improvement means capacity building at the local level with a focus on meeting learner goals. Everyone seems to get the "improvement part" but there is generally not consensus on what it is we're trying to improve and how we'll know it's happening. It would be interesting to hear how some of you have approached "program improvement" in your state, local program, individual classroom, or tutoring relationship. 
Sandy Strunk
Lancaster Lebanon Intermediate Unit 13
Adult Basic and Family Literacy Education
1110 Enterprise Road
East Petersburg, PA 17520
(717) 519-1006