Hello from the Hoosier State,
A brief comment on the college programs in the Indiana Department of
Correction:

IDOC has contracts with six colleges and universities to provide
associate/bachelor degree programs to offenders.  This morning, 17% of
all offenders who have a GED/hs diploma and enough time are enrolled in
degree programs.  At this time the only limiting factor on enrollment is
projected release date.  Our offenders have the highest completion rate
of any college group in the state.  

The Department's recid rate for 2001 was 37.7%.  
The recid rate for bachelor completers was 6.9%.
The recid rate for associate completers was 16.3%

The Department's recid rate for 2002 was 39.3%.
The recid rate for bachelor completers was 18.0%
The recid rate for associate completers was 17.3%.

We recently did a very detailed recidivist study on 856 offenders who
completed programs that are aligned with the USDOE's Youthful Offender
Grant program.  Recid rate= Less than 10%.  We accessed the state's
workforce and welfare database to detail employment, retention, and
access to social services. 

We are currently expanding that study to all offenders regardless of
age  who completed degrees in 2002, 2003, and 2004.  (almost 2,000
individuals).  Why?  The prior study suggests to us that there are
factors other than degree completion:  Date of First Hire; Concurrent
Substance Abuse Treatment; and, alignment of degrees to current
workforce needs.  

Lastly, we just signed contracts for one female facility where the
start to end education program is modeled on practices outlined by the
NIFL.  NIFL's documents were the basis for the RFP and the resulting
contract.  Undereducated offenders will be in literacy and GED programs
that are focused from day-1 on successful enrollment in and completion
of associate degree programs.  

I hope this adds a little to the on-going discussion.  John Nally




John M. Nally
Director of Education, IDOC
IGCS, 329
302 W. Washington St
Indianapolis, IN 46204
317-233-3111
FAX:  317-234-0956



>>> John.Linton at ed.gov Tuesday, September 19, 2006 >>>

Wow -- I'm impressed with the thoughtful comments in this discussion
already!
 
On the question about college for inmates -- this is a dynamic topic
and
there is much to be said.  First, there are still college programs in
prisons.  A recent Ford Foundation supported study by the Institute
for
Higher Education Policy documented the extent of postsecondary
education in
prisons -- and there are more programs out there than many had thought
(myself included).  This is a well documented and very forward
thinking
publication which needs to be seen by more people.   ("Learning to
Reduce
Recidivism, A 50 State analysis of postsecondary correctional
education
policy," November 2005,
<http://www.ihep.org/organizations.php3?action=printContentItem&orgid=104&ty

peID=906&itemID=14017>
http://www.ihep.org/organizations.php3?action=printContentItem&orgid=104&typ

eID=906&itemID=14017 )
 
There is still State money being invested in postsecondary education in
a
number of States, federal funds are being spent on postsecondary
education
in the Bureau of Prisons, and our Department provides more than $20
million
annually for postsecondary State prisoner education in the Grants to
States
for Workplace and Community Transition Training for Incarcerated Youth
Offenders Program.
<http://www.ed.gov/programs/transitiontraining/index.html>
http://www.ed.gov/programs/transitiontraining/index.html   In a number
of
States, postsecondary education seems to be quite an issue -- still to
be
settled at a policy level.  New York comes to mind.  California seems
very
recently to have settled this issue at a policy level and is now
developing
and implementing new partnerships with colleges.  
 
Will inmates become eligible for Pell grants again at some time in the
future?  That is for the lawmakers to decide, but it seems to be an
issue
that never goes away.  CURE is one national organization that has
worked
hard year after year on this issue.
http://www.curenational.org/new/index.html  The Open Society Institute
has
also shown an ongoing interest.  
 
John Linton
 

-----Original Message-----
From: specialtopics-bounces at nifl.gov 
[mailto:specialtopics-bounces at nifl.gov]On Behalf Of John Gordon
Sent: Tuesday, September 19, 2006 1:35 AM
To: specialtopics at nifl.gov 
Subject: [SpecialTopics 208] Re: Comment on discussion of
"re-entryeducation"for ex-offenders


Thanks to Taylor Stoehr for his thought-provoking piece. I think we
have
much to learn from such work. I'd like to hear more.
 
I work at the Fortune Society, a 39 year old organization in New York
City
dedicated to (1) advocating for prison and criminal justice reform and
(2)
working with people after they leave prison. At Fortune, education is
just
one of a wide array of programs people coming out of prison can
participate
in. Even though most people who come to us do not have a high school
diploma, education is usually not the first thing on their minds. The
vast
majority need a job and many are either homeless or one step from it.
In
addition, most people are dealing with a range of parole and probation
mandates like substance abuse treatment and anger management. 
 
Approximately 250 people participate in our Education program each
year; in
the last few years, the percentage of younger students and particularly
of
people mandated to one of Fortune's Alternative to Incarceration
program has
grown dramatically. I think our underlying philosophy has much in
common
with the program described by Taylor Stoehr - we develop curriculum
around
the needs and issues brought to the class by the students themselves.
However, a number of factors have undermined our ability to maintain
that
focus on content:

*	

	The sheer numbers of people coming through our doors every year
has
stretched our resources. We have struggled to keep up with the demand.
Recently we have restructured our program so that it serves fewer
people,
but more intensively.
*	

	We are serving increasing numbers of court mandated students,
many
of whom really don't want to be in class. We have worked hard to
develop a
curriculum that honors their right and need to make autonomous
decisions
about the role of education in their lives and at the same time to
insist on
the integrity of the process in the classroom.  
*	

	Perhaps though, the biggest obstacle has been the fact that we
are
caught up in the National Reporting System and its focus on educational
gain
as defined by test scores. The pressure to meet state targets, lumped
together indiscriminately as we are with every other program in the
state,
has produced enormous pressure to test, test, test. This has not been
all
bad as it has led us to look closely at what we are doing and think
about
how we can do it better. But the narrow focus on test scores has made
it
difficult to shape the program around the real and individual needs of
the
students.

Perhaps in a later post, I can address some other issues, but I did
want to
pose one question:  Given that the elimination of Pell Grants for
prisoners
has virtually ended the possibility of going to college while in
prison,
what do the panelists think is the importance of and possibility of
reinstating that right? Here at Fortune where many of the staff have
been
incarcerated themselves, the value and significance of college level
work in
prison is a given. Many of the staff members in the leadership of the
agency
got their degrees (or at least started them) while in prison.
Obviously, the
college degree, or college level coursework, opens up job possibilities
for
people once they're out. But it also contributes to the development of
leadership skills that will allow former prisoners to come back to
their
communities and play critical roles in shaping collective responses to
the
problems those communities are facing.
 
john gordon
The Fortune Society 
 
While we 

  _____  

From: specialtopics-bounces at nifl.gov
[mailto:specialtopics-bounces at nifl.gov] 
On Behalf Of Taylor Stoehr
Sent: Monday, September 18, 2006 8:38 PM
To: specialtopics at nifl.gov 
Subject: [SpecialTopics 205] Comment on discussion of "re-entry
education"for ex-offenders



I work in a Massachusetts program for probationers called Changing
Lives
Through Literature.  (See our website: cltl at umassd.edu )  Started in
1991 in
a single court, it has spread to a number of jurisdictions in
Massachusetts
and to six other states.  I can speak for the men's program in
Dorchester,
the busiest criminal court in the state, where we have the experience
of a
dozen years - perhaps 250 graduates of our ten-week program offered
every
semester.  We are currently involved in a study of recidivism in five
jurisdictions, but the results will not be available for quite some
time.
For the moment, I can say that the probationers themselves believe that
they
change during this short period of intense focus on a few texts, and a
set
of concerns that are central in their lives.  Our primary text is
Frederick
Douglass's Narrative of the Life of an American Slave, which serves as
the
starting point for discussion of problems faced by the students
themselves -
poverty and racism, the struggle for social  justice, family breakdown,
the
weakening of community bonds and thinning out of spiritual sustenance.
Short supplementary readings by other authors - black and white,
American
and foreign, contemporary and classic - clarify issues Douglass raises
by
putting them in a broader context, and a writing assignment helps us
focus
on their relevance today.  For example, after reading how Douglass
describes
his childhood, and how Malcolm X, Bill Russell, Maxim Gorky, or Leo
Tolstoy
describe theirs, students are asked to state their own opinion of what
is
necessary for a "normal" childhood, and who has the responsibility to
provide it.  What was your childhood like?  What kind of a father do
you
want to be?  Those are the implied questions.  We also ask how a man
like
Frederick Douglass or Malcolm X finds himself.  "Where do people get
their
courage, self-esteem, and righteousness?"

With men like those I work with, it's probably better to concentrate on
the
literacy skills they already possess - a complicated mix of street
smarts
and a colloquial eloquence among friends and family - than to imagine
that
we are going to "improve" their reading, writing, or talking.  To speak
in
their own voices in a public setting like our classroom, where we talk
about
serious issues that affect their lives, is the best training in
literacy we
can offer them.  

One of our aims is to demystify the whole realm of social control,
schooling, and literacy.  All their lives our students have been told
they
are incompetent readers and writers, and this tends to make them so. 
But
the incompetence is superficial in most cases.  Their speech skills
are
usually more than adequate, and often superb.  In fact, their failure
in
school has protected them from certain kinds of glibness and beating
about
the bush.  

All students, including ours, have the right to success in a truly
democratic classroom - not just an opportunity to learn, but active
exercise
of language, taste, and ethics, in order to explore their own
individual
powers and ideals in relation to a growing sense of how others speak
and
judge and evaluate.  "Success" means both discovering and making
standards,
rather than merely living up to them.  "Failure" means being left out
of the
most essential aspects of civic life.  Often the schools fail to do
this
important work, through a misguided notion of what kind of education
is
appropriate in an egalitarian society.  The men we meet in Changing
Lives
typically think of themselves as failures.  From their earliest
experiences
in schooling to the regimen of incarceration and probation, they have
stubbornly resisted demands and admonishments, have been labeled
incorrigible, and have little or no sense of what it might mean to be
part
of a democratic forum deciding matters of concern for their own lives. 
We
want to establish such a classroom, in which no one will be left out.

Our aim is to give each man a chance to think better of himself, while
simultaneously dispelling the illusion that success in school is the
only
route to respectability.  We aren't trying to get people back on the
educational track, but to let them judge for themselves what it would
mean
to return to school, or to decide not to go that route, a question that
asks
them to assess their own lives - Who am I, really, and what kind of
future
do I want for myself?

 

Taylor Stoehr, English Department

University of Massachusetts - Boston