Webcast: Learning Disabilities Program Outcomes Based on Bridges to Practice - Vermont

Transcript - Learning Disabilities Program Outcomes Based on Bridges to Practice - Vermont's Presentation

These are not toys, these are called tactile enhancers. These are things that will be helpful in your teaching when you have students who have difficulty paying attention or have trouble concentrating or can't sit still for a long period of time or even a short period of time. You can put these tactile enhancers out. Because we know our students learn in a multitude of ways-Felicia was just saying I'm a very visual learner. I have a classroom full of auditory learners this year. She's had to change the way she teaches. We can assist our students by putting out tactile enhancers so that they can pay attention. Because we're last, we thought that we should do everything we can to keep your attention.

Louise:
Therefore we have the tactile enhancers. I'm sorry to say you have to return them before you leave. We'll tell you where you can get them.

Before we get started, there is a light green piece of paper that is still face down for some of you. We'd like you to turn over and do the exercise. We got this from Pat Anderson. Some of you have probably already done it. Read the directions at the top. It says, all tasks are to be completed with your non-dominant hand. Take you non-dominant hand and go to work. It will just take you a minute or two?

Louise:
Try using a pair of left-handed scissors some time and you'll know what we feel like.

OK. So, do we need more time? How does this make you all feel? That you'd be able to memorize your name in manu-scribble?

Louise:
We like to do this activity during our trainings because first of all, it cracks everybody up. Second, it is as difficult as the mirror activity. It's as difficult as the activity you did writing your name and moving your foot. It brings home that feeling that it's important for us to experience as we continue to serve the populations that we serve.

We thought we'd start our presentation with a description of what Vermont is like in this world. Adult basic education in Vermont is divided into four private non-profits. Vermont Adult Learning is the private non-profit that we work for. It's the largest provider of adult ed services in Vermont. Up until probably about five years ago-1995, there was not much of any support for learning disabilities in the State of Vermont in adult education. We had no staff development director until this year. Ann and I were it as far as learning disabilities and adult education was concerned. We are county program managers for Vermont Adult Learning. We both have full-time jobs managing county programs for Vermont Adult Learning. In 1993, we met Nancie Payne and then subsequently brought her to Vermont. We convinced our State Director that we should do something about this learning disabilities thing. It's been a great show from there on, but it's been us. We've both been in adult education for-I've been in adult education for 24 years, Ann for about 18. We've been practitioners this whole time. It's been a wonderful change for us to be involved in learning disabilities and learning disabilities projects. Its also been somewhat difficult because it's a juggling act. Most of the time we're running our own programs.

Louise:
We've done a small amount of learning disabilities training through an organization in Vermont called the Stern Center for Language and Learning. They have a grant to serve adult students. Ann and I were fortunate enough to have two of our students involved in this program. We got a first-hand introduction to Orten-Gillingham. [sp] They created a six-volume video that was a training video for teachers. Our students were in it. We got to practice all these methods. We were hooked on learning disabilities stuff and got excited and started going to conferences. That's where we met Nancie Payne. That's how we got her to come to Vermont. Through Ann's involvement with the New England Literacy resource Center and the development of the learning disabilities kit, we hooked up with Alan Pesovitch. [sp] Alan called Ann to talk to her about this grant that she was writing about----

Louise:
She talked about this huge opportunity for the New England States to share their expertise and work together. We said OK, we can do this. This was the first systems change that we experienced. Here we were doing our thing in Vermont. All of a sudden we were going to be involved with all the New England States. It was exciting for us to make that initial connection. As that evolved and we got big, fat packets of this grant and then we'd get another packet of this grant. We said - do we have to read this whole thing? We subsequently got involved with Nancie Payne and immediately started to see where we could connect the two projects. I had the opportunity of being involved in the trips to Washington to work on the Bridges project as it was evolving and work with the writers and meet Evelyn and Maureen. It continued to be exciting-and June. You were right there with us. We kept building momentum in Vermont.

We decided as the Bridges project was unfolding that, because we were already involved with the Nancie Payne training, we would blend the two of these projects. It worked beautifully. The Nancie Payne training is LD awareness. It's planning for instruction. It's strategies and accommodations. It worked. It was made to happen.

We have four projects to share with you. I think that you'll be terribly impressed. All of the projects are represented in your handout in some form or another. As we go through, we'll point out to you which ones are which. Without further ado, Ann is going to introduce our first.

Ann:
Probably we should say, you're taking away more paper than you will ever want to read or keep. Some of these things are examples of what we've done and will be useful to look at. Beyond that, it may not be something you can actually use. As Louise said, the prelude to both Bridges and systemic change in Vermont was our introduction to Nancie Payne at a NASSLN conference in Philadelphia in 1993. I think that thing that hooked us from the start was the systemic change piece. This wasn't just another workshop. This was somebody talking about how she had worked with other states like Oklahoma as Faye was telling us yesterday, and helped them begin to institute change in how not only ABE teachers, but other providers of service would begin to deal with people with learning disabilities. She came to Vermont the next year on three different occasions and trained 15 teachers and two people from the Department of Education to set up this process of helping teachers gain the awareness and the skills and teaching strategies and accommodations that they need to be more successful and therefore have learners who are more self-aware and better able to advocate for themselves, both of whom will then influence the other providers in the system to begin to make change. The four things that we'd like to share with you today are the things we think have made the most significant changes over this four-year period.

We want to begin by giving you a little bit of an overview of the Payne training that we've been doing for the last five years. We've trained about 75 teachers in the State of Vermont, which in Vermont is a lot of teachers and probably is somewhere between 60 percent and 70 percent of the teaching staff. I don't know how it is in the other three non-profits, but in Vermont Adult Learning we don't have much turnover, as you can see by us. Our teachers get older and older and they stay around. It's been a significant piece of training, we think.

The Payne training is a six-day event. It last over a period of about nine months. We divide it into three sessions that are two days each with the idea that people need an intensive piece for a short period of time. Then they need to go home and think about it and practice. Then they need to come back and take the next step. That process has worked well. Teachers seem to feel at the end of that year, that they've made some significant changes in what they're able to do with their students.

It covers an awareness piece that is in many ways very similar to the awareness that you find in the Bridges book. We talk about definitions and characteristics. We talk about legal issues. We talk overtly and explicitly about systemic change and begin to talk with teachers about strategies to make that happen. We also talk about resource development and the referral process and the need to make connections in the community for that. There is another piece of that that we'll talk about in a little more detail in a few minutes. And we talk about learning styles and also about the process of learning and helping teachers understand so that they can help students understand what that process is all about. We have an activity that we like that we want to share with you now that describes the process of learning a little bit.

Pat, would you be my student? You're my student. We've been through an intake process together. You've shared with me that you dropped out of school in the ninth grade, that reading and writing in particular were always really difficult for you, that you've been in an adult education program five or six years ago and you again found it frustrating and difficult so you dropped out. Now you're back and you're really wanting to figure out how to be successful. Since we recognize that there are some learning difficulties here, I've suggested to you that you come back in and we spend about an hour together going through a questionnaire I have that is going to help you and me sort our a little bit what your strengths and weaknesses are and how you learn and what are some of the things in your background that may have contributed to those difficulties.

Ann:
We don't ever tell other people about anything that happens in adult basic education. Everything you do here is completely confidential unless you choose to allow me to share it with someone.

Ann:
Before we start this question period, I want to talk with you a little bit about how you learn the best and what some of your problems with learning might be. I'd like to think with you a little bit about how everybody learns. How does that process of taking in information, storing it in your brain, and then having to use it sometime really work? Louise is going to draw while we talk. This is going to be a rough picture of your brain. You have to use your imagination a little bit. If that is going to be your brain, think for a minute. What are the ways information comes in. What is one way that something comes into your brain?

Ann:
You see things, OK. Sometimes we call that visual. Things come in a visual way. Can you think of another one?

Ann:
It's a touching kind of thing. Touching or doing. Think about cooking breakfast.

Ann:
The way the information comes in is the hearing. The talking is going to come on the other side in a few minutes. Think more about your senses. What happens when you eat those eggs?

Ann:
Yes. I always keep a little cheat sheet for myself because I can't remember them all.

Ann:
This is a tricky one that has to do with intuition and feelings. Some things come in through----

Ann:
Sometimes we divide up the touching and the doing, the tactile and the kinesthetic. Louise and I keep a little cheat sheet because there are seven. All of that information, Pat, comes in. It comes into your memory. First of all it comes into what we call the short-term memory. Here we are today. You probably had to remember, when you were coming to see me, where my office is. If we were not to see each other again or over a period of time, probably by next year you might not remember that because it's not real important-or the phone number that I gave you yesterday.

Ann:
Some of those things come in and stay a little while because they are important to us and we've put them in our short-term memory. Then they're not useful any more. They get lost. Things that you want to remember over a longer period of time get hung up on those nice little hangars that Louise drew. They go into your long-term memory. I was sharing this with another student once who felt like she had a lot of problem remembering things. She said, oh my gosh. I know just what happens then. That's when they all fall off the hangars onto the floor.

Ann:
So everything is nice and neatly stored in there, sometimes not as neatly as we want. There it is in your memory. When you need to use it, how does it come back out? You mentioned one just a minute ago.

Ann:
The other side of the emotional piece. Sometimes we scream. Sometimes we cry. Sometimes we laugh. Sometimes people think of the more artistic and musical kinds of doing and talking like drawing, painting, dancing. All of those are, on some level, verbal and doing but they're other forms of expression that are nice to think about.

That gives you a picture of how the process works - how things come in. How they get stored inside your brain and how they come out again when you need to use them. There is a frame that goes around that like a big box. The frame we call attention. The fact is, that is an absolutely key piece. If you don't have the ability to be paying attention, a lot of those processes are going to get interfered with. You need to be aware of the attention piece, both as information comes in and as you use it.

That is an interesting drawing to reflect on. We're going to let you keep that and take it home with you and mull it over as you begin to think about some of those areas that are important to you and some of those areas that you may be struggling with. When you come back next week and we talk about the results of this screening that we're going to be doing, you'll be able to see even more clearly the kinds of strength areas and weakness areas that may be unique to you as a person. Everybody has their own pattern of the ones they use. I learn almost exclusively through seeing and visual things. I have a hard time learning by listening. For other people it's just the opposite.

Ann:
That is true for lots and lots of folks. Now I'm going to give you a copy of this questionnaire that we're going to be doing. It has 56 questions on it.

Ann:
But it goes really quickly. It's giving you an opportunity to talk a little bit about some things that have been helpful to you in the past and things that have been hard for you in the past and about what you're good at and what you feel you're not good at. It only takes about an hour. I think we'll have a good time doing it together. I'm giving you a copy.

Ann:
It's only 1:00 so we have plenty of time. (You're doing very well.) Thank you for that. I'm going to go back into my other mode. She's talking back too much. It's important as a trainer to know when to let go.

I give pat a copy, which is in large print so that she can write on it if she chooses to or she can just follow along with it if she wants. She has ownership of the questions that are happening and can take them with her so she can review them if she likes. People react to that in very different ways. For some people it's important to write down all the answers so they have their own record. Other people pay hardly any attention to it whatsoever.

After we've started with the circle-of-learning process, then we go into the question-and-answer kind of mode. I ask the questions from my copy of the questionnaire out loud one at a time. We are going to show you a few pages to give you a sense of what they look like. This is the first page and the first question, which says "How do you think you learn best?" People may check as many of those as they like. Then we pick the three that they feel work best for them. The thing that is interesting in this Payne inventory is how every single little piece of the question is clued to the strength and weakness area. This is a strength question. The questions are divided into four categories. Some of them are background questions. Did you move a lot during school? Some of them are strength questions. Some of them are weakness questions. Some of them are other. This is an example of a question that falls into the weakness category. Do you have trouble - this whole list falls into primarily verbal and auditory expression kinds of difficulties. They are questions that fall into the whole variety of categories that are keyed to weakness areas that are associated with learning disabilities.

The last one we wanted to show you is a background question that has to do with medications. One of the real strengths in this screening tool is, I think, the questions that are keyed to health and medical issues so that those kinds of things surface up-front. I was interested in the comment that Steve made about one of his students. I too had a student whom I had worked with for a year as a teacher before I decided to do this inventory with him. In the course of it, I discovered he was blind in one eye. He had never thought it was important to tell me. I immediately started sitting on the other side of him for starters. We stress how important it is to go through some of these medical issues with folks in the beginning.

The next step is that we finish this process. The last question has to do with what do you do in your spare time. That helps the student relax a little bit at the end and talk about something that is neutral and fun, although we are often that people have a hard time answering that question. It's really interesting.

Then it is our job to score it. The score sheet has [inaudible]. This sorts out the strengths and weaknesses. Each question is keyed to one of these areas on that side: attention; auditory; verbal; orientation; tactile/kinesthetic; memory; visual-four visual categories - visual, visual non-print, visual print, and visual motor. You come up with percentage scores. Things are significant if they are over 50 percent. That part you don't share with the student because the particular number of the percent is not as important as the pattern. It gives you a pattern of strengths and weaknesses that are sorted out into those categories. The other part of the score sheet is where you sort out the background questions that you think are significant. Some of them - did you move a lot of times? No. It's not an important thing, so you don't bother to keep it. It's a way of keeping track for yourself when people say, yes I had a problem with drugs and alcohol, or I had a head injury as a child, or I was diagnosed with a learning disabilities. Things that you know are going to be significant that you want to be sure to put into the whole picture, you keep track of in that way. Then there is a place at the bottom to make notes about what kinds of strategies and accommodations you might want to begin with and what kind of referrals you may want to make to start this process.

You write that up in a little report form and meet the next week with the student and report back and begin the discussion of what's next. As I said, one of the important things that we've discovered over the five years we've been doing this is the importance of not just coming up with whether or not somebody needs to be referred for learning disabilities or ADHD diagnosis, but the referrals for medical issues. Before we start working together, let's get your vision checked because it's clear from the fact that you say your eyes tear and water frequently, they blur when you're reading, the print jumps around on the page. Let's make sure that's not a medical issue before we start working on instruction. We've been surprised over this period of time at the number of people who need vision and hearing referrals. It's significant. Getting that taken care of up-front is often very significant too in terms of the results it produces.

This is a big benefit for the student. It helps them-and often so much of a relief. It helps students see what they've already known, but in a clearer way. I'm good at this. Here are the things that I'm-that are my real strengths. Here I knew I had problems listening and responding. There is something reassuring about being able to sort it out with somebody and have that kind of a pattern. It's also important because it helps them begin that process of self-advocacy and being able to talk clearly for themselves when they're talking with other people about what their strengths and weaknesses are. Of course, it feeds then into the planning and instruction process and the beginning of setting instructional goals and talking about strategies and accommodations and where you may want to go next.

Louise:
So we've introduced people to the assessment process. We've gotten the results. Now we have a lot of information that we need to sort out and start our planning process and think about how we're going to instruct. As we start to think about this, we're also thinking about this [points to assessment questions on screen in room]. Most teachers are visual learners and most learners are not. We need to be careful in how we think about what we're going to do.

We'd like to start this portion of our presentation with another activity. Steve, can you tell me how you learned to concentrate.

Jackie:
I think maybe by someone helping me organize things or sometimes there were outlines when I was reading or doing something-a task in school. I think that's how it happened.

Louise:
Can you think about a single characteristic that is significant about all your answers except one. One person mentioned school. None of the rest of you mentioned school. You weren't taught these things in school, as least not directly. This information came-I can't think of where I got it. I don't know how I learned how to do this. We aren't taught these skills in school, generally speaking. We are taught how to outline. That is one way of organizing information.

In your packet there is a handout called Meta Cognitive Skills. I think one of the most important pieces of the Payne training is when we talk about meta cognition - thinking about thinking and where we look at how do you get here? What do you do? These things-you didn't learn this in school. It was quietly taught to you. I think that if you think about it, our students with learning disabilities don't have these skills. They don't prioritize well. They don't generalize information. We're re-teaching all the time. We have to teach critical thinking. We need to teach people how to pay attention. What about our cognitive flexibility? I think that if you look at this list, you will be amazed at how much you do without thinking and how much we need to teach these skills to our students. We spend an awfully lot of time with sequential learning and we don't teach sequencing, except when we are teaching people how to count.

Ann:
We teach lots of things in sequence but we don't say, now we're going to learn about sequencing.

Louise:
We expect generalization. We say, remember how we did this? I want you to apply that to this. But we don't say, this is the skill of generalization. What I think we need to think about in changing the ways we teach is overtly teaching these skills. To spend some time saying, OK what we're doing right now is working on critical thinking. This is how we're going to do it. This is how you can apply it in this situation over here. Now Pat, you tell me where you could apply this skill in another place in your life. What about when you go to see your VR worker? What could you do with your critical thinking skills that you're learning about today in that situation? We're creating opportunities to generalize the information.

We'd like to show you an activity that will help when you are thinking about how to teach these skills. This is also an activity from the Payne training that Dan Fi, whom some of you know, modified to-we loved it. We use it all the time. It's called the Information Processing Model. You can take any task that you need to teach and use this model to figure out what skills you need to teach in order to get to the product that you're looking for.

The example that we're going to use is a spelling test. If you think about all the components of a spelling test, what are the inputs, what is the information coming when you are taking a spelling test?

Louise:
The information is coming in this way. Is there any other way of getting that information?

Louise:
OK. There is a visual component. If you are watching the teacher's mouth, you are going to see. What is the result? What is the output? What is the information? How do we demonstrate that information?

Louise:
OK. Don't go there yet. What is the-remember the circle of learning, the demonstration? OK, you've got a tactile component and a kinesthetic component because you're doing and---- OK. Now looking at your sheet of meta cognitive skills, what are the skills that you need to have in place in order to spell a word?

Louise:
OK. You have to be able to pay attention. You have to focus on-OK you've got to remember it.

Offscreen participant:
Sequential because you have to remember the order of the letters.

Louise:
Abstract thinking, yes. You've got to move that word from up here to down here. Any other skills.

Louise:
You have to do critical thinking-decide if you've done it right. Any others?

Louise:
Yes. You've got to remember whether that word is related to any other word you know and whether you're spelling it right.

Offscreen participant:
If you start to make a mistake, you have to be able to [inaudible] go back and start over or start from where you think you made the mistake.

Ann:
So you know if word that is spelled r-o-a-s-t and b-o-a-s-t and h-o-a-s-t, that of course the next one has to be m-o-a-s-t.

Louise:
Do you get the point? Now what you do is take another task and do the same thing. You look at both of them and see where the person's strengths are that you already know about. You know-this person has already told you that they have a good memory. They've already told you that they are good at applying what they know in different situations. You point out. Look! Here are two skills that you have and you've told me about in this situation. You've told me that you're good at these things. Look! Here they are. You've also told me that you have a hard time with this-with ordering things, with putting things in the proper order in doing math problems and those kinds of things. You said that spelling wasn't your best subject. This might be an area we need to work on. Look, it appears here and it appears over here when we do this same exercise with addition-a word problem with addition. Look at that. Sequencing is there. So is memory. We've got a shot here. We're creating these opportunities for people where we're saying, OK you've told me you're strong in these areas. This-you've already proved it to me. You've also told me that these are areas that are difficult for you. So look at all these different places where they can appear.

Ann:
Another thing, Louise, that fits in there is that sometimes before you can get to that point with a student, you need to do this analysis on a variety of kinds of problems that they are having so that you can begin to see the pattern. Oh, sequencing is a problem in spelling. Sequencing is a problem in math. If you just to this on a spelling test and the person is having a horrible time, you don't necessarily know which one of these things it is. But then when they are having a problem with math, you begin to pick out the patterns. You can begin to share those patterns with the student so that together you are sorting out what this is all about. At the same time, you're teaching them a little bit about meta cognitive skills and why they are important.

Louise:
I think it's important for teachers to understand these thinking skills and to be able to work with them and work with them with their students to create those opportunities for people. I don't think we spend a lot of time thinking about thinking. We don't do it because we do it all the time. It becomes an important exercise. I think [inaudible - tape cut out] we use this as part of our planning process, it informs the type of instruction you're going to use with your student. If you have taken the results of a screening tool, you have decided what kind of referrals you're going to make, and you've made the decision as to whether you're going to move on to formal assessment. All those decisions have been made. Eyes and ears have been screened. You've got a plethora of information now to plan for instruction and to think about the kinds of instruction you're going to use. Think about the strategies and adaptations and possibly accommodations that you're going to use in order for students to succeed.

This inventory is an incredible tool to begin this journey that we're doing with our students. A piece of Bridges that has been incredibly helpful for us is the Smart Process, which we use all the time. I think that it's self-explanatory. This is a perfect illustration of using meta cognitive skills to shape our learning, to help us. We encourage our teachers to keep that model in mind. It becomes more and more effective as we go.

Then we move on to the process of instruction. We keep our process direct and explicit. We keep our students engaged in the process by encouraging them to keep up-front that understanding of exactly what is going on so that they're not sitting there asking, what? Where? They spend a lot of their time wondering what is going on. We are incorporating them in the process and creating opportunities for understanding rather than creating opportunities for more confusion.

Because we have all these pieces in place and because we've been able to blend the Bridges information and the Payne training information, we have come up with some huge changes for our organization and for the State of Vermont. We've developed procedures for referral that were not at all close to standardized. We have processes for goal-setting and planning for instruction. We have tools for determining which strategies, adaptations, accommodations to employ to use with our students. We have an understanding of what appropriate instruction is. In the bigger picture, the systemic changes that have started to take place and have been ongoing are that there is a larger awareness of learning disabilities among ABE practitioners and the agencies that we work with. More GED accommodations. We're a testing center in the counties that I work in. I can't give you an exact figure, but they've gone way up. We're using those L-15s a lot. We have developed statewide resources for students with learning disabilities. We have radically changed the ways we look at instruction. We have changed our relationship with agencies, both the referral process going both ways and the instruction process in agencies and with us. It's changed the referrals that we have made and where we have made our referrals. That has been huge. I think I can't stress enough what an exciting opportunity this has been for us. It's allowed us to go in so many different directions, having so much more resource to provide our students with better service. We have handed out all of our Bridges packets. We have none left. Teachers are using them. They are using them as a resource and a guide. The bring them up in meetings. I think it's been a wonderful opportunity for us to educate and have this resource at our fingertips. We are very appreciative.

Ann:
Speaking of resources, I want to explain in a little more detail where we went with the resource process as a result of the original Payne training. When Nancie came in 1994, one of the tasks she assigned to that group of 17 teachers and administrators was for each of us to go back during the course of the nine months that we were working with her into our communities and begin making phone calls to psychologists, neurologists, and people who tested hearing and people who tested vision and come back with a list of some of the resources in our areas. That was then compiled by the Department of Education into a little booklet. We asked the following questions when we made these phone calls. Do you test adults with learning disabilities? How long will this assessment take? What will it cover? Will you provide both a written and an oral report? What is the cost? What does the cost cover? Do you take insurance? What kind of insurance? Are you willing to do pro bono work? It was a daunting and challenging job. It was particularly challenging for busy teachers who had this assignment forced upon them in their already busy life. Consequently it was done in a sketchier manner than we would have ultimately liked it. The end result back then was a beginning. It was fairly complete in a couple of counties. It was non-existent in some others. But it gave us an idea of how useful it could be. It became useful in the areas where there were really some things, particularly where people who had done the work wrote down some comments about the conversation that they had had. One of the things that became very clear right away was that in a rural state like Vermont, all the resources are lumped in one place to a very large extent. If you want good testing, you go to Burlington. If you live in Brattleboro, that becomes a significant problem in terms of transportation, child care, additional cost, and so on. It laid out a picture as well of what some of the challenges will always be in terms of accessing resources. It also clarified costs. This is real. This is what happens. That is often discouraging, although in the beginning it was clear that there was some inkling from people thinking they might do some pro bono work.

For the next five years, Louise and I had it on our guilt list. We've got to do something about the Resource Directory. It needs to be updated. We know nobody is going to do unless we do it and we don't have time. Finally, with a little bit of our last Bridges money, we very recently have paid a teacher who was on a leave-of-absence to do a final piece. What you have in your packet is still not a final version because she hasn't completed all of this. One of the glaring gaps is Chittenden County, which is where Burlington is, where she has listed the resources, but not yet made the phone calls. We're hoping that by the end of June this will be in a complete version. What you have is an advance copy of the second draft of this process.

The thing that has happened as a result of the second version has been a substantial increase in the number of people who have said they were willing to do pro bono work. I have been very excited about it until someone mentioned yesterday that just because folks say they're going to do it, doesn't mean they're going to. You may have to wait five months and so on. We'll see how it plays out. I think it's another indication of a little bit of systemic change. There are more psychologists aware, perhaps of the need and the usefulness for doing this kind of work.

The other thing that has changed over these few years is the advances in technology. We are hoping at some point in the not-too-distant future to be able to put this on a website where it could be more easily updated and useful to people in an easier kind of way. It's a work-in-progress. It provides a foundation for teachers and students as they are struggling to access the resources that they need to become successful learners. It has provided an opportunity on both sides for us to provide a little education to the health provider network about who we are and what we do and to learn also about what the resources are from that community that are available to us. The educational benefit has been considerable, I think, on both sides.

Louise:
In your packet is-the one with the black clip. We learned early that ADA compliance was really important. We knew that Vermont adult education programs were not all accessible. We knew that they were not in compliance with ADA. We knew we had to do something about it. We worked with the State Director. She said, why don't you guys design a model and we'll see. We'll go from there. We said, OK. We'll do that. We figured we didn't have to reinvent the wheel, that there was something out there that we could use. We found that the State of Washington had an ADA compliance checklist. We called them up and asked if we could adapt this for Vermont. They said, of course. They sent it to us. We went through it very carefully and changed what we needed to change to make it applicable to Vermont, which wasn't a whole lot. It was very well done. We felt that we could change where it said Washington State to Vermont Adult Learning. If the State decided they wanted to adopt this, they could change it to the State of Vermont or different private non-profits could do with it what they wanted.

The first section is a brief note to our providers that we've got to do this folks. Then we have the explanations of each section starting with notification. Then the actual checklist is after that. It was interesting to look at this. As we looked at it, we said, Oh dear. We've got a lot of work ahead of us. Then we went through it again and decided-we had discovered that there were some things that were going to have to be State decisions. There were some things that were going to have to be organizational decision. There were some things that were going to have to be program decisions. It became very evident to us that we were going to have to do a policies and procedures manual. That is the next thing that we did.

The last piece of that is Vermont Adult Learning Policies and Procedures Manual. We luckily had an incredible resource to help us design this. We sent everything that we wrote to Pat Anderson. She was very kind and edited whatever we sent to her and talked to us about language and understandings that we needed to develop and how what we had written was perfect except for that particular word. We were very grateful for that help. Also, interpretation-every program and person within it is going to interpret things slightly differently. We had wonderful experiences meeting with our different program directors and saying - you don't have to move tomorrow. It looks like your accessibility is a little limited. Then we had to explain that accessibility isn't just physical accessibility, that it is also program accessibility. It was an education process that took time and understanding and education. I think that we learned an awful lot in that process.

The Bridges books were very helpful in that process. In Book I the indicators of high-quality service was a good place to go for information and words to use for educating our staffs. The rights and responsibilities section also gave us language to use in order to convince people that this was a worthy effort. We had conversations with the State Director and our Executive Director about the ways that they needed to participate in this process, the policies that they needed to develop or at least stamp so that we could keep this process moving. We got the whole process done. We turned it over to the State. We feel that we are successful because we know that there is a tool now for programs to use. We made it very clear to our State Director that we feel this is a good tool. We feel this meets what we need to meet and - Take it away.

We felt that because we were able to provide this that now adult education programs in Vermont have a process to become compliant with ADA. We decided that we wanted to continue our process of education by having Pat Anderson come and do a training with our program managers. We had her come up. It was summer. It was a couple of years ago in June that Pat came up for the day and worked with our program managers and did a wonderful training. That training we included with Pat's permission in our handout. We use this all the time. It's very, very helpful. It has a checklist in it and information about 504 and IDEA. I think you all know about ADA compliance and how important it is. You also know how programs-people don't seem to take it seriously. They need to. We turned this whole process over to our Executive Director as well. Because we're county programs, we're located in six counties throughout the State of Vermont. Each individual program has to take care of their own compliance. Each program has this checklist. Each program is responsible for updating it and keeping it current. We're confident that now that the pieces are in place, that people will pay attention and be in compliance both programmatically and in their physical setting.

One thing that remains a problem is - you're holding a workshop in a church in the church basement as we were talking about yesterday and it's not accessible. What do you do? You make a plan to find another place the next time. I think people are starting to realize that this is a priority and we're the champions. Whenever anybody calls and asks us a question we say, well I'm sorry but that's the way it is. You must do it this way. It's been a wonderful process for us in terms of our understanding. Also, I think that Vermont is now in a better position in its adult education programs anyway, of being in compliance with ADA.

Ann:
We only have one more thing to talk about. And it's only 11:35 so you might get lunch early. The last thing we want to share is something called The Literacy Protocol, which has to do with how people are referred from social service agencies, primarily the welfare system for adult education assessments. We think it's probably the most successful venue for systems change that we've been able to influence that is primarily outside the education system. The other things that we've been talking about have been within the adult education system. We feel like they've all set groundwork for influencing change in other areas. As we mentioned with the resource directory and with teachers having a higher level of awareness, change occurs in a progressive sort of way. This change, I think, has made significant changes in our relationship with the social welfare system, which in Vermont is called PATH. The name itself indicates that they have gone through great changes because they have only been called PATH for a little over a year. PATH, since you probably couldn't possibly figure it out on your own, stands for Prevention Assistance Transition and Health Access. They went from the Department of Social Welfare to becoming PATH as one of the ways in which they were struggling to respond to the huge changes that I'm sure all of your states have experienced in relationship to welfare reform.

The changes came to Vermont suddenly and very late because Vermont had received a waiver from the federal government that lasted until 2001 from complying with the federal welfare requirements because they set up a study, which we could talk about over lunch. It was a little interesting. It protected the state in many ways from some of the really difficult things that were happening elsewhere and then forced them in a crashing kind of way toward the end of this time period to say, oh my gosh. Now we've got to comply. What are we going to do? So, in addition to changing their name to PATH, which we all have gotten used to. It sounded so weird in the beginning. The other day I said to somebody, what did PATH used to be? I can't remember anymore. 0h, VSW, got it. One of the other things that became clear as the transition was happening was that a closer collaboration between PATH and the Department of Employment and Training and the Voc Rehab people and the education providers was going to be necessary in order to provide the services that would be necessary to transition people successfully into the workforce. Probably that realization itself, has been a systemic change. In addition to that, it became clear that many, many PATH clients had significant educational needs and that it would be important and helpful to have an assessment system and a referral into that assessment system for educational services that was uniform among these agencies.

That decision was made on the bureaucratic level in the state government. While it was a good decision, they then developed a committee of two people from each of those four agencies who developed this protocol of services. Then they handed it to the education providers and said, this is what you have to do, which forced a system change because the education providers in Vermont are these four private non-profits who are well-known for not doing anything alike. It's one of the great flaws in the system of educational service providing in Vermont. Vermont Adult Learning does things one way. Northeast Kingdom Educational Services does an entirely different kind of process and provides different services and has a different referral system and does different assessments. Here we were, all of us with this mandate. The only thing we could agree on was that we needed to have practitioner input and make this process something that was workable, since they were forcing us to do it uniformly. It turned out to be a wonderful process. This has all happened within the last year. Louise and I became a part of the committee that involved representatives from the four non-profits that revamped and made a system that was going to be workable.

There is now-you have in this whole packet in your folder - it's called The Literacy Protocol Manual. We photocopied it all so you could get an example of how it works. There is a uniform referral form. Luckily the State had decided about six months before this all happened that Vermont probably was the last state in the country that went to a uniform standardized assessment system. The TABE had already newly been imposed. If that hadn't happened I don't know what we would have done. Prior to that we were all in different assessment processes as well. So the TABE and the GED practice test are the acceptable assessment tools in addition to the short-form of the Payne inventory, the 13 questions that a number of other people are also using. Then a written report is done at the end, which is sent back to the referring case worker from whichever agency the referral came. That piece is also new. We have never provided written reports to agency people in the past. If people score high on the 13 questions of Payne inventory, it is suggested in that report-most of the referrals come from PATH, so it's suggested to the PATH worker that a referral be made to Voc Rehab to investigate possible learning disabilities.

In the beginning, a training was provided on LD awareness and the whole system of how we were all going to do that to workers from all of the agencies. Louise was involved in that training. Louise and I also provided training to all of the intake people who were going to be doing the 13-question Payne inventory, which in many areas of the state would become a brand-new thing to do.

There have been a lot of positive results. It was awkward and cumbersome and in the beginning the PATH people didn't quite to know what to do. Oh, somebody needs an educational assessment. For many of them that was a new idea. Because there were these forms and this process and they'd been to this training, they began slowly to get into the system. Then they began getting back these nice written reports. People began-they'd get a call from somebody in Vermont Adult Learning. Or they would get the report and they'd have a question, so they would call somebody up. Communication began to happen. That was neat because it was being helpful to the client. I think one of the greatest advantages that we're beginning to see, now that we're a year into it, is how it has fostered communication between the referring worker - be it from Voc Rehab or DET or PATH - and the adult education provider who is providing this service. In many cases it has almost instituted a case management kind of situation, which has been helpful. There also have been increased referrals to Voc Rehab because of the 13 questions. In some instances, Voc Rehab is now referring people back to Vermont Adult Learning or the education provider for the full Payne screening because they've discovered that it's a useful prelude and intermediate step, sometimes, to deciding whether or not they want to go someplace like the Stern Center and pay $800.

It has increased the awareness, I think, the awareness of learning problems and dealing with learning problems and begun to set into place some better ways to handle them. The increased communication has been extremely helpful to both providers and clients. The challenges have a lot to do with that. Because there is increased communication, it takes more time. Because we provide a written report, it takes more time. We don't get any more money. We are, in Vermont Adult Learning, furious at the Department of Education who agreed to this process without consulting any of the providers and did not demand that if we're going to be providing this extra service that one of these agencies figure out how the providers are going to get paid for it. That's been a serious frustration and time problem. The person on my staff who is doing this is spending about a day and a half of his time doing these assessments and written reports. It's increasing because the more he does it, the more people love it and want it. There isn't any pot of money in my budget that is specifically earmarked to pay for it. It's ABE service, but in the meantime, our ABE grant didn't get increased, so those are the challenges.

There have also been challenges of students dropping out part way through the process, which is true always with students, but when you've invested this kind of time in an assessment process, it's frustrating when all of a sudden the person who is most involved has disappeared.

That's what has happened. We're excited about it. As Louise mentioned in the beginning, I've thought so much about that first phone call from Alan Pesovitch in the last few days and how she anticipated that the greatest benefit for us in Vermont has been the opportunity to learn from all of you. For us, we felt very, very isolated before all of this happened. It's been wonderful the changes that it has made in the way we're able to go about our work. I also think that these last two days have been marvelous. I can hardly wait to get home and go back through all these things and remember that I want to follow-up on The Right Question thing this time. I want to figure out how we can begin doing more of what I see happening in New Hampshire and Rhode Island around services that funnel through Voc Rehab and begin to identify people and have a real process of assessment. I feel that what we've done is just a baby step compared to some of these other things. Thank you all for giving us all that you have given us.

June:
I'm record-keeping for the future. I am thinking about this because we have so many states doing this now where we're using the 13-item screen. Yet, it was validated on a TANF population. It seems to be working for a lot of other populations in adult education, but we don't have the research on that. We could be helpful, I think, to the government if we could begin pulling this together and keeping a set of records that would be similar through the Bridges program and the people who have been doing this so we could say, look we've tested-whatever at this point three million adults using this 13-item screen. They've been referred for diagnosis. Here are the results that have come back. We're getting a lot of them on the TANF clients because the Voc Rehab people are keeping these records. I'm wondering if you have any suggestions, all of you in the room, about how we might work out a plan to do that as a national project. It would take money. I'm not suggesting that you do it with no money. What would it take, do you think, to start gathering that kind of information so that we could standardize some of this and then be able to say to agencies across the country, we've done it in 11 states for VR purposes. There are at least 11 that have been done under the Bridges umbrella. I hope there are more. There are lots of other adult ed programs that are doing this kind of thing in other states too. We're looking for a system so we can standardize some of this. I'm working within the Bush Administration's guidelines for scientific research and we need to start pulling some of this together. Word-of-mouth anecdotal stuff doesn't hack it when you are looking for money from the government. I would like to help you get more money to keep this work going but I'm going to need figures-facts and figures to do it.

Ann:
In our state that would be easy because this literacy protocol stuff is being tracked in terms of-for us it's been primarily within the TANF population. It wouldn't be hard to keep records, I don't think, and be able to report it out.

June:
I'd also be interested in hearing more about adult educators who are using the longer screening from Nancie because I keep hearing good things about that all over the country. I want to be able to put money where things are already working. I cannot see developing things brand-new. If you already have something that works, let's pay the money and use it. Educators all over the country are telling me that this is very, very helpful because it gives them teaching information.

June:
People who have been using it and are experienced in it and are willing to share information, I'd be interested in hearing more about that too.

June:
I'll do that. I'm preparing my budget for next year. There is a lot of excitement about this project and what has happened and looking at next steps and what we do now nationally to build more interest in doing something and use the money wisely that I would be giving. I think I'm going to get a budge increase, not decrease but increase for next year because of all the work that we have been able to accomplish in this project. I want to use it wisely. [inaudible] federal government two-way test.

Louise:
June, I think if you talk to teachers, if you talk to instructors, you'll find that they're looking for tools. They're looking for tools and strategies and ideas and ways to adapt what they're doing to work with students. They want stuff. Assessment is huge right now. Evaluation is huge. I think that if we can provide them with a variety of instruments to use that aren't all TABE, CASS, and AIMS. There are some more authentic tools. I think that one of the beauties of the Payne inventory is that it is an authentic assessment. It is a self-report tool. If we can figure out ways to do a cross-walk with the scoring process of the Payne inventory to have-to maybe look at it in terms of-people always want grade levels and NRS levels. If we can even work with Nancie to figure out a way to translate some of that into what's accepted in terms of the government, the NRS levels, I think it might help in getting that type of assessment to be accepted even more than it is. I think the type of information that teachers get from this is what informs their instruction. The TABE and the AIMS give you a grade level you can translate to an NRS level. Then what do you do? Then you do an authentic assessment to find out what they're really doing. You have this wonderful interview with people. Everybody that has spoken has talked about interviewing students and talking to people. You get the most information when you find out what happened in school. What were you doing that worked? What were you doing that didn't work?

Ann:
One of the biggest struggles we're having is transitioning into this process of using the TABE, which teachers have been taking a deep breath about as they start doing. As you all know, for students with severe learning problems who are very beginning readers, the TABE is not an appropriate tool. We're in a position right now where our organization says, OK. You don't have to give the TABE to people you know can't answer any of the questions. The State says, we don't count in our brand-new MIS system-we don't count anyone who hasn't been given the formal assessment. We are not getting credit for any of the students that we teach whom we don't give the TABE to.

June:
Let me ask you another question, then. What if some of your students could be involved in a research project where they would take the TABE and they would do it on a tape and then try it again in the written format. It would be levels seven and eight that would be available on tape. We're looking for people who would want to do that, frankly. I have a professor now. Finally we've got somebody who does accommodations research who has agreed to do this. We've already taped it. We've paid for it out of Bridges funding. The tapes are prepared. They've been standardized. We used the American Publishing House for the Blind. We didn't just go to anybody to have it done. It's been done correctly. The tapes are available and ready. He is ready to do the research. We're talking about maybe 500 students that we'd like to use from around the country.

June:
I'd like to spread it out rather than just doing it in a couple of states, I think if we could get some variety, I think that would be helpful. Then McGraw Hill can pick up the bill from there. I agreed to do this to start this out. OK. I'm going to make a note of that.

I have a final question, if I may before anybody jumps in. I'll bet at least three, if not four, of the six states that have presented have mentioned Barbara's Wilson's reading program. I talked to Barbara about the whole issue of also needing research on her reading. The anecdotal evidence is wonderful. We don't have any straight scientific studies that have been done with the use of that. I don't know if she is applying for NIH funding. I suggested that she contact John Strucker [sp] and see if between the two of them they could do some kind of study and apply for NIH funding under this new grant program that is coming up. I think we need to do that. If you are using her program and you are keeping track of this and can talk about the results of it, we ought to get some of that down on paper so that I can show that to people and if nothing else get some funding. I'm not supposed to be supporting private programs as a fed. But if it works, I'm willing to go out on a limb because there are too many programs out there that don't work. If we know that there is something that does, then I want to do what I can to support that.

Louise:
We're doing an overview training on May 9 and 10. Her people just completed another training in an elementary school in Vermont just last week. We're going to look into partnering with the K-12 system to do the level one training for some of our teachers that have already gone through the overview training. We're invested in Wilson at this point. We are going two tracks. If people want to do the Wilson training, we're at least providing the overview and looking into the level one training. Then through the Stern Center, we can provide the basic Orten-Gillingham instructions. We're going both directions that people want to move in. It's their choice. They can do both. One doesn't negate the other. They enhance. I think the understanding of how to use the Wilson system is the critical piece of going through the Wilson training. The Orten-Gillingham is a little narrower in its focus so that it provides you with that grounding in the use of structured language.

Steve:
There is a program in Rhode Island [unintelligible] The Learning disabilities Resource Guide [unintelligible] that uses the Wilson system exclusively. Susan Gresless, [sp] who is the Director of that program is training on Wilson system to adult educators in Rhode Island. Her name and her program are in both the Learning Disabilities Resource Guide that I handed earlier. I'm sure she'd be very excited about that also.

Maureen:
We did an interesting thing in Connecticut a few years ago. It was a reading exercise. We gathered together all the adult basic ed and LDA people. Also a lot of community college people and others came to it. That was a few years ago. Barbara came and spoke and John Strucker spoke. The more interesting thing about it is the process was that we held part of the workshop in where all the publishers were. We had invited people who designed special reading and language programs either on computers or all kinds of other things. They were set up like booths. They demonstrated some of their best products. Then we had a conversation between teachers and Barbara and John and the publishers about the way practitioners were using the publication materials, which was very different than the publishers had any idea about. It was a very eye-opening conversation which resulted in us getting good material from people and the publishing field starting to think they were missing the boat on some things. It was a great opportunity to kick reading off in our state as a major priority for us in ABE and literacy of course. It would be an interesting to think about doing some of that on a regional basis where we brought publishers together, but also practitioners. In Connecticut we're trying to give programs the option. We've been bringing Barbara and the Stern tapes and a lot of variety of things to people's awareness and letting them experience them so that programs can make a decision about which models like Bridges report card. There are great things out there. What it is that your program is willing to invest in and compromise on when you can't get everything that you want. It might be interesting as a collaboration to do it across a region because it's more powerful too in terms of the publishers.

Pat:
I don't know where this fits in the research piece, my reading theory too beside reading theory gives people a baseline understanding of how to use Wilson. It's not in an official Wilson training, but gives them a method that has a manual, that has material. People feel so comfortable with that. Like myself, they probably go back and modify it for the classroom. I don't use the absolute Wilson method in my classroom. It's 80 percent of the way I do it - the materials, the methodology, the information that I'm teaching. My teachers come back and love it for both English and ESOL. I just did a tutor training because a lot of students who are new readers need that one-on-one. They loved that system. I have tutors this year who are using it one-on-one in the specific way it's supposed to be used. One-on-one you don't have variety of students that you have to modify and change.

Maureen:
There are a lot of good systems. We don't have access to seeing what they are supposed to be. There are some new computer things that I think are good.

Maureen:
It was a great experience for us to get a sense of what is out there.

June:
There are millions of dollars out there for reading that I could get access to. You can only do it for reading. There is a certain pot of money for LD for adults. Then here is a huge reading pot because of the Bush administration being interested in that. It's not just for kids. There is some adult money in there. That's what I've been trying to do is move this on into the reading area. We say that 85 percent of the people with LD have reading problem. That's because we measure them in schools. I think there are a whole lot of other things too. Why not make use of that is the way I look at it.

Louise:
There is an interesting question that we've been posing over the years about reading. We had a group that grew-a group of people who had been hurt on the job and could not get retrained because they didn't know how to read or their reading skills were not at the level where retraining was an option. Most of the people who were in this category were people who either did manual labor jobs, drove a truck, laid carpet. They were jobs that they used their bodies and their minds to make their living. Here they were with back injuries predominantly from their jobs-or neck and shoulder injuries, which made what they did impossible. They came to adult education and said, now I have to learn how to read and get my GED and do this and this. I have to do it right now because I've been injured. I'm getting benefits now. They are going to end because they are saying this, this, and this. We started out with just one or two people. We thought this isn't a trend. Then we started seeing a few more. We ended up with a class of people who needed to learn how to read. We started thinking about it and thinking about is the incidence of injury on the job higher because you can't read or is the-which comes first. What we really learned was that the predominant reason that people weren't able to read was because they definitely had learning difficulties. As we were able to hook them up with Voc Rehab and get them tested, we found that they had significant learning issues and that it impacted everything. Often one of the biggest impacts for them was that it impacted their medical treatment because they weren't able to make some of the decisions that you and I don't think a minute about making. They didn't understand the information. One guy had five operations where he didn't need to have more than because he didn't understand what they were talking about. We spent enormous amounts of time teaching self-advocacy and medical terminology so that these folks could make more informed decisions. I think it's an interesting place to think about teaching reading because I think everybody has got to work. These were not old people. These were people in their 30's, 40's, and 50's that needed to keep working until they were 65 or 70. It's a burgeoning population.

Maureen:
We started a reading and language arts task force in Connecticut that deals with ABE and LDA. I got an interesting technical assistance call one time from a researcher at Yale. It was a combined U Conn and Yale research into HIV active users who were using still and sharing needles. They had a fabulous research project. It was a lot of self-advocacy. They were working with teaching users how to teach others about giving up the needle program. It involved a lot of literacy. They asked people to keep journals. The people who were involved who were teachers of the cohort were supposed to keep journals. They never thought to do a literacy test. People were dropping out of the study. They called me 2.5 years into the study. The came to see us. They said, we can't understand why these people were dropping out. Now we're thinking that it could be that some of them can't read. Do you have a quick-and-dirty easy reading test that we can give to the medical field that will let them know when people come into hospitals and other places that they have trouble reading. There has been some research and work done in that. There is a test on health literacy. The fellow-when we finished our conversation, we shared samples of some reading tools that they could use. They talked about the problem of doing something quick and easy with reading. He said 2.5 years we've been down this research road. It's like now we realize that part of the problem could have been solved very early on if we had thought. Those of us who work in literacy always think that's the first question. People assume people can read and they don't have a learning disabilities.

June:
There is a whole project at the American Foundation for the Blind based on that very issue. As people are aging and need to be retrained because of vision loss, they are finding that literacy is a major issue because these people don't read well. It's not just a matter of teaching them to use large print or teaching braille. It's teaching them to read originally that is the problem. The Voc Rehab people are not able to teach it. They all want to learn what to do and what's involved in teaching reading.

Louise:
The whole thing that Maureen was saying yesterday. The providers that we work with are not at all clear about what's involved in teaching reading. If you can read, you can teach it. That's why we're where we are.

Maureen:
I think in education not only ABE words, extremely high. It's 72 or 73 percent of people are teaching out of their discipline. If you go through high school, people aren't teaching what it is they were prepared in college to teach. In ABE you see that notoriously. I think we're not doing enough awareness. It's the idea that it's so simple and magical.

Jackie:
A couple months ago Ashley and I were doing an introduction to the Young Adults with Disabilities program was all about. We were doing some information about reading. All of the people in the room worked at correction facilities. What you know is that a lot of folks who don't know how to read end up in correction facilities. The people who are there doing the workshop with us were all teachers of reading. All of them were teachers. We did a survey. One person had be formally trained in how to teach reading. Most of them taught something else. They just got a job in the correction facilities and they were teaching reading. It's unfortunate because 1-4 is when you learn how to read. Five on you are reading to learn. It was interesting that these folks were teaching reading to the folks in the facilities and they didn't really know how. It seemed like they were going to mess up again. They were there and hopefully going to get out, but they weren't going to be taught how to read correctly. It is scary.

Maureen:
In the corrections you have a contained audience. Whereas in our field, the dropout, retention, and attrition issues may well be related if we don't have the right people teaching the right subject matter to the right individuals. When we talk about why it is that we can't hold onto students, it's because we have somebody from business who never knew how he learned how he to. Felicia and I, we know how to do things, but don't remember how we learned to do that.

It may well be that our dropout rates are in some way related to the fact that not the right people are doing the right things with the right audience.

Participant:
A perfect example of that is about six or seven years ago I was called into Yale. It was the hospital not the medical center. They had thrown their hands up in the air. They had decided to restructure their entire staff as a downsizing method. They did it. Then they decided that all the people who were currently in their jobs, had been in their jobs for 18, 20, 25 years had to test for the new positions. That is the first time they found out that they had a literacy issue. I am sitting in the board room. The President of the hospital is saying, there is no literacy issue here. There is no reason why these people can't pass this test. Meanwhile some community-based organizations said, even if they don't pass this test, you cannot lay off all these people. I turned to the President of the hospital and asked, did you ever wake up one day and say, gee I really want to be a janitor? He looked at me and said, who would want to be a janitor. I said, how about people who can't read. That did it. I was there for the next 18 months doing classes for their people. It saved about 120 jobs. They had absolutely no idea what they were getting themselves into. They assumed everybody could read.

Faye:
I had an interesting classroom experience about reading. A lot of times people think they are beginner readers and that is what causes the problem. This year in our AD-1 we raised the level of who gets in AD-1. A lot of the students who used to go to pre-GED, get stuck there, never move and quit. There was a middle group in my classes. I've had three people go from my class to pre-GED to GED. They were exactly the students who would have totally dropped if they had been put in pre-GED because they didn't have that baseline. They didn't know how to figure out the words. They didn't have comprehension abilities. I've been thrilled with that. It took a group of people who used to fail. They didn't have a piece of the reading piece. They maybe didn't need it as intensively. They moved more quickly. They needed it.

Maureen
[inaudible] has that fellow who speaks was from my Cape program. He said he never had a reading teacher in adult education who took him back far enough. The assumption is they are reading about a third or forth grade level. Most people would be comfortable shoring up their skills.

Louise:
[inaudible] until third or forth grade. When you make that switch is when a lot of people get lost.

June:
[inaudible] an article on reading from a corrections education association journal. When you are talking about [inaudible -tape cut out]. I have used this. An old piece of cheese has to have all the old rind cut off from the edges because you can't get new ideas in until you've done that. You have to measure to find out where the holes are in the cheese because they've already got lots of things going on. There are gaps. There are different sizes in different parts of the cheese. You have to figure out what that is by diagnosing the reading problem, not just getting a tape or one of those other standardized placement tests. I thought it was such a good image that I've used that a lot. It helps to think about those things. There are a lot of difficulties out there.

Programs & Projects

Transcript - Learning Disabilities Program Outcomes Based on Bridges to Practice - Vermont's Presentation