Literacy Harvest
Spring 2001
The Journal of the Literacy Assistance Center
Leadership in an Era of Change Contributors
In This Issue
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .3
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .4
What’s It All About?
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Reflections on the Workforce Investment Act and Its Implementation in New York State and City
Paul Wasserman Learner-Centered Philosophy as a Paradigm for Administration . .6
Adult Literacy Public Policy Organizing in Massachusetts . . . . . .31
How Our Pedagogy Can Inform Our Management Practices
A Participant’s Reflections
David J. Rosen
Joni Schwartz The New Accountability Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .11 Point-Counterpoint on NRS and WIA
NIFL-NLA discussion list participants Assessment and Accountability . . .18 A Modest Proposal
Heide Spruck Wrigley
Is There Room for Family Literacy in a Work-First Environment? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .35 Jamie Preston
The Need for Leadership among Adult Learners . . . . . . . . . . . . .37 Archie Willard
Literacy Harvest The Journal of the Literacy Assistance Center Spring 2001 Founded in 1983, the Literacy Assistance Center (LAC) is a not-for-profit organization that provides essential referral, training, information, and technical assistance services to hundreds of adult and youth literacy programs in New York. Our mission is to support and promote the expansion of quality literacy services in New York. Funding for the LAC is provided by the New York City Mayor’s Office of Adult Literacy, the New York State Education Department, and a wide range of philanthropic foundations, corporations, and individuals.
Literacy Assistance Center
Literacy Assistance Center 32 Broadway, 10th floor New York, NY 10004 www.lacnyc.org phone: (212) 803-3300 fax: (212) 785-3685
Executive Director Michael J. Hirschhorn Deputy Director Elyse Barbell Rudolph
Editorial Board Faigy Berkovich Agudath Israel of America Claire Harnan Literacy Assistance Center Elyse Barbell Rudolph Literacy Assistance Center Sheila Ryan Brooklyn Public Library Shirley Thomas Mayor's Office of Adult Literacy K.C. Williams Forest Hills Community House Editor Jan Gallagher Interior Design & Layout Alison Kaplan Cover Design Donald Peete
Director of External Relations Geoffrey M. Glick Director of Finance & Personnel Craig A. Tozzo
Publication of Literacy Harvest is supported by the New York City Mayor’s Office of Adult Literacy and the New York State Department of Education as part of the New York City Adult Literacy Initiative. For permission to reprint any portion of this journal, please contact Jan Gallagher, Director of Publications,
[email protected] or (212) 803-3332. © 2001 Literacy Assistance Center. All rights reserved.
Contributors Participants in the National Institute for Literacy—National Literacy Advocacy (NIFL-NLA) listserv include Bob Bickerton, Massachusetts State Director of Adult Education; Kathleen Bombach, El Paso Community College; George Demetrion, Literacy Volunteers of Greater Hartford; Gloria Gillette, NE ABLE Resource Center; Tom Sticht, consultant; and Regie Stites, SRI International. The list is moderated by David J. Rosen. Jamie Preston is Family Literacy Coordinator at the Philadelphia Mayor’s Commission on Literacy. From 1998 to 2000, she was the Philadelphia Field Coordinator of the Family Independence Initiative, a project of the National Center for Family Literacy. David J. Rosen is a member of the Massachusetts Coalition for Adult Education Public Policy Committee. He is the National Literacy Advocacy list moderator and director of the Adult Literacy Resource Institute in Boston. Joni Schwartz is director and developer of the Brooklyn Tabernacle Adult Education Ministry and a doctoral student in adult education at Rutgers University. Her reflections on adult education philosophy in management stem from her experience as program manager of Discipleship Educational Center in Brooklyn. Paul Wasserman is the director of the Adult Learning Center of Lehman College in the Bronx, part of the City University of New York (CUNY). His reflections on the Workforce Investment Act come out of a CUNY staff development effort last year. Archie Willard learned to read at the age of 54 after struggling with dyslexia. He founded VALUE, Voice for Adult Literacy United for Education, a national organization of adult learners, and now serves as VALUE’s chairman emeritus. Heide Spruck Wrigley, Ph.D., is a senior researcher with Aguirre International, where she specializes in issues related to language, literacy, and learning. Her interest in assessment stems from long years of working with immigrants and refugees whose true knowledge and skills are seldom captured on tests.
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In This Issue Jan Gallagher, Editor
Land a renewed commitment to encouragiteracy Harvest is back, with a new look
ing thoughtful reflection on critical issues among literacy professionals both in New York City and nationwide. The Literacy Assistance Center (LAC) is pleased to bring you this issue of Literacy Harvest, whose theme is Leadership in an Era of Change. Literacy professionals—particularly those who work in publicly funded programs—will not be surprised to learn that an issue of a professional journal that was originally slated to focus on the subject of leadership in general quickly began to focus on the changes in the field brought about by the Workforce Investment Act (WIA), which went into effect last year. Program managers, local policymakers, and others in positions of leadership have been asking themselves and each other, “How can we meet the new accountability requirements without diverting precious resources from our instructional programs? What can we do about what many see as a central philosophical difference between what adult educators perceive to be our mission and what legislators seem to expect of us? What does it mean to lead in the face of fundamental shifts in focus?” In the lead article, Joni Schwartz lays a philosophical foundation that can inform adult education leadership no matter what shifts in public policy may take place.
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Drawing on the authors who, many agree, lay the groundwork for adult educational philosophy—Dewey, Freire, and Lindemann—Schwartz suggests that adult educators who become managers must remain true to the principles of learner-centered, emancipatory education by involving all stakeholders—staff, learners, and others—in decision-making. Schwartz argues that such a participatory management model yields positive, measurable results such as improved staff and learner retention and better student outcomes. Ah, yes, outcomes. Perhaps no aspect of WIA has engendered more controversy and anxiety than the requirement that adult education programs be evaluated on the basis of their ability to demonstrate learner outcomes—and face the possibility of losing funding if they do not meet established goals. Several adult education leaders— including a state director, program managers, and educational consultants and researchers—participated in an extended discussion last year on the National Institute for Literacy’s National Literacy Advocacy listserv (NIFL-NLA). Partici-pants express a variety of viewpoints on WIA’s accountability requirements and what they mean for programs, wrestling with the roles they and others in positions of leadership must play in order to implement WIA requirements thoughtfully while simultaneously advocating for change, particularly in methods of assessing learner achievement.
Literacy Harvest
In This Issue
It seems that no one is happy with standardized tests as the primary measure of learner outcomes, but few adult educators have been able to commit themselves to finding alternatives that will meet funders’ requirements. Heide Spruck Wrigley offers “A Modest Proposal” that not only acknowledges the weaknesses of relying on standardized test scores but also outlines a process for replacing standardized tests with more authentic performance- and portfoliobased assessments. Such assessments, says Wrigley, not only more accurately reflect student progress but also can be standardized in order to allow comparisons among learners and among programs. Establishing and standardizing authentic assessments is only the beginning, argues Wrigley. Adult educators must work together on the local, state, and national levels to ensure that their work is embraced by policymakers. The next two articles focus, then, on broader issues of philosophy and policy. Paul Wasserman’s impassioned critique of WIA and its implementation in New York State and City starts by noting what he sees as “policy agendas to which [many adult educators] are deeply opposed politically and philosophically” —including not only reliance on standardized tests but also a heightened emphasis on workforce preparation and a standpoint that reduces education to yet another consumer commodity. Equally troubling, argues Wasserman, is the fact that new requirements do not come with additional resources to help programs implement the requirements.
David J. Rosen’s account of almost 20 years of public policy organizing on the part of Massachusetts adult educators. This effort has led to an increase of $35 million in state funds for adult literacy in five years. And what about the emphasis on workforce preparation? Must job preparation be the basis of every initiative of every adult education program? Or is there room for creative efforts in other areas as well? Jamie Preston’s description of how a National Center for Family Literacy initiative in Philadelphia helped learners get and hold a job shows that workforce preparation need not neglect learners’ other needs. Indeed, as Preston puts it, “success at work begins at home.” Finally, Archie Willard, founder of VALUE (Voice for Adult Literacy United for Education), reminds us that not all adult education leaders are education professionals. In an article originally written for International Literacy Day 2000, Willard calls on successful adult learners to “serve as role models” for potential adult learners and to push to be included in the literacy field’s discussions of important issues. I hope this issue of Literacy Harvest will provoke honest reflection and meaningful dialogue among adult education stakeholders. If you have feedback about this issue of Literacy Harvest, please write me at the LAC, 32 Broadway, 10th floor, New York, NY 10004 or at
[email protected].
Adult educators in New York and other states with similar concerns about WIA requirements and the resources that go with them may be encouraged—and inspired—by Spring 2001
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Learner-Centered Philosophy as a Paradigm for Administration How Our Pedagogy Can Inform Our Management Practices by Joni Schwartz
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their individual learning goals, their collective hen adult educators become managers, they learning in the classroom, and the larger organizahave—but often overlook—an opportunity tion or institution of which they are a part. to incorporate adult education philosophy into the management of the organizations and institutions of which they are a part. To help administrators Adult education philosophy draws from, adopt a management style that corresponds with among others, the work of Brazilian educator Paulo their educational philosophy, this article will define Freire and Americans Eduard C. Lindeman and a philosophy of adult education, outline the beneJohn Dewey. From Freire, we recognize that in fits this philosophy affords to management, and suggest ways for the field to Often adult educators who become managers begin to effect change. New York City revert to corporate/traditional management programs that have successfully transmodels instead of incorporating the adult formed their management structure education participatory/communal model. provide examples of how to put theory into practice. learner-centered education the curriculum originates from the needs and desires of the learners, Defining Adult Education with the teacher as co-learner. In his now-classic Philosophy Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Freire talks about power and transformation. Like many other adult educaAdult educators come from a variety of backtion theorists, Freire believes that true education grounds and bring a variety of core beliefs to their transforms an individual, giving that individual work. Many, however, espouse a philosophy of access to power. Whether that power is political, adult education variously known as learner-centered, organizational, or instructional, shared power is participatory, or emancipatory education, transformative essential in adult education. learning, and so on. Whatever it is called, the essence of adult education is the centrality of Eduard C. Lindeman, a less well-known but learner-driven instruction and the belief that learnnevertheless influential writer, social worker, and ers are partners in all aspects of their education. scholar, has provided an important perspective on Learners share in decision making with respect to 6
Literacy Harvest
Learner-Centered Philosophy
adult education. For Lindeman, education means learning from participation, experience, and reflection; experience is the adult learner’s textbook. John Dewey, in Democracy and Education and elsewhere, speaks of the communal nature of education. In community, power is shared, and individual transformation becomes possible. Dewey, Lindeman, and Freire contend that education should not be separated from life; rather, it should be integrated into life through community—both the classroom community and the larger community, including, for Dewey, our democracy. Although this summary has simplified the theories of Freire, Lindeman, and Dewey, it conveys the basic point that transformative learning happens in a learner-centered framework where all participants—teachers and students—share power as a community of learners. In an ideal learner-centered model, learners are involved in community and decision making in the following five areas: 1.
Governance. Learners serve on boards and committees that decide classroom and/or program policy.
2.
Curriculum and methodology. Learners and teachers collaborate to develop and publish curriculum.
3.
Administration. Learners are involved in public relations, recruitment, fundraising, and office work.
4.
Staff development. Learners participate in tutor training and evaluation, in the hiring of new teachers, and in staff development retreats and workshops.
5.
Assessment. Learners complete selfevaluations and participate in interdisciplinary evaluation groups that set goals and monitor progress toward those goals.
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An adult educator or adult education program that employs all five of these areas of learning would certainly be putting adult education philosophy into practice. In reality, most educators and programs incorporate some of these areas as they strive toward attaining all five.
Adult Education Philosophy Benefiting Management Management theorists have long written on the value of shared control, decision-making, and power, along with team learning, personal mastery, and creativity on the job. But often adult educators who become managers revert to corporate/traditional management models instead of incorporating the adult education participatory/communal model. Most programs are administered as traditional corporate hierarchies—while the teachers remain isolated in their classrooms, struggling to implement beliefs they know to be sound. There is a schism between what adult educators are trying to achieve in their practice and the way the larger institution or organization—be that the library, the board of education, or the local nonprofit—manages. The traditional corporate management style flies in the face of what adult educators know to be in the best interest of a learning community that promotes student learning. This schism undermines outcomes for learners, reduces staff productivity and retention, and reduces an organization’s ability to raise funds. When nonprofit social service organizations and public education institutions use adult education philosophy to inform management practice, they have an opportunity to mend the schism. Applying a participatory and emancipatory model of management, one that involves students and teachers in all five areas outlined above, has three major benefits for the organization or institution: ownership, empowerment, and community. 7
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Students and teachers who are involved in governance, curriculum development, administration, staff development, and assessment have a sense of ownership in the organization. Staff and learners participating in the governance of an organization through boards and committees with real decision-making power remain in the organization longer. Students and teachers who “own” an organization work longer hours and produce more, thus increasing student learning and staff productivity. Better retention and increased productivity are ultimately cost-effective for the organization. Students and teachers who are involved in the process of change feel a sense of empowerment, a term some may think “outdated.” Its use here is appropriate because power is key. Without power to change, organizations become antiquated. Relying on the decision making of a few, usually those at the top, often leads to decisions that are “out of touch” with the real needs, issues, and problems of learners and teachers. Giving students and teachers decision making power and access to those who make decisions is essential to keep an organization integrated with the life of the learning community and the larger community of which it is a part. Organizations that encourage shared decision-making create innovative approaches to programming and learning, thus attracting funders who are looking to support “cutting-edge” approaches to education. Adopting a management model informed by adult education philosophy creates community. For adult educators, life and learning take place in community; therefore the life of a healthy learning organization takes place in community. It is not difficult, when visiting organizations, to identify those that are defined by strong community as opposed to those that encourage little interpersonal connection among staff members. A healthy community within an organization attracts healthy, 8
smart, creative staff who are willing to take risks, try ideas, and grow professionally—once again enhancing productivity, retention, and outcomes, and with them the potential for funding.
Adult Education Management Effecting Change The field of adult education, although still in its formative stages as a profession, has a tremendous amount to offer to management theory as it applies to nonprofit and community—based adult education programs. With a full grasp of adult education philosophy and a firm resolve to apply that philosophy to their management practices, organizations and institutions can transform themselves into vital learner-centered communities. Two small local Brooklyn programs that have experimented with, and to some degree succeeded in, this transformation are the Open Book and Discipleship Educational Center. For years these programs have strived to involve students in all aspects of decision making, including hiring decisions, curriculum development, fundraising, and staff development. Students serve on boards and participate on advisory councils. In addition, these organizations have endeavored to empower staff as well as students through shared decision making. Both have succeeded in building strong community learning centers. I know something of this process firsthand, having been first a teacher and then manager of Discipleship Educational Center from 1985 to 1997, with additional senior management experience in the Center’s larger organization, Discipleship Outreach Ministries, Inc. (now Turning Point/Discipleship). At its height I managed approximately 25 staff, youth workers, and volunteers at the Educational Center.
Literacy Harvest
Learner-Centered Philosophy
At the Educational Center, located in the Sunset Park section of Brooklyn, I fostered learner-centered models in my classrooms. When I moved from classroom teaching to management, I made a conscious effort to take what worked in the classroom into my management practice. We began with the center’s philosophy. A staff and student community drafted a written philosophy, a six-month journey involving staff and student committees, teachers, counselors, and administration. It was a time of heated debate, resistance, compromise, and collaboration, because, as individuals, we were invested in the process. Once drafted, our philosophy set the stage for action. We set out to create new practices or expand existing ones in keeping with our philosophy. The student advisory council applied for and received a mini-grant to write a handbook, expanded its membership, and nominated students to the organization’s board of directors. Staff, students, and outside consultants taught staff development workshops. Student groups interviewed potential new employees. Decisions about a person’s role on the job were made based on the person’s skill, expertise, and interest rather than on the job description. Shared power was discussed and encouraged. My performance evaluation was done by my staff and volunteers as well as through my own reflection in my journal. Subsequently, the Discipleship Educational Center has experienced excellent staff retention, with many staff members making adult education their career choice. Student retention has been competitive with rates for larger adult education centers, averaging 65 to 75 percent over an academic year. In addition, the educational center is extremely cost effective, working, in some cases, with half the budget given to other facets within the same agency while serving two to three times Spring 2001
the number of clients. In terms of real outcomes, the center annually has 30 to 50 GED graduates. It has two alumni with master’s degrees and numerous alumni currently in college. In 1999, five Discipleship students received full four-year college scholarships. The process of change was slow and deliberate, sometimes meeting with resistance and misunderstanding. Reflecting back, I know it was right. Retention of staff was high, achievement by students was clear, a community of learners was built, and the center grew through increased funding and visibility. Later, when I became a senior manager in the larger parent organization, the difference between programs with a traditional management model and those that espouse a participatory model, as the Educational Center did, were evident. Principles of adult education can and should be applied to management through thoughtful, deliberate methods.
Theory into Practice Supposing that adult educators are ready to apply our philosophy to management practice, where do we begin? Change should begin with research that links philosophy and practices, examines the adaptation of adult education paradigms in management theory, and studies how organizations that integrate adult education philosophy in their administration operate. Researchers looking closely at the two Brooklyn programs mentioned above, or at other similar organizations, can ascertain how the change began and whether these organizations’ practices can be expanded to other programs. Researchers should compare various management styles in adult education programs in terms of learning outcomes. If this research validates that participatory management practices yield real outcomes in terms of staff/student retention, cost-
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effectiveness to organizations, and organizations’ response to community needs, this validation will aid fundraising efforts. Such research can be done as a part of practitioners’ doctoral dissertations or master’s research projects or as independent studies at universities. Teachers can undertake research projects with grants such as those offered by the Literacy Assistance Center and NYC Professional Development Consortium or, on a larger scale, using the Literacy Leader Fellowship Program from the National Institute for Literacy (NIFL). Another place to begin is for adult educators who move into management positions to hold fast to our convictions about learning, so that we seek to model management based on adult education philosophy. We can start by being well read in the fields of adult education theory and management theory. An understanding of the theory behind our practice enables us to articulate our philosophy to others in our organization. Next, as professionals in adult education and in management, we need to reflect on our organizations in light of our classroom philosophy and ask questions: How are staff and students involved in all areas of the organization? Who has the decisionmaking power, and what types of power? Where can decision making be shared? Recognizing that change often comes gradually, we can begin to implement management practices one at a time, moving us closer to our vision. For example, during the first year of transformation, a manager might work on integrating students into staff development retreats, or ask students to participate in curriculum development for the new computer lab, or invite staff to meet informally
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with the executive director and board for a brunch, or include staff in the hiring of a new coordinator. These are small steps toward shared participation and decision making, but they are a beginning. In addition, we must understand that, particularly at the management level, community is the core of adult education. And we should ask each other: Does the organization reflect the community it serves? Is there a sense of community on staff? Do the staff and students “own” the organization? Have we articulated our philosophy to the board? Do our funders understand that we have a wellthought-through philosophy? Finally, adult educators have to fight discouragement. Adult education is a profession in its own right; educators must not be discouraged by trends, policies, and decrees that sometimes seem counter to sound practice. Adult educators must continue to believe that they have much to offer the organizations and institutions to which they belong. Employing and modeling adult education philosophy in administration makes for sound management practice. Adult educators need to take the best of what they learned while managing classrooms and use it in the management of organizations.
References Dewey, J. (1916). Democracy and education. London: Macmillan. Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Seabury. Lindeman, E. (1961). The meaning of adult education. Montreal: Harvest House. (original edition 1926, New York: New Republic).
Literacy Harvest
The New Accountability Requirements Point-Counterpoint on NRS and WIA
by participants in the NIFL-NLA listserv
Editor’s note: Last year participants in the National Literacy Advocacy discussion list sponsored by the National Institute for Literacy (NIFL-NLA) conducted a sustained dialogue about the accountability requirements of the National Reporting System (NRS) under the federal Workforce Investment Act (WIA), which includes the adult basic education. This Internet-based electronic discussion group provides a forum for adult education professionals to air their opinions and seek consensus on issues of concern. The comments that follow, part of a much larger discussion accessible at www.nifl.gov/lincs/ discussions/nifl-nla/nla.html, were compiled by David J. Rosen, the list moderator, and by Steve Reuys, editor of All Write News, the newsletter of the Adult Literacy Resource Institute of Massachusetts. This compilation first appeared in the September/October 2000 issue of All Write News (Vol. 17, No. 1) and is reprinted by permission of All Write News and the NIFL-NLA participants.
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ob Bickerton, Massachusetts State Director of Adult Education I’d like to check in with some very basic questions:
to make judgments about what’s credible and reliable. But it seems to me it’s well worth the effort.
1. If WIA and the NRS are too narrow, shouldn’t we be pushing for a more complete vision of what our work is about at the state level? WIA provides states with the flexibility to do this. Then the NRS could simply become a sub-set of what’s looked at from the broader perspective of each state, i.e., nothing more than a report, unfortunately incomplete, but without the power to narrow the important breadth of our work.
3. If large cross-sections of students can articulate important aspects of what they want to know and be able to do, shouldn’t we be working across our field and in partnership with our students to capture this? And if these turn into a rich, but necessarily incomplete set of learning/content standards, shouldn’t we at least honor this achievement? Whether it’s EFF or other similar efforts to surface such skills and abilities sought after by students, shouldn’t we find a way to agree to make such “learning/content standards” a part of the foundation of our work (including articulating this foundation with valid and reliable assessment processes)–always acknowledging that this is a sub-set of this universe and that we all need to continue to listen/hear and respond with an even richer set of teaching and learning experiences? I’m concerned that so much energy continues to go into finding
2. If quantitative measures alone are inadequate to describe the work of our field and our students, shouldn’t we be working to find consensus across our field to articulate the qualitative dimensions? WIA provides states with the flexibility to do this. I imagine the most difficult part of this dialogue will be reaching consensus across diverse constituencies, particularly when it comes to who may be able Spring 2001
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NIFL-NLA listserv
fault with everyone else’s proposals that we’re not making as much progress as our students need and deserve from us—to make our work truly accountable to them! So my final question: 4. Are we afraid of any form of accountability with consequences, including to those we profess to serve? Regie Stites, Center for Education and Human Services at SRI International I think the questions that Bob posed (or are they suggestions?) point us in the right direction toward working out answers to concerns about standards, accountability, and assessment systems. What these questions/suggesAre we afraid of tions imply is any form of serious work on accountability with developing perforconsequences, mance assessments. including to those In an earlier post, we profess to George Demetrion serve? referred to the creation of “rubrics” as a (poorly defined) step toward making qualitative standards (like EFF–Equipped for the Future) count as primary quantitative measures for the NRS. Development of performance assessments (whether as guides for instruction or for accountability measures) does involve creation of rubrics—and much else. Rubrics are central because they are the mechanism for translating detailed qualitative descriptions of performance goals into quantitative measures of levels of performance. At this point, the qualitative/quantitative distinction begins to break down. To make this more concrete, a rubric is needed whenever we want to judge performance that is more complicated than a set of correct/ incorrect responses to test questions. Teachers and students commonly develop and use rubrics to evaluate the quality of writing, oral presentations, project work, etc. If
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tasks are well structured and the criteria for judging performance (rubrics) are clear to learner and teacher, then assessment gets folded seamlessly into instruction. This is what I mean by performance assessment, and I believe that it can be made to work for accountability (probably first at the state level as Bob suggests) as well as for instructional purposes. Kathleen Bombach, El Paso Community College I have several concerns. One is that something like NRS standards (really outcomes) have been tried before, under JTPA. The result was that the population was creamed in order to meet the mandated outcomes. The expensive apparatus and process that developed around meeting these outcomes grew immensely in order to weed out anyone who might not, because of skill levels, English speaking ability, race and ethnicity, gender, or personal/ motivational factors, succeed in earning a GED or getting a job. Less and less money actually flowed into direct instruction and services for the participants who made it through the maze. The other side of this creaming was that lowincome people who could have striven for more were diverted into the JTPA system because they could provide quick positive results. I remember a program we did under JTPA. A number of the participants decided they wanted to go to college and got through the acceptance process, only to be told by their agency counselor that they were not allowed—they had to go back for job placement or job training in one of the infamous 13-week programs. (In one national study, 13 weeks was the average amount of time for JTPA vocational training programs.)
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The New Accountability Requirements
Since I did JTPA between 1983 and 1995, I observed every trick in the book to make sure only “winners” were served. In the beginning I bought into it and particiWe have tried the pated unquestionoutcomes-based ingly. After a year, I approach before began to question and it failed to and try to make serve most of the changes to address people who tried to what I thought were enter the system it the real needs of spawned. poor people, having been one most of my life until that point. It didn’t work—the necessity to meet outcomes was too strong even when coworkers were sympathetic. If the person was not going to result in a success in a relatively short period of time, they were diverted into someone else’s program—often the adult literacy programs. Of course, no money for the learner went with the referral. The second concern I have gets at the difference between outcome measurements vs. accred-itation requirements. In an accreditation process, one looks at the inputs, the activities, and the outcomes. In a system where the only things that matter are the outcomes, any way you can get those outcomes becomes paramount, including not providing services but pretending that you did. We have tried the outcomes-based approach before and it failed to serve most of the people who tried to enter the system it spawned. Now we are stuck with it again because it is politically appealing and sounds so good! EFF is one way to keep the focus on the learner, not the outcome, and to look at multiple aspects of providing a quality program defined as meeting the needs of learners, not the state or the private sector. If we can unify behind an approach that may not be perfect to all, but has substance and some earned momentum, as well as Spring 2001
reflecting a lot of work over a period of years by a lot of knowledgeable people, we may have a longterm chance of changing the dynamic from one of feeding the machine with workers to a balance of home and family, citizenship, and work. And aesthetics, spirituality, and whatever else matters to individuals. If we cannot push a broader agenda because we cannot agree on the nature of our utopia, we will be stuck with recycling the same inadequate system under a different name for the next hundred years. However, we must continue our internal debates over the nature of perfection. Gloria Gillette, Director of the NE ABLE Resource Center, in Ohio The NRS has done three very important things for our state. It has forced us to analyze: Who do we serve? How we do we serve them? How do we measure our effectiveness? There has been a lot of flotsam and jetsam, but in the end I think it has been a very good process of self-reflection. And I think, in the end, we have developed a system that both embraces our goals and maintains the reality of the system in which we work, while respecting the integrity of the students we serve. Tom Sticht, researcher and consultant in literacy and adult basic education Recently Bob Bickerton addressed some questions to several NLA list participants, including me. Here are my responses to Bob’s questions and comments. Reply to Bob’s Question #1: It did not take WIA or the NRS to provide states with the flexibility of “pushing for a more complete vision of what our work is about at the state level.” States have always had that flexibility and presumably have operated by some sort of vision over the last thirty years. In realizing their various visions, different states have made different uses of different standardized tests. I understand that in New York, 13
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state-funded programs have had to use the TABE to measure growth in learning; in California, Oregon, Washington, Connecticut, and other states, visions have been put into practice using the CASAS tests to assess gains in learning; other states have included in the realization of their visions other standardized tests in measuring parts of their “visions.” So as I understand it, then, the only thing new now is that the NRS is systematizing the gathering of data using standardized reporting forms and extending the need to provide learning outcome data in some systematic way. Also, as I understand it, the NRS has the blessing of the Council of State Directors of Adult Education. It is, as you say, merely an accounting system for keeping track of outcomes. It in no way narrows all the other types of information of which states may wish to keep track. But I think that the idea that funding may somehow be tied to the outcome data is a new thing under the WIA. At the state directors level, that may not be a problem because the data are aggregated across local programs and the state is accountable only for the aggregated data. It is highly unlikely that any state personnel will lose their jobs because of failures to show learning outcomes in line with their approved five-year plans. But folks in a given local program may be a little bit nervous if they can’t meet state goals. Some have told me that they worry that their jobs may be on the line. Reply to Bob’s Question #2: States have always had the flexibility to articulate “qualitative dimensions” of the work of our field and our students. WIA does not prohibit such descriptions, either. It just does not include them in the core indicators of learning. Instead, the NRS discusses implementing the WIA requirements for data on learning outcomes by suggesting a number of standardized tests with standards for indicating
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achievement at each of the six levels of ABE and ESOL. The NRS also permits other sorts of standardized, quantitative indicators of learning such as performance assessments that indicate learning at each of the six levels of ABE or ESOL. Portfolios can be used, too, but there must be some way of providing scores ranging from at least one to six so that progress up through the six levels of learning can be indicated. This may be done using various scoring guides, that is, rubrics that permit the assignment of ranks to performance indicators. Whether or not most states will opt to use the more time-consuming methodology of performance/portfolio assessment over standardized tests is unknown by me. But at the present time, I think that most states have opted for traditional standardized tests. I have not found any that propose to use the TALS, the commercial version of the NALS, perhaps because it is too time consuming. (It uses performance tasks and handscoring of various responses using rubrics for scoring.) Apparently, ease of administration and scoring is a matter of some concern to programs. So maybe the search for qualitative dimensions (note that anything with dimensionality can be quantified!) may not be worth it to programs if they are too much trouble and too costly to use. Reply to Bob’s Question #3: From what I have heard over the years talking with many teachers and administrators, almost everyone thinks that their program and their teaching reflects what adults have said they want to know and be able to do over the years. In short, they seem to think they have been capturing what their adult learners have articulated as their learning needs and desires. But when some adult learner says he or she wants to be able to pass the driver license test, they don’t mean driver license tests in general, as some sort of general competency statement or “content standard” such as “convey ideas in writing” or “solve
Literacy Harvest
The New Accountability Requirements
problems and make decisions” or “completes application forms” but rather as the specific vocabulary use, reading, writing, spelling, problem solving, and decision making they have to do to pass the specific test they have to take in their state and locale to get their driver license. But the sorts of things they have to learn in the specific do not usually show up on the general assessment tools that are based on broader competency or learning content standards, such as the TABE, ABLE, AMES, NALS, TALS, CASAS, or any other standardized tests. Hence, though programs may strive continuously “to listen/hear and respond with an even richer set of teaching and learning experiences,” they do not always make much happen that shows up on the assessment devices that are used for accountability. In my experience, this appears to be what frustrates lots of teachers and learners about various attempts to create generally applicable content standards and the present stock of assessment tools. In going from the specific to the general, most of the actual learning seems to get stripped away. Reply to Bob’s Question #4: Most of the teachers and administrators I have spoken with are not afraid of accountability with consequences so long as the accountability is based upon what they think they can do and are doing as adult educators. They express some concern about being held accountable for things like job placement and income earnings, which they see as beyond their professional responsibilities. They express concern about the use of standardized tests like those included in the NRS guidance papers because they do not seem to relate much to what they are teaching and they think the tests do not accurately reflect what learning does take place in their programs (see above). Regarding those they serve, survey after survey has rewarded teachers and administrators with positive feedback statements
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from those they serve. If funding was based on the accountability reflected in the praise adult learners have for their teachers and programs, the Adult Education and Literacy System (AELS) in the United States would not be in the obscenely underfunded position it is presently in. George Demetrion, Director of Literacy Volunteers of Greater Hartford, in Connecticut This is an excellent and highly relevant discussion on standards. Thanks to Regie Stites for defining the term, “rubric.” I think I get that now. Whether it’s the GED writing test or EFF standards, various criteria are assigned a number Most of the teachers and administrators I (or, to use NRS have spoken with terminology, a are not afraid of level) that would accountability with allow a quantitaconsequences so tive measure. long as the accountRegie feels that ability is based they could be upon what they made to work at think they can do the state level for and are doing as accountability as well as instruction, adult educators. though Tom Sticht argues that most states in the current NRS requirements are opting for the easier-to-administer standardized tests. One wonders also, in light of the NRS mandate and time frame, how many states are willing and perhaps able to incorporate the more qualitative indicators of assessment that wellconstructed rubrics (depending on what they’re linked to) might begin to capture. As Regie points out, there’s much more than rubrics involved in establishing good assessment measures. And even the development of these within a state context that would involve more than the few “pilot” states that are attempting this now in response to the NRS would be a long way off, if ever. In the
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NIFL-NLA listserv
meantime, states have to respond to the pressing requirements of the NRS at this time, and most are going to rely on standardized tests. This brings us then to Bob Bickerton’s point on the freedom and flexibility allowed by the WIA. . . . [G]iven the complexity of the issue— creating relevant standards that capture significant aspects of what students achieve through participation in adult literacy/ESOL and GED classes, in ways that are meaningful and can be applied to instruction as well as used for reporting purposes— does the WIA legislation facilitate that process or retard it? In theory it could do both, yet as Tom points out, the practical impact is that in the vast majority of states, it is only going to reinforce the pervasive tendency already to rely on standardized tests as the “primary” measure, premised, obviously, on the quantitative metaphor. I recently purchased a book from Peppercorn Press that addresses the issue of assessment. (This is an excellent clearinghouse of student-generated and Freirian-inspired resources located at 693 Snow Camp, NC 27359, telephone (336) 574-1634. Give them a call if you’d like to obtain a catalogue.) The book, called Language and Communication, identifies the following principles for assessment: 1.
Assessment should reflect what has actually been taught.
2.
Assessment should serve instruction rather than drive it.
3.
Assessment should fit in with the approach to teaching and reflect its value system.
4.
Assessment should yield reliable and valid results.
5.
Assessment should give learners a sense of their own progress.
6.
Assessment should not be culturally or linguistically biased.
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7.
Assessment should allow for comparisons of learner progress within and between programs.
8.
Assessment should be integrated within instruction (formative) and be incorporated at the end of learning cycles (summative).
These are obviously big challenges, and no one’s saying development of assessment standards based on these principles is easy. My concern is, given the current climate based on the quantitative and reductionism mandates of the NRS/WIA, these principles aren’t even on the radar screen. They may be “nice,” but don’t count in the “real world” of policy, power, and funding. If there is a way As long as adult out of this morass, I literacy is viewed don’t know, but I’d as a subset of like to briefly sketch current social out a possible world. policy linked to First, any way out of the maintenance this morass would require at least a one- of the global economy, the year moratorium on the imminent imple- more narrow view of the field as mentation of the implied by the NRS. Very difficult, WIA/NRS will to be sure, since the prevail. NRS train has well left the station. But an imminent train wreck is on the horizons. I say, “Stop! Halt! Screech! Watch Out! Put on the Brakes!” There is simply no way, given current pressures and limitations of resources, that the current ABE system can step up to the plate, as both Bob and Regie are suggesting, to create the kind of complex, multi-dimension assessment system needed to come close to capturing the actual learning that is taking place in classrooms and tutoring sessions across this great land. While in principle the NRS allows for freedom and flexiLiteracy Harvest
The New Accountability Requirements
bility (that Tom says the states already had without the NRS), the reality is that it will only reinforce the current emphasis on quantification, standardization and a very limited legitimate view of adult literacy education. That is the reality. Is there another model? Here’s one that would need much amplification. At the end of each funding cycle the state office would have to issue a narrative report on the programs that are funded by federal money. The report would be based on the narratives that the programs provided that then would be summarized, synthesized, and analyzed by the state offices of adult education. This would be an ongoing progress report. A broad range of information would go into the report at both the local and state level and there would be no need of a “one size fits all” approach. May 1,000 flowers bloom. Obviously, certain criteria would be needed, though the plurality of the system in a given state would also be respected. (Why should a town-run ABE program be judged on the same criteria as a community-based literacy program?) This scenario would include quantitative information, but more as support (secondary measures) that would amplify or help explain the primary story told through narrative. In this scenario, sampling—rather than focusing on quantitative information on each student—would be more pervasive. Given the narrative focus, there would be an emphasis on development such as: a.
This is where we’ve been.
b.
This is what we attempted to achieve during this funding cycle.
c.
This is what we actually accomplished, including unanticipated breakthroughs and a whole host of projects and initiatives that flowed out of our work
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d.
These are the problems that we still have—some of which we have the capacity to improve on, some of which we don’t, given current resources.
e.
This is where we’d like to go for the next funding cycle.
This report could be developed by a representative team from both the field and the state office with consultative support from a research institute. The information would flow back to the programs as well as upward to the federal government and would be a format to stimulate discussion, analysis, and program development as well as “data” for national accounting. I could go on here, but you get the point. Improbable, you say. Perhaps so, given the current official mentality grounded in the assumptions of standardization, quantification, and “objectivity,” behind all of which is a quest for control— control of the system, of the information, and of the lives of the students to be channeled within certain realms of behavior—get a job, get off welfare, stay out of jail, vote, read to your kids. As long as adult literacy is viewed as a subset of current social policy linked to the maintenance of the global economy, the more narrow view of the field as implied by the WIA/NRS will prevail. A broader and humane view would move in a direction like the one I am suggesting or in some similar way that captures the qualitative dimensions of what our field is about. To assume that my suggestion is “subjective” as opposed to the “objectivity” provided by a quantitative, measurable, and standardized format that drives the assumptions of the NRS is to assume that numbers accurately depict reality rather than interpret it. I do not make that assumption.
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Assessment and Accountability A Modest Proposal
A
t times it seems that everything there is to say about testing and assessment in adult literacy has been said. By now, practitioners and administrators alike can cite the shortcomings of standardized tests using multiple-choice formats and are familiar with the inadequacy of grade levels as indicators of what adult learners know and are able to do.
by Heide Spruck Wrigley
Local approaches have remained just that, local approaches, primarily because there has not been enough field testing to establish the reliability of these measures and there have not been sufficient efforts to implement alternative assessments across programs. Even programs that have been enthusiastic about developing an assessment system that captures what they consider to be worthwhile outcomes are becoming distressed about the prospects of an alternative system being able to rival the standardized tests currently in fashion.
Yet paper-and-pencil multiple-choice tests continue to be used not only as placement instruments but as measures of learner gains and evidence of program success. Given current reporting requirements, their use is likely to It is entirely possible to design a framework increase, at least in the near future. that allows learners to demonstrate what they can say and understand in English From the perspective of programs, despite limited proficiency. there seem few viable alternatives that would meet the information needs of It is an unfortunate fact of adult literacy that funders interested in reliable data that indicate how programs that help those “hardest to serve”—for a program is doing overall. Portfolio approaches, example, learners who are both new to English for example—considered the last great hope a few and new to literacy—have the greatest difficulties years back—have not matured to the level where showing gains, not only because their learners need they might be used to report and aggregate learner a great deal of time until progress is evident, but gains by group (although they are invaluable as because the kind of progress they are making is not evidence of individual learner progress), largely easily captured by standardized multiple-choice, because the field has not invested in the developpaper-and-pencil tests. In addition, programs that ment of benchmarks and rubrics. Reprinted by permission from Adventures in Assessment Volume 11 (Winter 1998), SABES/World Education.
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serve these students—often community-based organizations—don’t have the resources to set up testing alternatives appropriate for a low-literacy population. There is a danger, then, that programs will decide to focus their efforts on those students who most easily advance, in a process known as “creaming.” ESOL programs, for example, might decide to focus the curriculum on immigrants with higher levels of education rather than serving ESOL literacy students.
Alternative Testing for LowLiterate Students What might an assessment that measures the incremental changes that occur at the initial levels of language and literacy development look like? It is entirely possible to design a framework that allows learners to demonstrate what they can say and understand in English despite limited proficiency. It is also possible to design a “can-do” literacy assessment, of the type first suggested by Lytle and Wolfe, based on the kinds of texts and tasks that those new to literacy deal with every day. Tasks could be designed that allow learners to select pieces of print that they can recognize fairly easily, as well as some items that give them some difficulty and others that pose a still greater challenge. For instance, the range of items for one learner might include a McDonald’s logo, sale signs, 50% off promotions, the learner’s own street address, and a letter from the INS or TANF office. After selecting these print pieces, learners read the items once together with the friendly teacher/facilitator/ assessor and then try a few text pieces that they have selected on their own. The assessor rates individual performance on a scale without making a big deal of it. On the third round, the assessor might select an item that is slightly more difficult than the previous one, Spring 2001
again encouraging the person to discuss If we want the quality of adult the item and interpret what it says. literacy to Through assessments increase, we need of this sort, we an approach that should be able to measures to what tell to what extent extent learners learners can handle a variety of literacy are acquiring the tasks at varying knowledge, skills, levels of confidence and strategies and proficiency. We that matter in the would see evidence long run. of skills worth having, such as telling an electricity bill from a phone bill or a notice from the INS from a notice from school. This technique—asking learners to select tasks that they can do with confidence as a starting point for assessment and moving up from there—is not limited to the domains of practical literacy. For those interested in the subtasks of reading, one-onone student-initiated assessment can show to what extent learners have developed the phonemic awareness that allows them to select familiar words that start with the same consonant or to identify words that rhyme. Those interested in basic writing proficiency can ask learners to select an evocative photograph or some other prompt, discuss it with the facilitator, and then write the response.
Building an Assessment Framework That Yields Worthwhile Results Developing an assessment that captures gains at the lower levels is only the starting point in a larger effort to build a system that works. Other efforts are needed at both the local and the state levels so that we don’t end up with an accountability system driven by what current stan19
Wrigley
DEVELOPING
A
WRITING RUBRIC
AT THE
BROOKLYN PUBLIC LIBRARY
I
n the course of a three-hour workshop facilitated by Jane McKillop of City College in 1998, the literacy staff of the Brooklyn Public Library (BPL) Literacy Program defined a rubric for scoring learners’ writing samples. The rubric defines five levels, with descriptors for each level, so that literacy instructors can report student progress in a way that both instructors and funders can understand. BPL literacy staff brought to the workshop writing samples representing the full continuum of writing skills among BPL learners. McKillop broke the staff members into working groups and instructed them to begin by defining characteristics of writing at either end of the four-level scale she proposed. Thus the groups first defined what constitutes a “1” and a “4” writing sample, attaching the samples they had brought as examples. The small groups reported back to the whole group, which then discussed and reached agreement on the characteristics of writing at the ends of the scale. Having defined the ends, the groups tackled the middle levels using the same process. They decided, based on the writing samples, that there were three, not two, levels in the middle of the scale, so that they ended up with a five-level scale of writing skill: 1. New writer 2. Emerging writer 3. Developing writer 4. Fluent writer (since amended to “Confident/Fluent”) 5. Independent writer Each of the five levels on the scale has 9–11 defining characteristics. Below are portions of the descriptors for the first two levels, as they have been refined since the 1998 workshop: EMERGING
WRITER
NEW
WRITER
♦ Can write name and address
♦ Can write or copy own name
♦ Can write simple sentences
♦ Can write or copy part or all of own address
♦ Uses invented spelling ♦ Knows letters can be written in upper- and lowercase
♦ Can write or copy simple words ♦ May invent spelling ♦ Does not distinguish upper- and lowercase letters
After the rubric had been in use for several months, the literacy staff met to discuss what did and didn’t work, making modifications that included revisions to descriptors and the change in name noted above for level 4. A rubric is valuable for both instructional and reporting purposes. When a teacher describes a learner’s writing skill as a “4,” another teacher knows what she means and how to begin instruction with that learner. An instructor can report, “James has moved from being a 1 writer to being a 3 writer because his writing now shows the following characteristics.” The program as a whole can report progress that funders can understand. By scoring a baseline writing sample at the beginning of the semester and a second sample at the end of the semester, the program can show how many learners progressed and by how much. At this writing, BPL is in the process of developing a reading rubric to be piloted in the early summer of 2001.
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Assessment and Accountability
dardized tests are able to measure. If we want the quality of adult literacy to increase, we need an approach that measures to what extent learners are acquiring the knowledge, skills, and strategies that matter in the long run: how well they are gaining meaning from various print sources important to their lives, communicating their thoughts and ideas, learning how to learn, using resources effectively, and learning with and from others—along with the sub-skills that help learners become increasingly more proficient in these areas. At the local level, a three-pronged approach might be necessary. Literacy practitioners will need to: 1.
Find a way to live with the currently available standardized tests, keeping in mind the principle of “first, do no harm.”
2.
Convince the state that the data a program has provided over the years are at least as valid and reliable as standardized tests such as the TABE, and that the process should therefore continue.
3.
Work with others to develop an assessment system that reflects the realities of adult learners’ lives and focuses on what participating programs have deemed to be the core sets of knowledge, skills, and strategies.
Components of an Alternative Assessment System What might be the components of such a system? To start with, any program concerned about serving different groups of learners equally well needs to collect demographic information in order to capture the learner characteristics and experiences that affect school success. In order to see which learners are being served and which are not, we need to know:
Spring 2001
♦
What learners want and need to do with English and literacy, given their current circumstances and their goals for the future
♦
How much schooling they have had and how successful they were
♦
What print and communication challenges they face in their everyday lives
This descriptive information allows us to see which learners are succeeding in our programs and which are languishing (or leaving) because their needs are not being met. The information can be collected in profiles that travel with the student and to which teachers and learners contribute on an ongoing basis. In addition to background variables such as age, employment status, years of schooling, country of origin, and languages spoken, these profiles can: ♦
Capture current literacy practices: who is now speaking to the doctor without a translator, who has started to pick up a newspaper to check the weather
♦
Chart shifts in learner goals
♦
Record changes in life circumstances that are important to stakeholders, such as a new job, citizenship, or economic self-sufficiency
In such profiles—also known as “running records”—progress can be captured as it occurs, requiring a teacher to write only a line or two at a time for two or three students per class. Profiles have the added advantage of encouraging teachers to create opportunities for learners to discuss what is happening in their lives as the teacher observes. Such profiles can be connected with portfolios that demonstrate student progress through writing samples, reading inventories, and performance tasks. If a standardized test is used, results can be included in the profile as well, helping to flesh out the general picture of achievements and struggles.
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Wrigley
From Learner Success to Accountability While an approach that combines rich profiles and individual portfolios will produce important information on individual students and provide insights into the relative success of certain learner groups, such an approach does not, in and of itself, yield the kind of data needed for accountability. After all, we cannot ship boxes of profile folders to funders to have them realize what a great job we are doing. To make profiles work for funders, a further step is needed, one that yields data in aggregate form so that policymakers can get a picture of the shape and size of the forest, not just a close-up of the trees. If a program wants to create an assessment that works double duty as the basis for both program improvement and accountability, it must develop scales, rubrics, and benchmarks that indicate the expectations for any given level and show to what degree learners are acquiring the knowledge, skills, and strategies that are a core part of the curriculum. Rubrics indicate both what the expectations are for any given area—such as face-to-face communication, dealing with print, accessing resources, and so on—and what constitutes evidence of success. The scales that accompany the rubrics allow programs to document where learners fall on a continuum of proficiency, showing what they can do with relative ease, where they succeed with some help, and where they are struggling. Since rubrics and scales can be designed for different skill domains—SCANS skills, communication strategies, navigating systems, civic involvement, learning how to learn, empowerment, and so on—and for various contexts—school, family, community—they can easily be matched to the goals of learners and adapted to the focus of a
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particular program. They also allow students to control task selection as discussed above. Once rubrics If a program wants and scales are in to create an place, meeting assessment that accountability works double duty requirements that call for aggregate as the basis for data becomes relaboth program tively easy. Since improvement and the descriptors on a accountability, it scale can be nummust develop bered—say, from 1 scales, rubrics, for “struggles” to 6 for “no problem”— and benchmarks that indicate the assessment results can be compiled, expectations for summarized, anaany given level and lyzed, and reported show to what out. If matched degree learners with demographic are acquiring the profiles, these knowledge, skills, results allow a and strategies that program to see are a core part of which groups of learners are being the curriculum. well served and where the program must change in order to serve other groups better.
The Pros and Cons of Alternative Assessment The beauty is that this approach functions as standardized tests do: learners are assessed on a variety of skills under standard conditions with common instruments on similar tasks, even as they are given choices in task selection and afforded multiple opportunities to shine. However, unlike the standardized tests currently available, profile assessments do not rely on multiple-choice, paper-
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Assessment and Accountability
and-pencil items. Rather, they give learners the opportunity to demonstrate what they can do with language and literacy through more openended assignments. Furthermore, profile approaches to assessment can be adapted for specific learner groups and modified to match the focus of a particular program, be it workplace education, family literacy, citizenship, or whatever. Most importantly, perhaps, profiles provide rich information that makes sense to teachers and learners—information that is useful to programs, not just to funders. Why then, are we not seeing more of this kind of assessment? While they are both worthwhile and valid, such assessments carry a significant burden: they require a consensus both on what is worth teaching and learning and on what evidence of success looks like for any given skill domain. To be successful, profiles and portfolios have to be integrated into the curriculum. Either ongoing assessment must be part of day-to-day teaching, or time must be set aside at intake to establish a baseline and toward the end of a teaching cycle to document progress. If that means the end of open-entry/open-exit as we know it and forces us into shorter instructional cycles that have a clear teaching/learning focus, so be it. To give such a framework a chance, a significant amount of teacher orientation, training, and buy-in will be needed. Not many adult literacy programs have the commitment, energy, and resources to embark on that endeavor. However, given sufficient advocacy from local programs—along with a modicum of political will on the part of state directors and other funders—teams, working groups, and consortia could be set up to develop assessment frameworks that are based on, or at least include, profiles.
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Where We Go from Here What then is the bottom line, given the current climate of accountability for accountability’s sake? We have two options: we can decide that cynicism is the only sane response to the current requirements, live with standardized tests as best as we can, and try to lay low, figuring “this too shall pass”; or we can commit ourselves to fighting for a saner system for our own sake and that of our students. On the local level, we must be prepared to work with others to decide on the focus of our programs and to map out core sets of knowledge, skills, and strategies. At the federal level, we must push for an accountability system that is driven not by what the current standardized tests are able to assess, but by outcomes that reflect what sound adult literacy programs should be all about. Furthermore, if we are asked to be accountable for outcomes and impacts, we must be given the resources to document success in meaningful ways. Finally, while we may need to play the accountability game for the time being, we can work toward building a system that measures effectiveness where it counts—a system that shows adult learners acquiring the kinds of knowledge, skills, and strategies that are important to them now and that matter in the long run. If we give up too soon, we will only marginalize adult literacy further.
Reference Lytle, S. L., & Wolfe, M. (1989). Adult literacy education: Program evaluation and learner assessment. Information series no. 338. Columbus OH: Center on Education and Training for Employment. (ERIC Database #ED315665)
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What’s It All About? Reflections on the Workforce Investment Act and Its Implementation in New York State and City by Paul Wasserman
Author’s note: The following is an abridged and updated version of a piece that originally appeared in a manual published by adult education staff developers from the CUNY (City University of New York) Office of Academic Affairs in September 2000. The manual compiled recommendations for intake and assessment procedures developed by adult educators from throughout CUNY during a series of summer workshops. These workshops provided a context for teachers and program managers to explore common approaches for implementing the requirements of the Workforce Investment Act (WIA) and the National Reporting System (NRS), federal undertakings seeking to restructure and systematize key aspects of the work of adult education programs.
T
resources, but for months it appeared that programs he 2000-2001 school year has been a trying would receive no additional funding. Ultimately, one for those of us in leadership positions in most programs did receive modest increases, but not adult education programs in New York City. The nearly enough to implement the new requirements. state and city agencies that fund our programs have Furthermore, funding decisions were not made until handed down an array of new procedures, structures, the middle of September, when most programs’ and requirements for intake, assessment, level intake and initial assessment processes were already placement, goal setting and impact follow-up. underway. Meanwhile, central data systems, strugThe details of these new requirements were spelled gling with unclear guidelines and complicated new out in a plan developed by the New York State requirements, were slow to adapt their structures to Education Department in response to federal manWIA and NRS frameworks. dates included in the Workforce Investment Act (WIA) and the National Reporting System Adult education program managers have (NRS). Because decisions about future funding will be made in part on the basis of been under pressure to adjust program how well our programs meet a variety of perstructures and procedures to enable us to formance targets under the new guidelines, deliver impressive statistics. adult education program managers have been under pressure to adjust program structures Fortunately, state and city literacy officials and and procedures to enable us to deliver impressive staff from the Literacy Assistance Center, which statistics in various WIA/NRS categories. manages New York City’s central adult education This adjustment has been complicated by a number of factors. Many of the guidelines in the state plan are vague or confused; some seem contradictory or unrealistic. Implementing the new mandates requires significant extra staff time and
24
data system, have been open to ongoing dialogue with practitioners. After several meetings, some areas of confusion have been clarified and some unrealistic expectations have been altered. Still, more than halfway through the school year, a number of key issues remain unresolved and data system problems continue. Feelings of frustration Literacy Harvest
What’s It All About?
and resentment have been widespread among program administrators—accompanied, for many of us, by an underlying concern that the new requirements reflect policy agendas to which we are deeply opposed. As a program manager, I have been grappling all year with the challenges presented by the need to implement WIA requirements. In the process, I’ve worked closely with colleagues at my home base in the Lehman College Adult Learning Center, with fellow program managers and staff developers in the City University of New York (CUNY) adult education community, and with practitioners from community-based programs throughout New York City. Together, we’ve tried to devise strategies for complying with WIA and NRS requirements that make sense for our programs, meet the needs of our students, and correspond with the visions and values that underlie our work as educators. For me, this effort has included maintaining a critical stance toward the larger frameworks that are generating the changes coming our way and speaking out against aspects of WIA and its implementation that seem problematic. What follows is an overview of some key WIA-related issues. While the opinions expressed are my own, they grow out of extensive discussions with many colleagues, and express, I believe, concerns that are widespread among adult educators.
Fuzzy Benchmarks I feel strongly that the whole endeavor at the heart of the WIA/NRS system to evaluate programs based on their ability to reach percentage targets for key “indicators of program effectiveness” is fraught with pitfalls. For one thing, many of the percentage benchmarks seem quite arbitrary. I am also concerned about the population base against which percentage targets will be calculated. Since students enter programs at various points during Spring 2001
the school year, to expect the same levels of gain or job placement for students with only a few months in a program as for students who have been in classes for an entire year seems neither fair nor logical. On the other end of the scale, WIA and NRS indicators provide no way of measuring student progress over the course of two or more years. Given the educational deficits with which many students enter adult Is our goal to education programs, move students it is unrealistic to through our proexpect them to show significant gain after grams as quickly only 100 or 200 as possible? Or is hours in classes, the our goal to work only time frames in with students for which the new guideas long as it lines—as well as previous ones—allow takes to help them grow and us to measure educational gain. WIA and attain their goals NRS procedures as learners? provide no mechanism for measuring the profound growth we often see in students over the span of two or more years. Yet the ability to retain a significant number of students and help them progress over a period of several years is perhaps the most significant indication of program effectiveness. The entire structure of relying on one-year-only percentage targets raises a fundamental question: Is our goal to move students through our programs as quickly as possible—to zip them through a few classes, record their data, and send them off into the workforce? Or is our goal to work with students for as long as it takes to help them grow and attain their goals as learners? The question brings up fundamental philosophical issues about the purposes of our work as adult educators.
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Wasserman
Philosophical Issues Vibrations from the political frameworks shaping educational policy at all levels of government pulsate throughout the state and federal WIA and NRS documents. The documents reflect the themes that have shaped the dominant dialogues among policymakers in the 1990s: an emphasis on work preparation as the primary purpose of education, a reliance on high-stakes standardized testing as the primary measure of student ability and program effectiveness, a desire to apply the values and logic of the marketplace to the world of education. Certainly, some of the language in New York State’s Workforce Investment documents pulls in other directions: a continuing emphasis on educational goals, an acknowledgement of the need for non-standardized assessment tools, a stated commitment to providing education for those most in need. One can almost feel the tensions at work in the larger political arena playing themselves out here in the adult education world, as those assigned to write the New York State guidelines seek to preserve some of the traditional language and values framing past dialogues in the adult education field while striving to implement the new agendas of the policymakers. This tension also leads to varying interpretations of the ultimate significance of the new systems adult education programs are being asked to work under. For some, WIA/NRS structures mainly involve changes in language, not in substance. Programs, according to this interpretation, may have to tinker with intake procedures and data systems, but the nature of our work won’t be affected. But for others, there is great concern about the future of adult education. From this view, the thrust of adult education policy and funding decisions in recent years seems to indicate a lack of commitment on the part of policy makers 26
to support meaningful and effective educational programs for low-income adults.
Work Preparation “We are educators, not job developers.” This sentiment, voiced frequently by many in the adult education field, expresses a widespread concern that funders and policymakers are seeking to shift the focus of our work. The change from the Adult Education Act (AEA)—the original federal legislation providing funding for adult education programs—to the Our hopes for Workforce Investment Act—into which AEA the kinds of has essentially been working lives folded—seems intended adult students to signal such a shift in can build differs focus and emphasis. greatly from the The majority of notions of the Congress seems to policymakers. feel that education in and of itself is not a significant enough undertaking to warrant even a minimal commitment of funds unless it can be justified as contributing to the process of preparing people for work. Adult educators have already felt the impact of this attitude in the context of welfare reform legislation and the subsequent removal of most students on public assistance from adult education programs. Placement in workfare assignments and low-wage jobs with no future was deemed more important for low-income students than allowing them to continue their education. Certainly, helping adult students better prepare for meaningful and rewarding working lives is one of the central goals of our programs, and getting a good job is a prime motivating factor for most of our students. But many of us have a different understanding of how the educational process can serve this goal than do the workforce Literacy Harvest
What’s It All About?
investment planners, and our hopes for the kinds of working lives adult students can build differs greatly from the notions of the policymakers. I for one am not interested in helping provide a stream of bodies for low-wage, oppressive labor. I don’t believe that the existence of high levels of unemployment and the need for public assistance in poor communities is a problem caused primarily by the inadequacies of the people in those communities. The fact that unemployment rates dropped significantly during the recent economic “boom” indicates to me that unemployment results from structural realities in the economy, not from laziness or lack of skills on the part of the unemployed. Behind all the talk of “jobs first” and “workforce investment” lies a fundamental avoidance of responsibility on the part of policymakers—a responsibility to do something about the larger structural realities that generate poverty and unemployment. One of the greatest sources of my uneasiness with the Workforce Investment project is that it seems to be part of a broader undertaking to shift responsibility for dealing with deeply rooted social inequalities onto the shoulders of poor people, poor communities, and the educational programs that serve them.
High-Stakes Testing The reliance on standardized tests as the primary measure of student progress and program effectiveness in WIA guidelines is also part of a larger national trend. Linked to a determination to “raise standards” and hold educational institutions “accountable,” the growing emphasis on standardized testing is having a profound impact on education at all levels. From elementary school through college, standardized tests are reshaping the educational experience of virtually all students and teachers in New York and narrowing the opportuSpring 2001
nities available to educationally disadvantaged students. The heightened emphasis of standardized tests in WIA and NRS guidelines seems to be an attempt to bring the adult education world more fully aboard the standardized testing bandwagon. For sure, we need to maintain high standards for adult education students and programs, and we need to hold programs accountable for delivering quality education to students. But using standardized tests as the primary measures of student achievement and program effectiveness is not the way to do that. Thoughtfully constructed and utilized standardized tests certainly have an important role to play in the educational process, but they become detrimental to quality education and effective teaching when they are given too much weight and used as a major determinant of funding, matriculation, and admission. Over-reliance on standardized testing results in de-emphasizing and marginalizing other assessment tools. It pushes classroom instruction more and more in the direction of test preparation, narrowing the space for innovative and creative approaches to teaching and curriculum development. Even the best standardized assessment instruments capture only a narrow range of student abilities and progress. They penalize students whose strengths and accomplishments are not centered on the specific literacy skills and cognitive processes the tests measure. In spite of all the concern about low test scores, there is a continuing reluctance of political systems at all levels to provide the resources necessary for true educational reform or to address the deep inequities in education funding. In this context, the rush toward high-stakes testing appears to be another instance of policymakers avoiding responsibility for social inequality and seeking, instead, to blame the victims and those who directly serve them for the failures of schools 27
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to provide quality education for students and communities most in need. Within this broader context, the heightened emphasis on standardized testing in WIA and NRS guidelines is particularly troubling. While there is mention of the importance of other assessment tools, only student progress measured by standardized instruments is used to evaluate program effectiveness. Particularly troubling are the inadequacies and inappropriateness of the standardized instruments we are required to use. The NYSPlace test required for use with ESOL students in New York State, though useful as a The rush vehicle for initial placetoward highment, is inappropriate as the only standardized stakes testing assessment of students’ appears to be abilities and progress. For another one thing, it measures instance of students’ speaking and policymakers listening abilities only, avoiding with no assessment of responsibility reading or writing. For for social another, it loses whatever usefulness it has as an inequality. assessment tool when administered over and over again, the same pictures, the same questions, the same scoring protocol. Adult educators have long questioned the adequacy of the Test of Adult Basic Education (TABE), New York State’s required assessment for basic education students. Especially troubling has been the requirement this year that beginning readers, who previously were not measured by standardized tests, be pre- and post-tested with the TABE or some other standardized instrument. At the other end of the BE spectrum, there is word that the policymakers want to replace the GED practice test (the most appropriate and helpful of
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all the standardized instruments we use) with the TABE as the vehicle for assessing GED students and measuring their progress. In all areas—ESOL, BE and GED—decisions about assessment seem to be driven by the need of data systems for simplicity and standardization rather than by any concern about what is helpful to students and teachers. To me, when it comes to assessment, policymakers appear to be putting data collection in the driver’s seat and undermining sound educational practice in the process.
The Language of the Marketplace New York State’s WIA guidelines show evidence of an attempt to bring the logic and language of the business world into the realm of education. Students are increasingly referred to as “clients” and “customers,” programs are to be measured in terms of “customer satisfaction.” While subtle, this language is further evidence of how the larger political climate leaves its imprint on adult education policy. The push for vouchers, the growing drumbeat for privatization of various aspects of the educational system, the demand that educational institutions address the needs of the business community—these are all manifestations of a trend to open up more and more human endeavors to profit making and profit seekers. Many educators—myself included—would, by contrast, insist that we are involved in an intensely human undertaking, centered on the relationship between teacher and student and among students, all working together in the classroom as a community of learners and seekers and creators of knowledge. Those of us who hold that view must reject the growing intrusion of the values and needs of the marketplace into the sphere of education as a further expansion of the commodification of human relations into aspects of life previously protected from it. Literacy Harvest
What’s It All About?
Lack of Resources and Support Perhaps the area of greatest concern for me and many of my colleagues has to do with the mismatch between the work we are being asked to do in implementing the WIA guidelines and the resources provided by the New York State and City agencies that fund us. Adult education programs have always been woefully underfunded. I am perpetually embarrassed by the low salaries of teachers and office staff in my program and by the fact that most teachers work part time and without benefits. Clearly, adult education programs and students are not high on the list of priorities of those who make decisions about educational policy and funding. Even though the language in adult education legislation and requests for proposals always includes a commitment to creating stable, full-time jobs in our field, the funding is never provided.
Unfunded Mandates Implementing the requirements of WIA and NRS—at least, doing so seriously and thoughtfully—requires a significant increase in staff time and program infrastructure. More extensive and intensive testing requires devoting more time to administering and scoring tests. Reconfigured intake processes, with the added dimension of individualized goal setting with every student, require more time on the part of teachers, counselors, and office staff. The follow-up work needed to meet WIA requirements to track students’ work, college, and training experience is particularly labor-intensive. Tracking the new categories of data we are required to report has become more complex and often involves revamping existing filing and data systems. Planning time to implement the guidelines and monitor the effectiveness of new systems adds to administrative workloads. Spring 2001
If adult education policymakers and the state and city agencies that implement the new policies are serious about seeing programs carry out WIA mandates, they will naturally provide additional funding for programs to do the necessary work. In spite of record surpluses, however, neither state nor city budgets provided any increase in adult education funding for FY2001. There was a modest increase in federal adult education dollars awarded to states, but only a portion of that was passed on to adult education programs in New York. In short, adult education programs have been given a series of unfunded mandates. We are being asked to carry out a Playing [the complex set of new responsibilities, explained data manipulain guidelines that are tion] game unclear and often unwork- helps validate able, with the knowledge directions in that our future funding education may depend on how well policy to which we implement those we are deeply guidelines—and we are not being given adequate opposed. funding to facilitate this work.
Mutual Accountability Further complicating our work has been an ongoing string of delays and systems problems on the part of the state and city agencies overseeing our work, as well as difficulties in adapting New York City’s centralized data system to the new and often changing data requirements. Confusion on the part of those overseeing WIA implementation, ongoing problems with the central data system, continuing delays in funding decisions and in delivery of funds, along with the overall inadequacy of our funding, put those of us who administer adult education programs in a difficult situation. 29
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While we have been working hard to implement WIA guidelines effectively, our funding agencies do not seem to have a reciprocal sense of seriousness. They are putting in place detailed systems to hold adult education programs accountable for our performance as measured by their indicators, yet we do not seem to have any way to hold them accountable for the untenable situation in which they have put us. Accountability ought to be a two-way street.
Playing the Game? There is a body of opinion among adult educators that the situation we are in is manageable. The consequences for programs of all the changes mandated by WIA may not be all that great. If we just, on paper, give the overseeing agencies some of the data they want to see, funding will continue more or less as it always has. If our overseeing agencies are just going through the motions of making major changes in the adult education world, we should just go through the motions too. Among adult educators one hears, more and more openly, talk of strategies for how to get the data to look right. If we cultivate the art of playing with numbers, everything will be all right. That manipulation is
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the direction in which we feel ourselves pushed. And, face it, that is the way the world works. But there’s a problem here. All too often, that is the way the world works. Dishonest dialogues abound, in the education world as elsewhere. But if we are serious about reforming education, if we really are committed to examining our work carefully and making changes that will allow us to serve our students better, then we need honest, open dialogue, including real data about significant aspects of our work. Perhaps implementing WIA just means going through the motions. Perhaps programs will not suffer great consequences if we just “get the data right.” But playing that game helps validate directions in education policy to which we are deeply opposed. Our programs may survive, but the language of “workforce investment,” of “jobs first,” of standardized testing über alles will hold sway. Only by articulating firm humanistic perspectives on crucial issues and by demanding adequate resources and clear, realistic guidelines from our funders can we ensure that the adult education field will continue as a community dedicated to—and capable of—providing thoughtful, meaningful, and supportive education for our students.
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Adult Literacy Public Policy Organizing in Massachusetts A Participant’s Reflections by David J. Rosen
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Coalition for Adult Literacy. Originally run by n the early 1980s, a small group of adult learnvolunteers, the coalition soon won a grant from the ing and out-of-school youth program practitionGannett Foundation, which was then providing ers created an informal urban coalition known as support to new state literacy organizations in the Boston Network for Alternative and Adult Education. Many of us worked in underThe ambitious group that showed up decided funded community-based organizations. Some had a commitment to social that instead of a literacy day, we needed an change. We all felt isolated. adult literacy organization. We met regularly and spent time learning about each others’ organizations and about each other. We organized professional development sessions for ourselves. We worked on persistent problems in the field such as our lack of knowledge about what other programs were doing, our need for more training, inadequate funding, and low wages for teachers. This was one of the first attempts by Massachusetts practitioners to make some changes in the field.
We Got Better Organized In the mid-1980s, three Boston-area practitioners called a meeting to organize a Literacy Day to bring public attention to adult literacy issues. The ambitious group that showed up decided that instead of a literacy day, we needed an adult literacy organization. Thus was born, in 1987, the Massachusetts
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several places across the country. The coalition’s board hired two paid staff: a director and a fulltime state literacy hotline coordinator. The board also firmly established its volunteer public policy committee, whose job was to inform legislators about the issues and to begin to organize the field. This initial literacy coalition had three goals: ♦
To increase public awareness of adult literacy in Massachusetts
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To facilitate the coordination of information on available literacy, ABE, and ESOL services through the statewide hotline and publications
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To seek increased state resources for literacy, ABE, and ESOL programs
We accomplished this work through several committees. One of these, the Legislative 31
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Committee, later known as the Public Policy Committee, sponsored legislative briefing days. It also created a telephone tree through which we could reach programs quickly with critical information on public policy activities.
with students or send students, volunteers, and others to visit legislators’ offices to talk about adult literacy needs and present services ♦
Hold legislative briefings
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Inform adult literacy programs about opportunities to testify at state and regional adult education hearings
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Have sponsored postcard campaigns through which students who are put on long waiting lists for adult education services have informed their representatives about the need for more services (see page 35)
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Have collaborated with other Massachusetts organizations, such as the adult education committee that advises the Board of Education and the state ABE Directors’ Council, to develop new adult literacy public policy
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Led a successful effort to include adult basic education in the Massachusetts Educational Reform Act—the first time ABE was included in statutory language
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Sponsored statewide “Tax Teach-ins” to help students understand state tax policy and where their tax dollars go.
There Have Been Hard Times In 1989, when the Gannett grant ended, the coalition’s board continued to carry on much of the organization’s work through volunteer efforts. The Public Policy Committee persevered even without staff assistance. The statewide hotline service also survived, sponsored by another state-funded organization.
A Merger Made Two Weak Organizations into a Single Strong One In 1991, the original coalition merged with the Massachusetts Association for Adult and Continuing Education to form a new, stronger organization, the Massachusetts Coalition for Adult Education (MCAE). This new coalition has received funding from the state Department of Education to support its professional development activities, funding that has strengthened and stabilized the coalition’s efforts. MCAE also has revenue from memberships and from a successful statewide annual conference. With these funds, the coalition has been able to support a director and a staff assistant. MCAE’s well-organized Public Policy Committee, still composed of volunteers, has continued and expanded many of the efforts of the earlier organizations. For example, we: ♦
Hold regular monthly meetings
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Spearhead an annual legislator “meet and greet” campaign, in which adult literacy programs either invite legislators to visit
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Fast, Effective Communication Requires Planning in Advance Massachusetts has over 400 adult literacy, ABE, and ESOL programs. They are sponsored by community-based organizations, community colleges, volunteer organizations, public schools, corrections institutions, public libraries, companies, unions, and other organizations. Through the state Adult Literacy Hotline, MCAE has information about all of these programs. Using this information, as well as its regularly updated list of members, the MCAE Public Policy Committee uses a telephone tree, fax list, and email to reach coalition members and other practitioners across the state.
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Adult Literacy Public Policy Organizing in Massachusetts
We Work Closely with Legislators Over the past several years, MCAE Public Policy Committee members have worked with key Massachusetts legislators who have, in turn, formed a legislators’ Literacy Caucus. This group meets periodically, files and supports legislation, and attempts to influence the budget process. We have found that having this kind of leadership and organization within the legislative body is essential. Building and maintaining interest in adult literacy among legislators is a critical function of a state literacy public policy Building and group. The Literacy maintaining Caucus provides a interest in adult way for adult literacy practitioners to keep literacy among legislators informed. It legislators is a provides opportunities critical function to strategize together of a state literto find or make opporacy public policy tunities for possible group. new resources. And it has protected adult literacy both from inadvertent havoc or dismantling as a result of efforts to consolidate employmentrelated services and from attempted takeover by other state agencies. Caucus members have also provided us with important insights about our state’s legislative process.
We Follow “Tip” O’Neill’s Advice But how do legislators become interested in adult literacy as an issue? Former U.S. Speaker of the House Thomas P. (Tip) O’Neill used to say, “All politics is local.” We know many legislators—and former Governor Michael Dukakis, as well—who were moved by a conversation with someone who said he or she could not read or write or with Spring 2001
someone who was helped to read or write by a literacy program. It is eye-opening when these people in need of reading and writing help are working in positions where high literacy skills are taken for granted. Sometimes they are people whom the politicians know personally, without having known about their reading and writing difficulty. Inviting the state representative and senator to visit the literacy program and talk with students makes a difference. Inviting legislators to speak at graduations also has an impact. Here are a couple of examples of what working at the local level has done for us. Early on, during the Boston Network days, a group of practitioners working in one area of Boston invited three state representatives to breakfast at a local restaurant. (The legislators paid for their own breakfasts.) These representatives had worked together before on other issues, but only one was aware of adult literacy. After they learned how great the need was for adult literacy services, they agreed to co-sponsor an increase in the adult literacy line item. For two of these representatives, this was a basic services issue for their constituents. For the third, it was primarily a moral issue; although few of her constituents needed literacy services, she felt that everyone deserved the opportunity to learn to read and write. In the late 1980s, when half the funding for the local literacy initiative in Boston was lost because of cuts in Community Development Block Grants, one adult literacy program, which would have lost funding, convinced its state senator, the powerful senate president, to see to it that the state made up for these lost funds. He added a significant $2 million to the statewide Department of Education line item for adult basic education.
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We Create a Statewide Public Policy Agenda Each Year, But... The MCAE Public Policy Committee forms an annual agenda each fall, often seeking advice and information from practitioners as well as from the state Department of Education. However, this agenda is usually buffeted by the unpredictable winds of politics. One year we began with a goal of increasing funds but ended up fighting efforts to subsume all literacy services under an employment and training agenda. Another year we began with the same goal and spent the year fighting disastrous cuts in funding. One year we claimed One year we victory because adult began with a basic education was the goal of increasonly discretionary line ing funds but item in the state ended up fightDepartment of ing efforts to Education that wasn’t cut. One year we subsume all literacy services focused on getting more funding and settled for under an getting the first statuemployment tory language recognizand training ing the legitimacy of agenda. adult basic education. In some years we succeeded in getting line item increases in the state budget; for fiscal year 1999, for the fourth year in a row, we increased the Massachusetts Department of Education line item for adult basic education—by $7 million, a remarkable 70 percent increase in funding over a five-year period. In fiscal year 2000, we asked for an additional $7 million. This amount was approved by the house, but not the senate. The house/senate conference committee settled on $4 million, which would have been fine with us. However, at the last minute the governor, who has not been a supporter of adult 34
learning and literacy, vetoed the increase. Nevertheless, the community colleges succeeded in adding $2.9 million to the higher education budget for adult learning literacy. So funding has continued to increase in the state budget.
We Helped Create a Committee to Look at Need and Supply Five years ago, working with the Massachusetts Department of Education and several other state agencies that support adult education, a task force commissioned by the legislature was asked to look at the need and supply of adult education services. The committee chose to distinguish need, based on census data, from demand, based on waiting lists. The committee recommended to the Massachusetts Board of Education—which voted unanimously to endorse its recommendation—and to the state legislature an increase of $35 million over five years in order to meet current demand. We are well on our way toward achieving this goal, having achieved nearly 75 percent of it in the last five years. The MCAE Public Policy Committee has set its agenda for FY2001. We will request $9 million from the legislature. If we succeed, we will have reached the total of $35 million. We are also requesting that a new commission be established to re-examine need/demand and capacity and to make new recommendations.
We Link with National Efforts The Public Policy Committee has shown interest in national adult literacy issues and has been exploring how we might contribute at this level. Our state organization has been drawn into the national arena by such issues as: ♦
The Workforce Investment Act
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Adult Literacy Public Policy Organizing in Massachusetts
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Efforts—so far largely unsuccessful—to include adult literacy programs in the technology section of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act
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Concern about proposed national efforts to consolidate literacy into employment and training agendas.
Some members of the Public Policy Committee have joined an electronic list of over 600 people across the country who are interested in adult learning and literacy policy. The National
Literacy Advocacy (NLA) list (www.nifl.gov/lincs/discussions/nifl-nla/nla.html), we feel, is doing for adult literacy nationally what the Boston Network did for us locally: introducing us to each other and providing a forum for discussion. Perhaps out of this electronic list and other national organizing efforts, such as the National Alliance for Urban Literacy Coalitions and the National Coalition for Literacy, will grow a strong national movement of adult literacy public policy advocates, a movement made up of strong local and state coalitions.
THE MASSACHUSETTS POSTCARD CAMPAIGN Below is a description of a postcard campaign which literacy advocates and adult basic education programs in Massachusetts have used to call state legislators’ attention to long waiting lists for ESOL and ABE services. This has been one of several strategies which, taken together, have resulted in the state line item for adult basic education increasing by 700 percent in five years. PROGRAMS OVERCOME RELUCTANCE TO KEEP WAITING LISTS The campaign begins with program waiting lists. Some practitioners may not want to keep a waiting list. They try to serve immediately every student who applies, even if this means crowded classes led by unprepared teachers—which results in high dropout rates. They also may not want to spend the time needed to keep accurate and up-to-date waiting lists. Some colleagues must learn that while it may be painful in the short run to put students on a waiting list, with the increased resources resulting from the demonstrated demand, they can offer higher-quality services to even more students. STUDENT APPLICANTS FILL OUT POSTCARDS When a student comes to a program and is told about the waiting list, the student is also handed a postcard, which he or she can choose to fill out, with reading and writing assistance, if needed. A postcard might look like this: Dear [the student writes in the name of his or her legislator], My name is [ ]. I live at [ ]. I have recently visited the [ ] program where I have been put on a [ ]-month waiting list to begin [English, basic literacy, GED] classes. I would like to begin classes right away. I hope you can help by providing the funds this program needs to offer classes for me and others on the waiting list. ADVOCACY BRINGS CONCRETE RESULTS With waiting lists and other strategies, we have increased the expenditure in Massachusetts from $44 per student per year in the early 1980s to nearly $2,000 per student per year now. With these resources we can provide higher quality: higher instructional intensity, better prepared teachers, universally accessible facilities with regular access to state-of-the-art technology, serious curriculum and staff development that meet high standards, and ultimately better outcomes for students.
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Is There Room for Family Literacy in a Work-First Environment? by Jamie Preston
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here were so many Cinderellas. Their stories echoed through the huge ballroom of the Galt House in Louisville, Kentucky, which was filled with 2,000 family literacy practitioner-teachers and administrators who spend most of their days trying to help parents and their children make the difficult journey from poverty to self-sufficiency. The practitioners had come to Louisville in April 1999 to participate in the 8th Annual National Conference on Family Literacy. At every meal in that crowded ballroom, there were thunderous ovations in response to testimonials from parents who had transformed hardships into triumphs through the help of family literacy programs. As I joined many other conference-goers in brushing away tears of joy and pain, I wondered whether family literacy would be as resilient as the parents at the podium, or would the work-first frenzy of welfare downsizing shrink the grand coach into a pumpkin? To answer that question, I reflected on what I learned from working as the Philadelphia field coordinator of the Family Independence Initiative, a two-year pilot program of the National Center for Family Literacy (NCFL) designed to examine the process of blending work readiness with family literacy. The NCFL model integrates four components: adult education, parent time, parent and child together (PACT) time, and early childhood education. Under a Knight Foundation grant, family
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literacy programs in five U.S. cities piloted a program to provide pre-employment and postemployment support to families striving to make the transition from welfare to work. In Philadelphia, three literacy providers worked with about 50 families in the Family Independence Initiative project, coordinated by the Mayor’s Commission on Literacy. Two of the Philadelphia programs served families whose first language was Spanish, so that lack of English proficiency was an additional barrier to work for some.
Family Literacy Supports Work Readiness The experience of one family highlights the difference between family literacy and programs that focus only on adult education. A mother in the family literacy program was successful in finding a job. Her joy in moving ahead with her life was not shared by her son, who started disrupting his elementary school class and falling behind in his studies. Feeling torn between her roles as parent and worker, the mother talked to the staff of the family literacy program, and they worked out a plan. An AmeriCorps volunteer for National School and Community Corps would act as a big brother for her son. If the boy was having a bad day, he Reprinted by permission from Momentum, June 1999, National Center for Family Literacy.
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Is There Room for Family Literacy in a Work-First Environment?
could come up and sit with the AmeriCorps volunteer and the mother’s former classmates until he was calm enough to return to his own class. After school, he would get tutoring from the AmeriCorps volunteer while the boy’s mother watched and learned how to give him the help he needed. If the mother could not be there for the tutoring session, her sister would sit in for her. Because of the program’s family focus, the mother got the support she needed to be able to do her best in her new job, and her child got the attention he needed to do his best in school. In a program with a more limited scope, the worried mother might well have been distracted enough to lose her new job, and the boy could have begun the downward spiral that results in failure in school. That is not to say that programs providing only adult education or work-readiness training are not helping some parents make the transition from welfare to work. However, family literacy has the flexibility that allows it to provide more of the supports that parents and children need during periods of enormous change in their lives.
Success at Work and at Home Another strength of family literacy is that many of the programs are set in public schools, where varied work experiences are available. Parents may begin with job shadowing in the cafeteria, day care, classrooms, main office, maintenance department, and nurse’s office. In doing so, they develop positive work attitudes, a repertoire of skills, and a feeling for what kinds of occupations they prefer. They also establish the networks that lead many of them into paid employment in the school system, which allows them to stay close to their children during work hours. In work-oriented family literacy programs, job skills such as interviewing, résumé writing, and knowing how to dress for work are important pieces of the curriculum. But family literacy programs also stress that success at work begins at Spring 2001
home. If the program shows a parent how to carefully map out plans for household management, transportation, child care, meal preparation, For families homework sessions, facing multiple and even playtime barriers to selfbefore entering the sufficiency, how workforce, the odds can we expect of the parent keeping a job are much better, anything less and the family can than a compremake more informed hensive program decisions about each to unlock the member’s roles and responsibilities during potential of the transition. parents and children and allow While the parents them to succeed are building the founin work and dations they need for school? success in the workplace, the crosscurricular approach of family literacy is preparing children for the changes that the whole family will face when the parent gets a job. The program also acts as a constant in the child’s life when other routines are shifting and provides a touchstone for the parent during the transition period. On reflection, my answer to the question of whether family literacy is viable in a work-first environment has led me to two more questions. For families facing multiple barriers to selfsufficiency, how can we expect anything less than a comprehensive program to unlock the potential of parents and children and allow them to succeed in work and school? If we attempt to take shortcuts by investing only in programs of limited scope, what kind of legacy will we have left for the children of the next century?
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The Need for Leadership among Adult Learners by Archie Willard
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to help them conquer their “voices” and fears. Then s adult non-readers go through life, most do we will have helped them to take their first step in not have any visions for their lives and are not changing their lives. ready to seek literacy help. Because of past experiences, they think they’re incapable of learning how to read. Many live their whole lives hearing voices The literacy field needs to be looking inside inside them that keep telling them they cannot the adult learners who are entering adult reading learn to read. A seed must be planted in their programs. We should look for the things they can minds that motivates them to want reading help. do well to build their confidence. Many adult They need to know they are not alone. But before learners will never become good readers but can adult non-readers can become adult learners, they need to look Who can best speak to the issue of illiteracy? inside themselves to find the Someone who has written and studied about it or desire to conquer those “voices” someone who has lived it each and every day? and make the decision that they can and will succeed. Then they can take control develop good comprehension and communication of their own lives. The people who do this are the skills that will help them function very well in life. ones who better themselves. We need to stop asking adult learners to come up to society’s level of reading and writing. Instead, we should meet them at their level and make the Through the years, many reading programs information we use understandable to everyone. and materials have been developed to teach adult learners how to read. But for literacy in this country to move forward, the people holding the After adult learners have left their literacy reins in the literacy field will have to digest and programs, they should have a comfortable location understand this process that adult learners need to go to in order to keep up with the changing to go through. Until this happens, all the testing world and to continue making improvements in and reading materials will not be very effective. We should support adult learners in any way possible Written for International Literacy Day 2000 and reprinted by permission.
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Literacy Harvest
The Need for Leadership
their lives. This place should be for adult learners as well as for former adult learners who now have become lifelong learners. Because there are libraries in almost every community, I think libraries across the nation would be the ideal solution. The American Library Association would be a good partner for this lifelong learning process. We also need a process to identify adult learners who can become leaders and to develop adult learner leadership to encourage and support those who need reading help to enter reading programs. Successful adult learners can and should become role models for others. Adult learners need to keep asking the literacy field again and again to let us sit at the literacy discussion table; that way someday we will be there. Who can best speak to the issue
Spring 2001
of illiteracy? Someone who has written and/or studied about it or someone who has lived it each and every day? If we keep speaking out, someday we will be understood. If our nation is going to prosper and grow, society cannot afford to have between 40 and 44 million adults who are classified at the level of “functional illiterate.” It’s going to take a mutual effort from many literacy providers to meet the literacy needs of our country. We must all work together to solve our literacy problems. We will know this has happened by one way only: when adult learners walk out of their literacy programs for the last time with a vision for their lives and with more hopes and dreams for the future than painful memories of the past.
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