Establish an Independent National Center for Adult Education, Literacy and Workforce Skills

Date: July 30, 2010

. . . to provide the resources necessary to improve practice and provide high quality services to the adult education community and those they serve.[i]

—An NCL WIA Reauthorization Priority

Article by Nickie Askov

As former board member and research chair of the NCL, I have been concerned about the lack of funding for research, especially with the termination of a national research center for adult education and literacy. The Institute for Education Sciences (IES) in the US Department of Education funded a national research and development center in adult education/literacy at Harvard University (National Center for the Study of Adult Learning and Literacy, or NCSALL) for eleven years.

Previously, IES funded a similar center at the University of Pennsylvania (National Center on Adult Literacy, or NCAL) for six years. These two centers, their partners, and other research institutions, had been developing a community of scholars, sufficient theory to begin testing interventions, and models for rigorous research as well as more effective professional development and service models to better serve adult students.

However, the USDOE discontinued funding for a comprehensive research and development center for adult learning and literacy in 2007, in spite of the need for research that supports the delivery of services. (IES claimed that adult education research would be conducted as part of other centers.) This decision on the part of IES to discontinue the ONLY national center devoted to adult education research has dealt a severe blow to the field, both to practitioners and researchers.

Adult education and literacy can benefit from research in other education arenas, but the field has unique challenges not addressed by other fields including (for example):

Recruiting and supporting undereducated adults who need education, social services, public health, and other support services;
Customizing basic skills learning plans that enable
- Welfare recipients to qualify for jobs with family sustaining income,
- Adults to complete secondary education and successfully transition into post secondary institutions,
- Newcomers to learn English and American culture and citizenship skills,
- Current employees to attain the skills to qualify for ever increasing demands in the workplace that allow their employers to remain competitive in a global economy,
- Unemployed adults to qualify for job training programs and attain a marketable skill,
- Adults with learning disabilities to be successful in strengthening their literacy and numeracy skills, and
- Low-literacy parents to attain the skills needed to support their children’s education,
- Parents to be able to read and follow medical instructions to provide for the health concerns of themselves and their children (AMA reports that 46% of adults cannot do so).

Identifying best practices for each of the above.
Measuring the impact of each of the above.

This list of unique adult education research priorities is adapted from a white paper prepared in 2008 by the NCL Research Committee for wide circulation among federal policymakers including the IES board. The current policy principles for a research and development center (the National Center for Adult Education, Literacy, and Workforce Skills or “the Center”) now fortunately include technology as part of the priorities for a center.

Although the adult education field is still without a research and development center, it is important that practitioners, policymakers, and researchers continue to advocate for an independent research and development center devoted to adult education/literacy research as well as to the transfer of research findings into best practices in adult education.

[i] Please see the National Center for Adult Education, Literacy, and Workforce Skills Public Policy Principles and the Center Recommendations which NCL recommends should replace Section 242 of Title II of the Workforce Investment Act.

» News from NCL Members

» NIFL Closes: LINCS Transitions to OVAE

» Why the NCL Priorities for Reauthorizing WIA Are Important: Views From the Field

» Tips for Using Blog Discussions to Advance WIA Reauthorization Issues

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mltait

in July 30th, 2010 @ 12:55

To offer some background on Nickie’s article, in May 2009, the National Coalition for Literacy surveyed the field about the National Institute for Literacy (NIFL) services. In the largest response to any survey conducted by the Coalition, nearly 800 tutors, teachers, program and project managers, adult learner leaders, professional development professionals, state staff, librarians, and others, weighed in on what they value as the most critical services the Institute provides to the adult education community. That final report is here: http://www.national-coalition-literacy.org/NCL_NIFLReport061209.pdf

In response to these findings and to the need for a research center as Nickie describes above, the Coalition developed a set of policy recommendations for services, structures, and governance for a national Center for Adult Education, Literacy, and Workforce Skills (“the Center”) to meet the research, professional development, and technical assistance needs of the field. The general principles for the Center can be found here: http://www.ncladvocacy.org/NationalCenterPolicyPrinciples_FINAL.pdf and detailed suggestions for the overall structure as it might be written in legislation can be found here: http://www.ncladvocacy.org/Center_FINAL.pdf .

The Coalition reviewed the survey results and conducted numerous meetings to discuss and come to consensus on these recommendations. The Coalition felt it was important to maintain an independent Center, apart from any one administrative agency, so that it was not guided by the mandates of one department but could successfully coordinate efforts to address current and future critical issues such as health literacy, immigration, financial literacy, and career pathways. We concluded that an independent Center could do this best by collaborating with federal, state, and local government agencies, with other national organizations with a vested interest in issues pertaining to adult education, literacy, and workforce skills, and building partnerships in the public and private sector to advance work within these arenas.

The Coalition also suppored the ideas put forth in the Adult Education and Economic Growth Act (AEEGA) with particular respect to the technology center proposed within that act. Our recommendations to include a technology center in “the Center” come directly from the AEEGA.

Last, the Coalition thought that it was important to have a national Center that would advance the professional quality of the field, conducting the research needed to advance the adult education profession. The Center should have a focus within it to examine the intersection of professional development, practitioner working conditions, and student outcomes, create task forces to identify best practices nationwide that elevate the adult education teaching profession, and guide the field about improving the professional quality of the workforce.

As Nikki outlines above, research about adult education is sorely needed. The proposal to authorize the National Center for Adult Education, Literacy, and Workforce Skills would address some of the more pragmatic research needs in adult education; reestablishing a center within IES (as Nikkie described in her post) could address other, more longitudinal types of research.

[Reply]
Heidi Silver-Pacuilla

in August 1st, 2010 @ 17:44

I am impressed with Pres Obama’s education speech last week that highlighted the importance of postsecondary education and the challenges faced by those who struggle to move from secondary to postsec. Read the transcript or see the video here: http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2010/07/29/president-obama-education-status-quo-morally-inexcusable

It is important for us to seize this moment of attention to increasing access to postsecondary education and make sure that adults with low skills are recognized as part of the cohort. As Nikki writes, there is little empirical research being done in our field. As more of our adults are encouraged to enroll in community college and other postsecondary training programs, we really need to understand how best to support them, which remedial ed methods and models work for whom, and how to help them persist in a postsecondary environment.

[Reply]
John Comings

in August 5th, 2010 @ 11:45

As NCSALL’s director for 11 years, I have a bias in favor of a comprehensive, independent, and well-funded R&D center for our field, but many practitioners and policy makers see investment in such a center as an unproductive diversion of funding from support for programs. I believe such a view is short-sighted for the following reasons:

1. Many of the present areas of focus for the field (persistence, health literacy, web portals, and transition, for example) grew out of or came to the field’s attention through NCSALL’s work.

2. A large number of people who are active as academics or professionals (and have research training) in the field had their academic training supported, either through direct support or through work on research projects, by NCSALL.

3. The number of academics who have our field’s questions as all or part of their research and teaching agenda is now much larger because NCSALL supported their research and scholarship.

4. For many questions, practitioners and policy makers have a web-based resource at http://www.ncsall.net that reviews the research and practice literature that provides answers and a justification for those answers.

5. For some of those questions, professional developers have a web-based resource that provides materials to support research to practice activities.

The individual R&D projects funded by IES and OVAE will produce useful findings and resources for the field. However, NCSALL was able to link the activities of a large group of researchers, scholars, and practitioners to build knowledge and capacity over many years. In the beginning, not much came out of that effort, but as time when on the output grew and grew. NCSALL became a network of committed professionals all working toward the same goal, improving practice. Had NCSALL been allowed to continue, its productivity would have continued to grow, providing more output for each dollar invested. Individual projects can’t build that network, and so the types of outcomes listed above will not occur and their productivity will not grow.

K-12, higher education, and early childhood education have whole departments at almost every education school around the country. Almost all of IES’s funding goes to support them. This allows academic networks to develop in ways that are impossible in our field. No education school has a department focused on our work, and even the limited number of adult education departments have little or no focus on ABE, ESOL, and ASE programs. IES and OVAE must consciously build a network for us by supporting a comprehensive, independent, and well-funded national R&D center, and the director must be someone whose goal is to use those resources to build that network, not support his or her individual institution.

[Reply]
Federico Salas-Isnardi

in August 7th, 2010 @ 00:38

I share Nickie’s concern about the lack of funding for research in Adult Education even as we are asked to base our programmatic and curricular decisions on research-based evidence. I also agree with John’s comments regarding the impact that NCSALL had on our field; indeed, practitioners continue to depend on the studies that NCSALL conducted (as a doctoral student in adult education I continue reading NCSALL research and publications as one of the main sources of dependable knowledge on the field.

At the same time, I hope that the individual research projects that IES will fund will serve the field well (I am working with one such proposal to come out of Texas to focus on PD) and I wonder if the funding of individual/independent projects is not an attempt to diversify the geographic and demographic mix of the research in the field. Perhaps having a number of independent research projects will reflect more diversity. That said, I agree with John that a center like NCSALL would provide the linkages that independent projects may lack and would also make sure, through networking, that each project benefits from the research of other projects while avoiding reduplication and waste.

One concern that is not reflected in the comments here is a priority for me: as reflected in the NCL recommendations for a national center, I think there must be a Professional Development center tied to or component of the National Center. I believe the best way to ensure the field benefits from research is to have a strong PD initiative tied to research projects so that research findings actually affect the behavior of educators and impact students.

federico

[Reply]
Edward Gordon

in August 11th, 2010 @ 11:47

Nickie has made an excellent point regarding the need for a national research center for adult education and literacy. A careful examination of the current job market reveals that the majority of the growing millions of long-term unemployed are unskilled or semi-skilled adults. Unless they are rapidly educated/trained with additional literacy and career skills for a STEM-based eeonomy, long-term unemployment will continue to grow.

The United States needs a national center for adult education and literacy for two significant reasons. First, to find more research-based best practices that are more effective in reducing adult functional illiteracy. Second, policy research is vital to help business and government reorganize the education-to-employment system to better prepare and integrate the low-skill and high-risk population into an advanced-technology-based economy.

How can this new center be created? Adult education/literacy research centers already exist at prominent research universities. In these difficult economic times, it will be far easier to expand one of these into a national program by building on thier current accomplishments. Using this approach, it will be far easier to attract foundation, corporate, and any public funding rather then trying to start a research center from scratch.

[Reply]

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Establish an Independent National Center for Adult Education, Literacy and Workforce Skills

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mltait

Heidi Silver-Pacuilla

John Comings

Federico Salas-Isnardi

Edward Gordon