[Reading-hall-of-fame] Towards a Life Cycles Education Policy

[klare]

Tom, you make a good point about the funding and support--or rather,lack of 
it-- for adult training and education.

George

--On Monday, September 27, 2004 4:29 PM -0700 Thomas Sticht 
<tsticht@znet.com> wrote:

> September 27, 2004
>
> Head Start and Adult Literacy Education: Life Cycles Education is Needed
> for Sustainable Development of Human Beings Across Generations
>
> Tom Sticht
> International Consultant in Adult Education
>
> A U. S. House of Representatives committee has recommended funding for the
> Head Start pre-school program for Fiscal Year 2005 of some $6.9 billion,
> an increase of $123 million over FY 2004. The same committee recommended
> $574,372,000 for the Adult Education and Literacy System of the United
> States funded in part by the State Grants program of the Workforce
> Investment Act, Title 2: Adult Education and Family Literacy Act. This is
> less than ten percent of what the committee recommended for the Head Start
> program.
>
> Head Start Funding Grows 460 Percent
>
> In 1966, the Head Start program received some $198,900,000 million and
> enrolled 733,000 children in the preschool program. That is about $271 per
> child, or in 2001 dollars, that is $1481 dollars per child. Thirty-five
> years later, in 2001, the federal funding for Head Start was some
> $6,200,000,000 billion and enrollments were at 905,235, giving $6849 per
> child. Using 2001 dollars, this represents a 460 percent increase in
> purchasing power per child from 1966 to 2001.
>
> Adult Literacy Education Funding Drops 32 Percent
>
> Also in 1966, the Adult Education and Literacy System (AELS) received
> around $19.7 million and had enrollments of some 377,000 adult learners,
> giving around $52 per student, or $303 dollars in constant 2004 dollars.
> By FY 2004 funding for the AELS had increased to $574, 372, 000 and
> enrollments had risen to some 2.8 million giving $205 per adult student.
> In constant 2004 dollars, from 1966 to 2004 the AELS lost 32 percent of
> its per student purchasing power.
>
> The "Ounce of Prevention" Hypothesis
>
> Presumably, the obscene differences between the funding for Head Start
> children and the Adult Education and Literacy System reflects some sort of
> "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure" thinking, though in this
> case it looks like "a ton of prevention is worth a tenth of a pound of
> cure." This emphasis upon prevention might be interpreted to suggest that,
> with the funding of Head Start, the target population of adults who are in
> need of "remedial education" should decline.
>
> It seems reasonable to hypothesize that if the Head Start prevention
> strategy has been effective over the last thirty years then there should
> be effects on the AELS. For instance, (1) the size of the target
> population should decrease. (2) Additionally, the size of the population
> with ineffective literacy skills should  decrease. (3) The numbers of
> young people enrolling in the AELS should decline because they will have
> better skills and higher rates of high school diploma achievement.  But
> the data, admittedly scanty,  do not appear to support these hypotheses
>
> 1. The Target Population for the AELS Doesn?t Seem to Have Declined
>
> In this regard, a recent report for the U. S. Department Education, Office
> of Vocational and Adult Education, Division of Adult Education and
> Literacy (USDE/OVAE/DAEL) entitled "Profiles of the Adult Education Target
> Population, Information from the 2000 Census" provides an estimate of the
> AELS target population. This population, defined as adults  aged 16 years
> and over, who have not attained a high school diploma or equivalent and
> are not currently enrolled in school, includes 51 million adults (23
> percent of the total 16+ age group).
>
> Interestingly, in a 1995 report entitled National/State Comparative
> Profiles (Program Year 1992-1993) using data from the1990 census, the
> USDE/OVAE/DAEL estimated the target population at around 46.2 million. In
> a report entitled Adult Education Program Facts ?FY 1989, using 1980
> census data the target population  was estimated by USDE/OVAE/DAEL at
> about 51.8 million.
>
> Using the 1980, 1990, and 2000 census data, the absolute number of adults
> in the target population has fluctuated some, but there has not been a
> major decline in the numbers. However, the fact that the population of
> adults has increased over the decades suggests that the percentage of the
> population of adults 16+ years of age represented by these numbers may
> have declined over the years.  But I have not found these data in any
> USDE/OVAE/DAEL reports.
>
> 2. The Percentage of Functionally Illiterates Adults Seems to Have Gone Up
>
> If the prevention strategy is supposed to reduce the numbers of adults
> with literacy problems, then the data from literacy assessments do not
> support it. In the late 1970s the  Adult Performance Level study reported
> findings that one out of five (19.8 percent) adults lacked the skills and
> knowledge needed to function effectively in society. Today, based on data
> from the 1993 National Assessment of Adult Literacy (NALS), the home web
> page for the U. S. Department of Education funded National Center for the
> Study of Adult Learning and Literacy (NCSALL)(
> http://www.gse.harvard.edu/~ncsall/) states that "More than 40 percent of
> working-age adults in the United States lack the skills and education
> needed to succeed in family, work, and community life today."
>
> Given shifts in population characteristics due to factors such as age and
> immigration it is not clear just what might be behind the lack of literacy
> and other skills in the population of adults in the mid-1990s, but
> whatever the case, the fact that skills of adults have either declined or
> been modified due to other factors, there is little to suggest that an
> approach to the prevention of adult literacy problems using Head Start or
> other K-12 prevention programs is having much of an effect on adult
> literacy.
>
> 3. Are There Fewer Young Adults in the AELS?
>
> If the prevention strategy is working to reduce the numbers of adults
> needing the AELS, then it might be expected that as the Head Start and
> other prevention program participants grow up into age s 16-24 there would
> be fewer and fewer of these young adults enrolling in the AELS. But in
> 1975 young adults 16-24 years of age made up 40 percent of the AELS
> enrollees, in 1981 this rose to 42 percent, in 1997 it fell to 36 percent,
> in 2001 the number was 41 percent and in 2002 it was 40 percent. For over
> 25 years, then, it seems that the percentage of the young adults enrolling
> in the AELS has not changed much, suggesting that the prevention strategy
> has not been effective in overcoming the education problems of many of
> those in the pre-school and K-12 systems.
>
> Overall, it seems that the demands for the AELS? services have not
> diminished over the years. For those who take the position that investing
> in the education and literacy development of adults is a lost cause, and
> that the only solution to the problem of having a nation with almost half
> of its adults deficiently literate, as the U. S. Department of Education
> claimed in 1993, is to pump more and more money into pre-school and
> in-school prevention programs, while tossing a bare bone to the adult
> learners, the data presented above do not offer any support.
>
> Toward a Life Cycles Approach to Education
>
> It just might be that an approach that emphasizes both a pound of
> prevention and a pound of cure might actually be more effective than a
> whoppingly one-sided prevention approach.  A cycle has no beginning or
> ending place. As far as education is concerned, it seems to me that
> equitable investments in education across the life span, with an
> understanding of and attention to the potential for the intergenerational
> transfer from one generation to the next that education offers, is the
> best approach to the sustainable development of human beings in the
> present population and in cycles of future human generations.
>
> Thomas G. Sticht
> 2062 Valley View Blvd.
> El Cajon, CA 92019-2059
> Tel/fax: (619) 444-9133
> Email: tsticht@aznet.net
>
>
>
>
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