[Reading-hall-of-fame] Pity the Parents and Fix the Child

[tsticht at znet.com]

February 2, 2010

Pity the Parents and “Fix” the Child

Tom Sticht
International Consultant in Adult Education

President Obama’s  budget proposal for FY2011 continues the marginalization
of the Adult Education and Literacy System (AELS) of the United States.
The web site of the National Coalition for Literacy has a blog by Jackie
Taylor, NCL Policy Co-Chair. The recent blog provides an overview of
President Obama’s budget proposal for fiscal year (FY) 2011 for the state
grants for Adult Basic and Literacy Education State Grants. The request is
for $612.3 million.

For this, our teachers in the Adult Education and Literacy System (AELS),
the programs supported in part by the federal state grants,  are supposed
to: quote” assist adults without a high school diploma or equivalent to
become literate and obtain the knowledge and skills necessary for
postsecondary education, employment, and self-sufficiency.”end quote

This is a set of goals well beyond what was expected in 1966 when the Adult
Education Act (AEA) was first enacted. At that time, the goal was to get
adults to a level of English language and/or basic education that would
help them qualify for occupational training and more profitable employment,
and become more productive and responsible citizens. To do this, the sum in
constant 2009 dollars of $344 per enrollee was provided.
In 1970 the AEA was amended to provide education up to the completion of
secondary school  and the AELS funding in constant 2009 dollars provided
over $360 per enrollee.

Now, with the President’s request for FY2011 of $612.3 million, which
includes a greatly expanded set of goals, with a projected enrollment of
some 3 million enrollees, in 2009 dollars the AELS funding would come to
just some $204 per enrollee!

This continued marginalization of adult education comes while billions more
dollars are being allocated to the pre-school and K-12 education of the
children who are in large part the children of the millions of
undereducated adults served in the AELS. All this suggests that education
is a primary goal of the present Executive administration 
.until children
grow up to become adults. Then, an educational crumb is tossed toward the
home and the parents who must raise the nation’s children who make-up the
majority of underachievers in the public schools.

The idea seems to be that the children in pre-schools or K-12 programs can
be “fixed” in  programs somewhere away from home, even if at the end of the
day they must be sent back to the same homes and  communities where their
parents struggle to support them, help them with schoolwork that they can
barely do themselves, while trying to improve their own abilities within an
impoverished AELS.

Clearly, the President’s proposal for the budget of the Adult Education and
Literacy System of the United States carries the saying, “doing more for
less,” to new extremes. And the pity is that despite decades of research
showing the relationship of parent's educational and socioeconomic
achievements on their children’s academic achievement, the best our
educational policymakers can seem to come up with to close the educational
achievement gap between the adults at the bottom and those at the top of
the educational distribution, is to give up on the lost generation, and try
to "fix" the next.

Pity the adults, and try to “fix” their children
.until they grow up. Then
pity them, too.

Tom Sticht
tsticht at aznet.net