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

[Victoria Purcell-Gates]

Hi All; Does anyone know when the RHF Breakfast/Meeting is at IRA? The date, I mean. 
Thanks, VPG



-----Original Message-----

> Date: Tue Feb 02 15:56:03 PST 2010
> From: tsticht at znet.com
> Subject: [Reading-hall-of-fame] Pity the Parents and Fix the Child
> To: reading-hall-of-fame at nottingham.ac.uk
>
> 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
> 
> 
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