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

[Alan Farstrup]

The meeting for RHF is on the morning of Tuesday, April 27th.  More details to follow within the next couple of weeks..

Alan Farstrup
On Feb 7, 2010, at 5:36 PM, Victoria Purcell-Gates wrote:

> 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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Alan Farstrup
afarstrup at me.com
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