They have much more money than adult education. The demands that they put on us now are extravagent and cost a lot of money that could better be spent serving students. I'm willing to bet it will be more criticism from people who don't understand the population we serve or the way in which we serve them. The NALS survey is a perfect example of spending a lot of money with no noticeable benefit to adult basic education. Very few policy makers read the complete study and I believe that those who read the executive summary didn't understand what it meant.
Most policy makers see literacy as a yes or no question.
They don't understand that it is an evaluation of a person's present position on a continuum of skills or that those skills differ according to the person's life roles. Because few understood the meaning of the NALS survey and those who did understand it didn't want to recognize the size of the problem it represented, nothing much happened. Well, that's enough for now. Boston Globe Article. I did not see the article but also acknowledge the primary importance of improving outcomes reporting and accountability of what Adult Education Act dollars deliver.