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@aznet.net