Structures that support student participation in adult education/literacy programs

Greetings,

As a bit of organization to improving our adult education and literacy programs, I am suggesting that the community focus on structural or component features of programs. Having a well-defined structure can help orient students, staff, and volunteers to a better understanding of the program and setting their expectations and improving outcomes (e.g., GED pass rates, retention, transition).

From one of our USDE funded research and development projects several years ago, we examined issues for the low participation and retention rates (in adult education) for HS dropouts with learning disabilities or severe emotional disabilities. In the research activities we worked with several of the adult education programs in Kansas but primarily the program in Topeka, KS. We developed the research to include all levels of students including those students without disabilities.

The seven structural components that we researched and developed were:

Recruitment / Pre-enrollment

Orientation

Assessment (Placement testing)

Prescription component

Instruction component

Test-taking component (e.g., GED)

Transition

So the question for the community, is whether having some discussions around structural or component topics would be helpful for improving your programs and in turn the instruction and learner outcomes?

The anecdotal and state's evaluation data suggest that having these components well specified and implemented with fidelity will improve outcomes. To add a little "structure" to the discussion, we could stage the discussions on the seven components for a fixed interval such as 3 weeks and then introduce the next component.

What do you think? Your pro and con thoughts will be appreciated, even if you think this framework is a terrible idea! You likely even have suggestions on how this discussion might be better organized. Hope to hear from you.

Happy New Year,

Daryl

Comments

Greetings,

I've noticed that the initial post with a proposal for organizing a sequence of discussions around program components has had numerous reads and also no comments. The suggested framework for discussion seemed like a good idea back on Dec 31st but perhaps not. 

Seems to me that we have numerous, high quality programs that have a history of quality services for literacy and adult education. Those experiences or lessons learned could be valuable to staff in programs that are new, have had extensive staff changes, or just not quite gotten on track as they would like. I'm just wondering then about how to best proceed along these lines of program improvement. As Dean Fixsen and his colleagues have pointed out, we can have powerful, evidence based practices identified but they have to be implemented as intended to have the desired benefits. This proposed discussion might help with those implementation questions, but on the other hand, I'm just suggesting. 

Your thoughts? What directions are you planning for program improvement this year?

Regards,

Daryl

We will, this week, be participating in a regional meeting sponsored by US Dept of Ed/OVAE as part of the "national discussion" to form an action plan to "improve the foundation skills of U.S. adults."  Having been to USCAL and also participating in webinars and other information sources following the release of the PIAAC, we know it is very important to be part of this discussion.  The new GED, the Common Core, OVAE's NINA intiative are all pointing to re-thinking program offerings in view of college and career readines, health literacy, technolgy skills...and so much more.  Efforts in meeting those needs have been going on for some time now, but we will give even more time and effort to program development in view of these initiatives.

Greetings and Happy New Year!

This post reminded me of the New England Literacy Resource Center's (NELRC) Student Persistence website that focuses on the drivers of persistence. Over the spring of 2008, 18 New England programs implemented one or more persistence strategies and documented the quantitative and qualitative impact on student persistence.  Along with the findings are a number of very useful self-assessments and tools that programs may find helpful in discussing components.

http://www.nelrc.org/persist/index.html

Cynthia

 

 

I think reviewing keys components to persistence is always useful. We put into place a much more thorough and managed enrollment this past August and had great success, and I just downloaded about half of the New England Adult Learner Persistence Project--it's still the best thing out there.

Stephanie