Several states, Kansas being one of them, have the option of using
data matching with the Department of Labor UI to determine employment
and retain/improve employment outcomes for adult education participants.
We also do data matching to determine GED outcomes.  For the first time 
ever, this year we will be able to do data matching with our postsecondary 
education database to determine enter postsecondary education or training 
outcomes for adult education participants.  

While every state does not have these data matching options, those of 
us who do have these opportunities have a much more convincing
argument to present to state legislators for supporting adult education.
Kansas has received an increase of 35% in state funding since FY04.  
For years we made our presentations to legislative committees with adult
learners telling their stories.  Adult education was only one of many 
state-funded programs that postively impacted the lives of Kansans--according 
to the virtually endless number of presentations made to legislative committees.

However, when Kansas Adult Education could give legislators actual numbers 
of adult education participants who entered employment, retained employment,
entered postsecondary education, and passed the GED Test--determined through 
data matching--legislators definitely took notice.  I had a legislative committee 
chair tell me that his committee decided to recommend support an increase in 
funding for adult education because, "You had the numbers.  It's always hard to 
determine where to allocate limited dollars.  Everybody has a convincing argument 
for why we should give them additional funding.  But you had 'hard' evidence 
that adult education is making a difference in Kansas."  

Are there problems with data matching?  Of course.  Many adult education
participants choose not to or cannot provide social security numbers or 
work permit numbers, so we "lose" any employment-related outcomes 
these learners achieve.  For eight years, we have done EXTENSIVE surveying
to determine if learners with the goal of entering postsecondary education 
or training have actually achieved these goals, but our contact rate has 
always been less than 70%.  Even when we have the option of data
matching with the Kansas postsecondary database, we will only be
able to capture those exited adult education participants who enter
postsecondary education and training in Kansas.  (A special problem
since 30% of our learners live within 10 miles of Kansas City, MO.)

So while our numbers under represent the numbers and percentages
of adult learners who actually achieve these outcomes--WE HAVE NUMBERS!
Conservative numbers are better than no numbers.  And using the numbers
we do have, we strive each year to do better.  It's very difficult to improve
without a baseline...

Dianne Glass
Director of Adult Education
Kansas Board of Regents
1000 SW Jackson, Suite 520
Topeka, KS  66612-1368
785.296.7159
dglass at ksbor.org



>>> "Venu Thelakkat" <VenuT at lacnyc.org> 10/18/07 6:00 PM >>>

I am told that standardized assessments, especially those used in adult
literacy, have many problems.  But what is the alternative?  Policy
makers and funders (private or public) want accountability for the money
they disperse and there is very little else that has been proposed.
Even in NRS, educational gain is the only measure that has some validity
as a program outcome.  The other measures such as getting a job or
entering post secondary education are very unreliable given the wide
variety of methods used to collect and report the data.  

 

Venu Thelakkat

Director of ASISTS/Data Analysis

Literacy Assistance Center

32 Broadway, 10th floor

New York, NY 10004

(212) 803-3370

venut at lacnyc.org

www.lacnyc.org

________________________________

From: assessment-bounces at nifl.gov [mailto:assessment-bounces at nifl.gov]
On Behalf Of andresmuro at aol.com
Sent: Thursday, October 18, 2007 12:46 PM
To: assessment at nifl.gov
Subject: [Assessment 976] Re: FW: [AAACE-NLA] level movement

 

Melinda:

I don't disagree with anything that you are saying. However, in my
opinion, the problem with NRS-WIA is the same problem as with NCLB.
Skillful teachers  in the right settings with the proper tools can
facilitate knowledge in broad areas, and yet help many students show
progress in standardized tests. However, most teachers feel like they
are under pressure to demonstrate level gains in the given measuring
tool. Comments from Tom Stitch in the NLA forum articulated exactly
this. Essentially teachers felt pressure to show gains in standardized
instruments and spent most of their time preparing students to
demonstrate gains in these instruments. Most felt that they had little
time for other activities and that they were unable to teach things that
they felt were important. Comments, to me personally, from teachers
throughout the US over the years suggests the same. In fact, when
teachers are asked to document evidence of additional activities and
progress in other ar eas aside from the mandated assessment, they become
highly resentful. They feel that they are under pressure to prepare the
students to show gains in the TABE, BEST plus, CASAS, and whatever else,
and in addition, their administrators want them to demonstrate that
their students are becoming more knowledgeable of civics, health,
politics, history, the environment and whatever else. Teachers feel that
the paperwork becomes insurmountable and that their role is to keep with
an endless bureaucracy rather than concentrate on just teaching. 

In addition, as I argued in the NLA forum, there is no evidence that
standardized tests demonstrate anything other than knowledge on how to
take them. I don't think that there is a single scientific article that
states that not getting a certain score in the BEST plus, TABE, CASAS or
whatever, means that you do not posses the skills that the instrument
attempts to measure. You make that argument yourself. You claim that
having an GED is no indication of academic skills in math, reading, etc.
The only difference is that the GED does represent access to employment,
college and a significant entitlement for many. However, moving from
beginning literacy ESL to beginning ESL is absolutely, unquestionably,
indisputably, unarguably, overwhelmingly, incredibly meaningless. In
fact, what happens in many programs is that a student will start in
beginning literacy ESL, spend a whole semester or year in the same level
and at the end of the year the student will demonstrate that he/she mo
ved to beginning ESL. The student will stop attending for whatever
reason and return to the same or a different program some time later.
The student will be assessed again and will likely place in beginning
literacy ESL again, and do the whole thing again. Now, this is not an
exception. This is the rule w/ many programs. 

Andres

 

 

-----Original Message-----
From: Melinda Hefner <mhefner at cccti.edu>
To: Assessment at nifl.gov
Sent: Thu, 18 Oct 2007 9:22 am
Subject: [Assessment 975] Re: FW: [AAACE-NLA] level movement

I hope that this post will not be perceived as being disrespectful
because it's certainly not intended to be; however, there are some
slight but noteworthy inaccuracies in the NRS outcome measure
descriptions and requirement that were in the original post.  While
there are certain NRS requirements that all states must meet, there are
also optional requirements or outcome measures that states may choose to
include for determination of performance among its local programs.  NRS
guidelines, when adhered to, are quite supportive of student and
instructor led educational plans where instructional goals are dynamic,
meet student needs, and drive instruction.  To say that nothing else
matters other than level completion is not entirely accurate although
I'm certain that there may be some administrators around the country who
make it appear that way.  Fortunately, in North Carolina our state
leadership, while taking NRS guidelines very seriously, use them to
support instruction not impede it.

 

Additionally, while I obviously support GED completion as a goal,
unfortunately GED completion alone does not assure that a student
functions at an adult secondary high level in math, reading, and/or
language which has been problematic in a number of ways particularly for
students transitioning into post-secondary training.  Although there are
similar transitioning issues among underprepared students who graduate
from high school in the traditional fashion, adult literacy providers
should make successful transition into post-secondary training a high
priority for students as applicable.  One of the many ways to do this is
to assure and validate via pre-testing and post-testing that students
do, indeed, function at the adult secondary high level and have not
merely gained sufficient information and skills to have passed a GED
test(s).

 

Melinda



>>> On 10/17/2007 at 8:26 pm, in message

<059c01c8111d$85f2ba20$0402a8c0 at LITNOW>, "Marie Cora"
<marie.cora at hotspurpartners.com> wrote:

This email is cross-posted for your interest.

 

Marie Cora

Assessment Discussion List Moderator

 

**********

 

-----Original Message-----
From: aaace-nla-bounces at lists.literacytent.org
[mailto:aaace-nla-bounces at lists.literacytent.org
<mailto:aaace-nla-bounces at lists.literacytent.org?> ] On Behalf Of
andresmuro at aol.com
Sent: Wednesday, October 17, 2007 3:23 PM
To: aaace-nla at lists.literacytent.org
Subject: Re: [AAACE-NLA] level movement

 

Daphnee:

I think that the USDE and WIA-NRS look at a minimum of 66% that will
complete a level. Supposedly a program has to base test 90% of students
who enroll in program within the first week of instruction. Of those
that have a base test they expect that 66% show progress. In other
words, 66% should be able to go from one of the levels to the next one.
WIA-NRS has a bunch of levels. for example, the have beginning literacy
ESL, beginning ESL, Intermediate ESL, Advanced ESL. They also have
beginning literacy, intermediate literacy, advanced, and GED. May be I
have the names of the level wrong, but it is something like that. So, if
a student starts at beginning literacy ESL, s/he has several levels to
move through to get to GED. While there are few students getting to the
GED level, WIA-NRS allows ABE programs to show higher success rates than
before. However, the number of GED completers over the total number of
students in ABE has gone down. ABE programs are only evaluated on the %
of students that show progress in the TABE, BEST, etc. So, if students
use language to access health care, enroll in college, help their kids
with homework, build computers, publish stories, etc all that is
irrelevant. The only thing that matters is if students  show progress in
the BEST or TABE. In fact, if a students is enrolled in a beginning ESL
class and the student decides to go  take the GED on her own, that would
not be considered progress based on WIA-NRS unless the student declares
beforehand that GED is a goal. So, teachers are under pressure to have
the students show progress in these tests and nothing else matters.

I run a GED program with high completion rates. it is not a WIA-NRS ABE
program. So, we don't have to pretest,  and assess the students every
five weeks. We are under no pressure to show intermediate outcomes
outside from GED completion. In addition to GED instruction we discuss
health literacy, nutrition, legal issues, etc. We have very high GED
completion numbers. Our students also publish stories. We had an ABE-
grant. We could only measure success rates from one level to the next.
It was an insane bureaucracy. We don't have the ABE program anymore. 

Andres

 

 

-----Original Message-----
From: Daphne Greenberg <ALCDGG at langate.gsu.edu>
To: aaace-nla at lists.literacytent.org
Sent: Wed, 17 Oct 2007 8:49 am
Subject: [AAACE-NLA] level movement

Forgive my cross posting to a few electronic lists, but I received the
following 













question, and I am hoping that someone has good advice that I can share
with the 













person who asked me.



























If you were to review a program's "graduation" or "completion" rates
from one 













level to the next (for example from ESL to ABE or ASE/GED or ABE to
ASE/GED) 













what would you consider a  "good" rate?



























Thanks,













Daphne Greenberg













Georgia State University



























_______________________________________________













AAACE-NLA mailing list: AAACE-NLA at lists.literacytent.org













http://lists.literacytent.org/mailman/listinfo/aaace-nla













LiteracyTent: web hosting, news, community and goodies for literacy













http://literacytent.org <http://literacytent.org/> 
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