Dear Colleagues,

Sondra Stein's role in conceiving and developing Equipped for the 
Future (EFF) has been vitally important to the adult literacy education 
field, and has been one of the major contributions of the National 
Institute for Literacy.  EFF and the Literacy Information and 
Communications System (LINCS) are the two long-term initiatives for 
which the National Institute for Literacy is best known, and which have 
had the greatest national impact on moving our field forward towards 
excellence in practice.

I am glad to hear that Sondra will continue to work with EFF, and I 
hope that other national organizations will have the vision to support 
EFF's continued growth in staff development and assessment.  The 
investment which the NIFL has made in EFF has been sound. It has 
brought EFF to the point where several states have formally adopted it, 
and other states and programs also are using EFF.  Several states are 
using the standards to invest in creating the EFF work readiness 
credential. Assessment instruments will be created which are aligned to 
EFF standards.  Although I am disappointed that the National Institute 
for Literacy will let Sondra leave, and apparently is not interested in 
continuing to support Equipped for the Future, I think the standards 
are so important to the field, and have a sufficiently strong foothold 
in the states, that Equipped For the Future can continue without the 
support of the NIFL.

I would like to thank Sondra for the extraordinary work she has done 
for our field, first in Massachusetts, and over more than a decade, 
nationally.

David J. Rosen
djrosen at comcast.net


On Friday, March 26, 2004, at 10:55 AM, jaleh.behroozi at nifl.gov wrote:


>

> Dear Friends and Colleagues:

>

> I am writing this letter to let you know that March 31st will be my

> last day at the National Institute for Literacy.

>

> It has been an extraordinary 12 years.  I was a strong advocate for

> the creation of NIFL. When I was invited to join the staff early in

> 1992 as a special advisor to the first interim director, I felt

> greatly honored to have the opportunity to help shape the direction of

> an institution that represented so many hopes and dreams for the

> literacy field.  During the startup period I worked closely with our

> first Presidentially-appointed Advisory Board (made up of national

> leaders from across the adult literacy field, including Sharon

> Darling, Benita Somerfield, Jinx Crouch, and Jon Deveaux), with a

> wonderful group of colleagues from labor, education, and health and

> human services representing our Interagency Management Group, and with

> my dear friend Susan Green, who joined the staff in early 1993.

> Together we shaped the institute's first initiatives: the center for

> learning disabilities, and two interagency initiatives, one focused on

> professional development, the other on accountability and continuous

> improvement.  Soon Jaleh Behroozi joined the staff, to coordinate the

> design and development of what has become NIFL's LINCS system.

>

> We all took seriously the mandate from Congress to be an interagency

> institution, and to work closely with partners in and out of

> government to improve the quality and reach of adult and family

> literacy programs all across the country.  This vision of the

> Institute.s mission was shared by Andy Hartman, our first Director,

> and the other new program staff who joined the Institute in 1994 --

> Carolyn Staley and Alice Johnson.  All of us worked to build an

> institution that could serve as a powerful voice for the literacy

> field, inspiring and leading a national effort to assure that adults

> in every part of the country had the opportunity to improve their

> literacy skills and thus enhance their lives.

>

> As part of our effort to strengthen the quality and accountability of

> the adult literacy system NIFL launched Equipped for the Future - a

> collaborative, standards-based system reform initiative.  And - for me

> - the rest is history.  Working on EFF these past 10 years has been an

> extraordinary gift and (as my family will tell you) a magnificent

> obsession.  I have had the opportunity to work with a group of

> dedicated, reflective, and creative educators, researchers, and

> policymakers  - a true community of learners, in whose company I have

> learned much and grown enormously as an educator and leader.

>

> Working together we have accomplished so much.  We have developed a

> set of adult learning standards that define the full range of skills

> and knowledge that adults need to be successful in their roles as

> workers, citizens, parents and family members.  We have developed and

> refined a standards-based approach to instruction and assessment that

> helps teachers focus more sharply on student goals and the skills and

> knowledge students need to achieve them.  We have developed a training

> certification system that helps states integrate these new tools into

> their own professional development and program improvement systems.

> And we have created an assessment framework for the standards that

> promises to lead to a new generation of assessments that really help

> us measure what students know and can do.  In December, we produced a

> work readiness profile that will be the basis for our new work

> readiness assessment tool. And just last month we hosted a meeting of

> EFF states and assessment publishers to encourage the development of

> assessments aligned with EFF standards.

>

> In 1996 when we began the standards development process we estimated

> that by 2004 the development work would be completed, and we would be

> ready to turn our attention to implementation of system reform. Thanks

> to the commitment and investment of time and resources of all our

> partners we have actually achieved that ambitious goal.  We really do

> have a set of field-developed, standards-based tools that programs and

> states can use to improve the quality and results of our adult

> learning system.  I am amazed and exhilarated at what we have

> accomplished together, and the ways in which these accomplishments

> have already helped us move forward.  I can.t wait to see what's next!

>

> While I am leaving NIFL, I'm not quite ready to leave EFF. Next month

> the states that are partners with NIFL in the creation of an EFF Work

> Readiness Credential will take over management of the project from

> NIFL, and they have asked me to continue to work with them until the

> credential is completed in 2005.  I also expect to stay involved in an

> advisory capacity with the EFF Center for Training and Technical

> Assistance, which now has a very strong independent base at the Center

> for Literacy Studies, University of Tennessee.

>

> Most of all, I hope to have a little more time to tend to my garden

> and my husband, to travel for pleasure instead of work, and to take on

> new projects.

>

> I look forward to continuing to work with you.  Starting April 1, 2004

> you can reach me at my home email sondragay at aol.com

> <mailto:sondragay at aol.com>  or at 202-271-7163.

>

> Sincerely,

>

> Sondra

>

>

>

> Sondra Stein, PhD.

> National Director, Equipped for the Future

> Senior Research Associate,

> National Institute for Literacy

> 1775 I St NW, Suite 730

> Washington, DC 20006

> Ph: 202-233-2041

> Fax: 202-233-2050

> www.nifl.gov/lincs/collections/eff/eff.html

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