Dear Colleagues, 
I'm pleased to announce the following Guest Panel Discussion, which will
be held during the week of February 2 though 6, 2009.  Please read the
introduction below and consider the information presented.  What are
your experiences, thoughts, and questions on transitioning adult
students to higher levels of learning and/or employment?
Topic: 
Strategies for Addressing Transitions in Adult Basic Education
Guest Participants: 
Forrest Chisman, Council for Advancement of Adult Literacy (CAAL), NY
Tom Mechem, GED State Chief Examiner, Commonwealth of MA
Wendy Quinones, Community Learning Center, Cambridge, MA
Cynthia Zafft, National College Transition Network, Boston, MA
 
Introduction:
 
Transitioning adult students through the stages of their educational
experience is a challenging process.  In today's society in particular,
successful transition from adult literacy classes to community college
and beyond, and on to the workforce, can mean the difference between
achieving one's potential and struggling to get by.  Needless to say,
for service providers, it's clear that we must focus attention on the
process of successful transition from one education program to another.

 
This discussion focuses on several different efforts to address the
thorny issues of transitions - ABE and ESOL students to GED, GED to
post-secondary and/or job training.  While we will concentrate on
assessment-related issues such as measuring application and transfer of
skills, we welcome discussing issues in general that affect, or are
affected by, transitions.  
 
Collaboration among service providers is one such area that greatly
affects the success or not of a transitions process.  In his research on
transitions, Forrest Chisman discovered how one community college worked
toward better understanding and collaboration among ESL and ABE/ASE
faculty; see the case study on Yakima Valley Community College listed
below.
 
As a college placement test, the ACCUPLACER has its plusses and minuses.
Massachusetts Chief GED Examiner Tom Mechem has pinpointed that the
correlations between the GED and the ACCUPLACER math scores are dubious
at best, and that the tests' purposes seem to be at odds.  To address
this issue, Tom is developing a curriculum that can be used with both
the GED and the ACCUPLACER.  See his story below.
 
The National College Transition Network (NCTN) brings together the
various efforts of educators, professional development providers, policy
makers, and researchers concerned with effective college transitions to
postsecondary education for GED, ASE, and ESOL graduates and other
non-traditional learners (from the website, URL below).  Cynthia Zafft's
work with NCTN led her to identify five models of college transition
programs, which are outlined in the NCSALL Occasional Paper
Transitioning adults to college: Adult Basic Education program models
(URL below).  Cynthia will discuss these program models with us.  
 
Wendy Quinones will give us an overview of the transitions program she
is involved in at the Community Learning Center in Cambridge,
Massachusetts.  She has noted the often striking differences between
ESOL and ABE students in terms of their strengths and weaknesses, and
suggests some resources that have helped her navigate these turbulent
waters, such as the Assessment Strategies and Reading Profiles website
(URL below).  In addition, Wendy notes the following observations from
John Strucker's work on patterns of reading (from What Silent Reading
Tests Alone Can't Tell You: Two Case Studies in Adult Reading
Differences; URL below):   
Native speakers tended to have relatively stronger "meaning-based
skills" as compared to "print-based skills," while non-native speakers
exhibited the opposite pattern. Chall (1991) reported similar findings. 
Many second-language speakers in ABE classes had surprisingly low levels
of oral vocabulary in English (GE 2 to GE 4), despite their fluent
levels of conversational English. Similarly low levels of oral
vocabulary occurred among some inner-city young adults who were native
speakers. 
Recommended preparations for this discussion:
Torchlights in ESL:  Five Community College Profiles
http://caalusa.org/torchlights.pdf
See Yakima Valley Community College for description of how the ESL and
ABE/ASE faculty collaborate
 
*****
 
ACCUPLACER
http://www.collegeboard.com/student/testing/accuplacer/
 
GED and ACCUPLACER by Tom Mechem
I've spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to get more people to
pass the GED tests and earn their GED diplomas, but of course it is now
very clear that without at least some post-secondary education, we are
still sentencing even our GED grads to a life of poverty. And the
statistics (though they vary somewhat depending on whom you talk to)
concerning the success of GED grads in college are alarming. 
 
To start with, only 7% of ABE students even obtain the GED diploma, so
the ABE programs aren't doing the job there (and I don't like to lose
sight of the importance of the GED: there is no "Post-Secondary" without
"Secondary"). But then:
 
*        Only 12% of GED grads ever enroll in college
 
Of those:
*        Less than 1 in 5 completes two years of college
*        4% ever complete four years of college
 
That's no good. In our state (and I know it's true everywhere) community
college developmental courses are a major culprit: if someone has to
take more than one developmental course, he or she almost certainly will
never earn even an Associate's degree. And 2/3 or more of GED grads end
up in at least one developmental course. 
 
So the un-indicted co-conspirator is the college placement test, in our
state the ACCUPLACER. GED grads in Massachusetts do fine on the Reading
ACCUPLACER (better than the average incoming CC cohort) and well enough
on the Writing (about the same). But on the Math ACCUPLACER, GED grads
do much, much worse than the total incoming CC cohort. As it is on the
GED test itself, Math is the problem on the ACCUPLACER.  Furthermore,
there is absolutely no correlation between a GED math score and an
ACCUPLACER math score: the philosophies and purposes of the two tests
are so different (as I document in detail in one of my presentations)
that never the twain shall meet.
 
I have taken the ACCUPLACER test many, many times, and I am trying to
develop an ABE-GED curriculum that will prepare a student to pass the
GED tests and also to do well enough on the ACCUPLACER to avoid
developmental courses. I've been having some great meetings with all
kinds of GED teachers, but we're not there yet.
 
*****
 
National College Transition Network
http://www.collegetransition.org/
 
Zafft, C., Kallenbach, S., & Spohn, J. (2006).  
Transitioning adults to college: Adult Basic Education program models.  
Occasional Paper.  Cambridge, MA: National Center for the Study of Adult
Learning and Literacy. 
http://www.ncsall.net/fileadmin/resources/research/op_collegetransitions
.pdf 
 
*****
 
Assessment Strategies and Reading Profiles (ASRP)
http://www.nifl.gov/readingprofiles/ 
 
Strucker, John. (May 1997). 
What Silent Reading Tests Alone Can't Tell You: Two Case Studies in
Adult Reading Differences. 
Focus on Basics, Volume 2, Issue A.  Cambridge, MA: National Center for
the Study of Adult Learning and Literacy.  
 <http://www.ncsall.net/?id=456> http://www.ncsall.net/?id=456  
 
Resources of interest:
Challenges in <http://www.caalusa.org/content/assessmentmellard.pdf>
Assessing for Post-Secondary Readiness
Policy Brief
by Daryl F. Mellard and Gretchen Anderson 
Division of Adult Studies, Center for Research on Learning, University
of Kansas
December 4, 2007 
This Policy Brief examines the major assessments in use today to measure
adult learning gains and determine student placements - e.g., BEST,
CASAS, TABE, COMPASS, ASSET, and ACCUPLACER - in terms of their uses and
how they well they align with postsecondary education entry
requirements. Special attention is given to the GED. The authors
identify several problems and challenges as well as recommendations to
resolve them.
Transitions: Linkages <http://www.caalusa.org/publications.html#trans>
between Adult Education and Community Colleges
Multiple resources from CAAL (Council for Advancement of Adult Literacy)
Transitions to Post-Secondary <http://www.ncsall.net/index.php?id=106>
Education
Multiple resources from NCSALL (National Center for the Study of Adult
Learning and Literacy). 
Guest Bios:
 
Forrest P. Chisman is Vice President of the Council for the Advancement
of Adult Literacy and has been an independent consultant in the fields
of human resource development, health care, and philanthropy. From
1988-1997, he was President of the Southport Institute for Policy
Analysis, and prior to that he was Director of the Project on the
Federal Social Role. From 1977-81, he was Deputy Administrator for
Policy of the National Telecommunications and Information
Administration. Previously he was Director of The Aspen Institute's
Program on Communications and Society, and Senior Program Officer of the
John and Mary Markle Foundation. He received his BA from Harvard and his
doctorate from Oxford. He is the author of numerous books, articles, and
reports on a wide range of public policy issues.
 
A lifelong teacher, Tom Mechem spent the 12 years prior to coming to the
DOE as coordinator of and teacher in several highly-successful GED
preparation programs in the Boston area, most recently at LARE training
in Chelsea MA. Appointed GED State Chief Examiner in 2001, Tom has been
charged with overseeing the operation of the 32 official GED test
centers in Massachusetts and with improving the passing rate of GED
testers. To this end he has developed and delivered workshops and
presentations for teachers and program directors as to precisely what
skill sets are needed to pass each of the five GED tests. These
workshops are based on statistical information received from the GED
Testing Service, on the profiles of Massachusetts non-passers, on input
from teachers in the field, and on the latest research.
 
Wendy Quinones teaches at the Community Learning Center in Cambridge,
Massachusetts and at Urban College in Boston. In over 20 years of
teaching ABE learners at levels from intermediate through college, she
has continually faced the issues of students transitioning from ESOL
into ABE. She was a teacher-researcher in the three-year Adult Multiple
Intelligences study through NCSALL and has given many trainings on this
topic. She is also very interested in using distance learning for
professional development in ABE. Wendy holds the Massachusetts ABE
Teacher License.
 
Cynthia Zafft is the Senior Advisor and former director of the National
College Transition Network (NCTN) at World Education in Boston.  The
NCTN was created in 2004 to connect practitioners, researchers, and
policy-makers interested in developing and supporting the emerging field
of transition-to-college and postsecondary education for learners in
adult education.  Currently, Cynthia is the Curriculum Director for the
Health Care Learning Network (HCLN; http://www.hcln.org
<http://www.hcln.org/> ), an online curriculum for frontline workers and
community members interested in preparing for one of the many
challenging health care career college programs.  As part of a model of
support, online course work in reading, writing, math, and science is
combined with tutoring and career coaching to help employers "grow their
own" nurses and other health care professionals.  Cynthia is currently
completing her doctoral education in Higher Education Administration at
the University of Massachusetts at Boston.  Her dissertation topic is
transition to postsecondary education, particularly focusing on "college
readiness" for adults. 
  
  
 
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