2019 Annual Conference

Adult Basic Education and Literacy Education

Shared Concurrent Session (Approx. 12 or 20 minutes)

In this session, we will present data and analysis from an ongoing case study of five states and the impact of WIOA on the educational services they provide to adults identified as basic-level readers.

The target audience for this session consists of researchers and practitioners who are interested in the impact of federal policy on local adult basic education practice and the current landscape of available services for adults who have difficulty reading.

Session attendees will be able to describe what participants in our study (state directors, program administrators, and teachers) have identified as the policy-related changes in service for adults identified as basic level readers.

In 2016, adults who were identified as having difficulty with basic reading tasks made up approximately 50% of the adult basic education student population nationally (Pickard, 2016). However, the passage of the 1998 WIA legislation and its update, the 2014 WIOA, increased local accountability to federal aims and shifted the focus of the field away from literacy as variously contextualized in learners’ lives to literacy as preparation for employment (Belzer, 2017; Belzer & Kim, 2018). Because of the potential for adults with difficulty reading to show slow progress in an accountability-driven environment, we theorize that WIA/WIOA may have caused a shift in the availability of services to these adults, as well as a reduction in the type of services available. Therefore, we are conducting a case study of five states to develop a broader understanding of the impact of WIA/WIOA on educational services to these adults. Since policy changes can take a few years to be enacted on the ground, this research is well-timed to explore trends in state and program responses to the 2014 WIOA.

This session will be organized as a PowerPoint presentation and discussion of early findings and questions provoked by preliminary data analysis.