Evolution of Adult Education

Complete report

The notion that an educated citizenry is essential both to democracy and to a healthy economy is as old as the republic. At Valley Forge, General George Washington recruited chaplains to teach Continental troops to read. During the Civil War, the Union Army organized literacy instruction for thousands of freed slaves.

As early as the 1800s, some states offered publicly funded adult-education classes to help wave after wave of immigrants learn English and acquire basic skills, in hopes of further expanding the nation’s economy. During the Great Depression of the 1930s, the Works Projects Administration and other training efforts were key to rebuilding economic strength.

But it wasn’t until the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964, a linchpin of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s signature War on Poverty initiative, that the federal Adult Basic Education program was established and funds were directed to states to expand efforts to reach illiterate and unskilled adults as well as high school dropouts.

“For the one million young men and women who are out of school and who are out of work, this program will permit us to take them off the streets, put them into work training programs, to prepare them for productive lives, not wasted lives,” Johnson said. “It will help those small businessmen who live on the borderline of poverty. It will help the unemployed heads of families maintain their skills and learn new skills.”

Today, many ABE programs, like Rochester’s, are run by the local K–12 school district, but academic courses and career training are frequently lumped together with offerings as disparate as driver’s ed, recreational community-education classes, and preschool. Teachers are often part time, classrooms ad hoc, and data on outcomes rudimentary.

And, even more than K–12 and higher education, the workforce-preparation sector has historically involved an array of often-competing interest groups, including business, labor unions, nonprofit organizations, colleges and universities, and advocates for people with disabilities. Federal oversight has been divided between two departments—Education and Labor—without coordinated attention paid to outcomes.

In short, adult education hasn’t grown up...