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Synergy January 2003 |
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Inside (in this order) |
The Power of Participation and Goal Attainment Dr. Fran Tracy-Mumford Director, Adult Education, DOE
At the state level, we conducted an analysis on FY2002 enrollments in Adult Basic Education, GED, and English as a Second Language participants yielding several interesting pieces of information about learner outcomes at a state level. Joanne Heaphy once again produced four special reports of NRS Tables with information about number of participants, level completers, participant separations before completing a goal, and goal completers (from NRS Tables 5 and 11) at key points. The key points related to hours of participation – 25 hours, 50 hours, 75 hours, and 100 hours. |
What Do the Data Tell Us?
As we know, there are no federal or state laws that require our learners to attend our programs. Even when adults are mandated to participate in education by the courts, there is not necessarily the motivation to participate. Adults stay in our programs when they reap rewards in their lives. The data show that our students are reaping rewards. |
Enrollment by Hours of Participation
Number of Hours Participants % of Total
|
25 hours |
4,152 100% |
|
50 hours |
2,830 68% |
|
75 hours |
2,002 48% |
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100 hours |
1,539 37% |
Approximately one-third of our students attend 100 or more hours; one-half attend 75 or more hours. Almost 70% of all students remain with us long enough to achieve a level gain and as many as 90% who set a goal attain that goal. As students increase their hours of participation, level completions also increase. The number of students leaving the program prior to meeting a goal also decreases with increased hours of participation. Over half of the students who have been with us for 100 hours have earned at least one CEA. At the ABE Beginning Literacy level, 71% of the learners attain a level completion. |
Participants of Levels
Number of Hours |
Level Completions % Range |
Separations before Completing a Level % Range |
25 hours |
36% 21 – 52% |
16% 7 – 28% |
50 hours |
45% 27 – 63% |
12% 0 – 24% |
75 hours |
49% 30 – 68% |
11% 0 – 23% |
100 hours |
52% 30 – 71% |
11% 0 – 23% |
Student Goals
Goal |
Percent Achieving 25 hours 50 hours |
Goals 75 hours 100 hours |
Entered Employment |
76% 79% |
81% 82% |
Retained Employment |
81% 85% |
89% 90% |
Obtained GED/HS Diploma |
27% 28% |
29% 31% |
Placed in Postsecondary or Training |
69% 74% |
79% 80% |
Left Public Assistance |
17% 19% |
13% 14% |
Achieved Citizenship Skills |
38% 49% |
56% 59% |
Increased Involvement in Child’s Education |
75% 80% |
83% 86% |
Increased Involvement in Child’s Literacy Activities |
68% 76% |
76% 77% |
Voted or Registered to Vote |
38% 40% |
42% 44% |
Increased Involvement in Community Activities |
79% 81% |
83% 83% |
% with a Goal |
113% 119% |
120% 120% |
As students persist in program participation, the greater the likelihood is that they will enter employment, retain employment, obtain a GED/high school diploma, enroll in postsecondary education or further training, learn citizenship skills, become involved in their children’s education/learning, vote, and become involved in the community. A critical outcome is noted in the number of students who enroll in further training or other learning activities. Logic suggests that students should do better the longer they remain in our programs. This analysis demonstrates the type of goal attainment our students should expect.
Once again, the message rings true for Delaware learners of the power of goals. Goals are the motivation that bring our students to our programs and the motivation to keep our students in our program. If you want to help your students succeed, help them to set educational goals and then meet with them regularly to encourage and support them in achieving their goals.
IES URGES SBR (EBR and EBP) PDQ; NCSALL-CPPR AND EFF PROJECTS JIT for DE Beth Cady and Lillian Bryant
Huh? What?
We don’t know whom to worry about more: the people who understand this headline or those who don’t. We feel confident, though, that before you know it, these acronyms – or at least most of them – will become part of the basic jargon in the field of Adult Education and Family Literacy. Like all good Adult Ed people, let’s start with what we know. Anyone unfamiliar with PDQ deserves instant recognition for establishing a track record of timeliness. Those familiar with modern manufacturing will know “JIT,” or just-in-time, means that materials are available just when you need them. EFF, Equipped For the Future, is a national and state initiative that provides a framework for “what adults need to know and be able to do in the 21st century.”
IES, SBR, EBR, EBP, NCSALL, and CPPR may be less familiar. These acronyms share as common ground educational research, an otherwise dry field that has grown new life under the Bush Administration. For the President and his cadre of policymakers, practice that reflects scientifically-based research (SBR) is the added ingredient that will transform educational reform from fad to fact. SBR will lead to reading instruction based on evidence (EBR) and general education practice, again based on practice (EBP). So convinced are they that this is the case that Russ Whitehurst, director of the Institute of Education Sciences (which replaced OERI, Office of Educational Research and Improvement), warned state officials that the U.S. Department of Education will fund only literacy programs that pass SBR scrutiny. To make sure his point was made, he commented on the quality of evidence cited to validate curriculum or practice. He named “randomized trial” as the gold standard, followed by (in descending order of validity) comparison groups, before-and-after comparisons, correlation studies, case studies, and anecdotes. “All evidence is not created equal,” he explained. “The plural of anecdotes is not evidence.” I hope that explains the first part of the headline. As for the just-in-time research going on in Delaware, just read on. Delaware’s Role in CPPR Initiative
Delaware’s Adult Education and Family Literacy programs will help answer questions about Connecting Policy, Practice, and Research (CPPR). The CPPR initiative is a collaboration of NCSALL, the National Institute for Literacy, and other organizations. Its goal is to establish a national system that, by linking researchers, policymakers, and practitioners, will maximize the investment in research for all stakeholders. Delaware, along with New Mexico and Louisiana, is partnering with CPPR to examine products and professional development activities that will support access, understanding, evaluation, and use of research. Like Louisiana, Delaware has decided to focus on contextual teaching and learning. What makes Delaware’s role unique is the integration of CPPR’s mission into our existing research to practice dissemination model. Over the course of several months, Dr. Fran Tracy-Mumford, Director of Adult Education, has worked with ABE Administrators and statewide staff to chart the flow of communication for policy, curriculum, research, and other items. Research deemed relevant to Delaware’s mission and goals can surface in the Request for Proposals (RFP), the monitoring instrument, or be incorporated into curricula. NCSALL researchers Beth Bingaman and Cristine Smith will meet with ABE Administrators at their regular monthly meeting in January 2003. Half the day will be devoted to sharing research findings; the other half to examining the impact of the research on instruction and program design. There will also be a session on contextual teaching and learning at the DAACE conference in March.
EFF READING PROJECT Equipped for the Future and the Partnership for Reading have teamed up with the National Center for Family Literacy to create a training package to support family literacy programs in integrating evidence-based reading instruction into Equipped for the Future’s approach to teaching and learning. Eight states were selected to participate in the pilot project. Delaware was selected as a team member of the East Coast cohort. The East Coast team will explore programmatic and classroom issues related to providing evidence-based reading instruction through approaches that use life-based tasks encompassing parents’ experiences and goals. Each state has instructional and administrative staff from a family literacy program and a state-level representative who will work with the program on the implementation. Equipped for the Future’s Reading Project Committee will provide on-site technical assistance to participating states.
In Delaware, Manchester Literacy Center, a family literacy project of Appoquinimink Even Start, will serve as the pilot site. The program has established a Family Literacy Team Action Plan as well as Individual Action Plans for implementation of the project. Amy Trawick, Coordinator of the Reading Project, has visited Delaware, providing technical assistance to the project. According to Mrs. Trawick, “Delaware has come a long way in the fulfillment of their action plans and have actually experienced some pleasant unexpected outcomes.” Upon the completion of the project, a training module and model to support family literacy programs will be made available nationally. The model will address developing standards-based instruction in family literacy programs and the module will include materials developed in the field by practitioners. Materials are expected to be available in Fall 2003.
More
About Our Partner The National Center
for the Study of Adult Learning and Literacy (NCSALL, pronounced nick-saul)
is a federally-funded research and development center focused solely on
adult learning. Harvard University Graduate School of Education, World
Education, Rutgers University, Portland State University in Oregon, and
the Center for Literacy Studies at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville
are its partners.
Contents Plagiarism Sally Reynolds
Donald L. McCabe surveyed American high school students to determine the extent of cheating. His findings, reported in Students Cheating in American High School, indicate that “cheating is widespread and the Internet is raising new questions [in the area of cheating].”
According to McCabe, “72% [of the students surveyed] reported more than one instance of serious cheating on written work and more than 30% admitted to repetitive, serious cheating on tests/exams.” McCabe also noted “15% [of the students responding] submitted a paper obtained in large part from a term paper mill or website.” This unauthorized use of another’s ideas, thoughts, words, and/or structure is plagiarism. Most students understand that copying large sections of material from a classmate or having someone do their work is plagiarism. The scope of plagiarism is much larger than this. Michael Harvey, a professor at Washington College, states in Nuts and Bolts of College Writing that plagiarism includes not only the obvious “quoting material without attribution,” but also “passing off another’s ideas as your own, even if reworded, imitating a passage’s structure or argument without attribution, and concealing the extent…of borrowed [material] from a text or other sources.”
Purdue University’s online writing lab states that plagiarism “undermines academic integrity” of the student (Owl). Most students do not deliberately set out to plagiarize. A large majority simply do not understand the extent of the plagiarism umbrella. However, the results are the same whether deliberate or unintentional: the ideas of one person are attributed to someone else (Owl). “It’s like lip-synching to someone else’s voice and accepting the applause and rewards for yourself” (Owl).
Most experts in the field agree on how to avoid plagiarism. Instructors need to teach what plagiarism is. Students should also be trained in good note-taking techniques so they can devise a system to record resources, page numbers, and differentiate between quoted material and summary notes. Specific lessons on how to document borrowed material must be offered. Robert Harris in his online article, Anti-Plagiarism Strategies for Research Papers, adds several additional points to avoid plagiarism. Instructors should establish “clear penalties” for plagiarism. The guidelines may be part of classroom rules or may be set by the school. “Make assignments clear. Be specific about your expectations.” If resources are mandatory for the assignment, “require specific components.” (For example; term paper requires three resources, one of which needs to be offline, etc.) Establish specific due dates for “various steps” in the writing process. Finally, require “up-to-date resources.” Papers bought and sold are usually old, so their resources will often be over five years old. Harris states that even for English or history topics at least one or two resources of a recent date should be provided.
The quantity of material on the Internet and the amount of people who use it has grown substantially over the last few years. With the ease of retrieving Internet information, plagiarism is much easier. Whether a student is copying material from texts, paying another student to write the assignment, or cutting and pasting Internet articles, the result is the same. It is very important that the student and the teacher be educated on what plagiarism is and how to avoid it.
Resources: Harris, Robert. “Anti-Plagiarism Strategies for Research Papers.” Mar 7, 2002. Dec. 2, 2002. <http://www.virtualsalt.com/antplag.htm>. Harvey, Michael. The Nuts and Bolts of College Writing. July 18, 2002. Dec 3,2002. <http://www.nutsandboltsguide.com/plagiarism.html>. McCabe, Donald. Students Cheating in American High Schools. May 2001. Dec.2, 2002. <http://www.academicintegrity.org/hs02.asp>.
Owl Online Writing Lab. “Plagiarism.” 10/3/2002. 10/2/2002. <http://owl.english.purdue.edu/workshops/hypertext/ ResearchW/plag.html>. Contents Prison Adult Education A Wise Investment Maureen Whelan If you have ever caught yourself asking the question “why should my tax dollars be spent on educating inmates?” a recent study suggests that your money is well spent on correctional education. The Three State Recidivism Study completed in September, 2001 examines the effect of education on 3,200 inmates released from Maryland, Minnesota, and Ohio in 1997/98. For those of you not familiar with prison terminology, recidivism measures the number of inmates who re-enter the criminal justice system after their release from prison. The purpose of this study was to determine the impact of education received during incarceration on post release behavior, namely employment and recidivism. The study was conducted by Dr. Steve Steurer, Dr. Linda Smith, and Dr. Alice Tracy for the Correctional Education Association. You may remember Dr. Steurer as one of the DAACE Conference speakers in 2001. Data was gathered from numerous sources including a Pre-Release Survey completed by inmates; criminal history and educational data collected from various state agencies; a Parole/Release Officer Survey documenting behavioral, educational, and employment data on designated inmates; and federal Department of Justice statistics. The study, which was conducted over a three year time span, also examined other demographic variables that can impact recidivism. For example, the younger an inmate is upon release, the higher the risk of returning to prison. If an inmate is married, has a family, and can financially support his/her family, the risk of recidivism is lower. Having a steady job prior to incarceration also reduces the risk of re-entering the prison system. Not surprising, though, prior criminal history increases the risk of criminal activity as does involvement with family members or friends who have a criminal history. While the actual study contains pages of statistics and explanations of the study design, the conclusion is clear. The inmates who participated in education while imprisoned exhibited lower rates of recidivism and gained employment in higher paying jobs than the inmates who did not participate in correctional education. The authors concluded that more correctional education services are needed since correctional education is both “ a rehabilitative as well as a crime reduction tool”. As a result of the study, the authors also noted that vocational education/job readiness instruction increases an inmate’s ability to re-enter the workplace and that victim impact classes and cognitive skills development assist an inmate in realizing the negative impact of criminal behavior. While the authors cautioned that the results of this study could not be generalized to all states due to differences in individual state statutes, sentencing guidelines, and data collection techniques, they did maintain that correctional education seems to be a “wise” investment in any state. Here in Delaware for FY 2002, The Prison Adult Education Program served over 1,900 inmates and achieved over 1350 educational outcomes. We, too, believe that Prison Education is a “wise” investment. Contents NRS Lesson Plans Joanne Heaphy During the summer, the Office of Vocational and Adult Education (OVAE) of the U.S. Department of Education hosted four regional trainings on improving the quality of National Reporting System (NRS) data. One of the topics addressed in our region was “How does the audience use the data?” Given the range of “audiences,” the responses were varied. The one that caught my eye was use of NRS data in a lesson plan about funding cuts. Let me repeat: teachers are using NRS data in instruction. The statistical information gathered about students can be used to construct an excellent lesson on charts and graphs. Imagine a classroom of students understanding their class group dynamics based on the demographic information of ethnicity, gender, and age (found on NRS Tables #1 and 2). Imagine students creating and interpreting graphs and charts done in Excel!
For many students, setting a goal and understanding the steps to achieving a goal is a learning process. Each student must set two goals; many students in one classroom will have the same, if not similar, goals. Contextualizing student learning activities to their goals will enhance their learning process and increase the progress toward goal achievement. For example, a group of students have selected the NRS goal of increased involvement in children’s education. Writing instruction would focus effective communication with the school, providing the students with a practical tool. Students would write permission slips, notes about absences, or formal and informal letters to teachers and school administrators. The NRS does seem to have some valuable lessons we may have overlooked. If you can think of other NRS-based lesson plans, please email them to: jmheaphy@yahoo.com. Your ideas or suggestions will be shared at the Administrators’ monthly meetings. If you would like more information about the National Reporting System –the demographic information gathered or what NRS and state goals are, please contact your program administrator. Reference: http://www.air.org/nrs/traininginfo/notes_washington.pdf
Contents Verifications Change (Slightly) for CEAs Paul Hughey and Beth Cady Beginning in mid-February, portfolio requirements for the CEAs will change. At the L1 and L2 levels, a new format has been introduced for the alphabetized list. Instead of words appearing in a list, they are in boxes that appear more random on the page. This formatting change is actually part of a bigger initiative to standardize the format of all assessment tools developed by the state. The random placement also simulates a real-life application. Although the requirement to “alphabetize” predetermines a way to organize material, the final product allows students to learn (and teachers to teach) the strategies that can be used. The three-sentence, handwritten message previously required in the CEA2 portfolio has been relocated to the CEA1. Its placement in CEA1 represents a more continuous development from the L1 level’s three sentences to L2's three related sentences and now, three sentences about a specific matter. The other significant change at the CEA1 level is that the “friendly letter” format is no longer the required vehicle for a second paragraph. Too often, the paragraph requirements were being lost in the casual writing style that is associated with friendly letters. The format may still be used; the letter must demonstrate the verification requirement, namely, that a paragraph in such a letter has a topic sentence and supporting detail. The CEA2 portfolio will require two essays, at least one of which uses the comparison/contrast rhetorical strategy. The business letter requirement has been further clarified by making it about a job search. New writing requirements will be the primary focus for the ABE training that will take place February 4 at the ACE Network, February 10 at Marshallton, and February 13 at Sussex Tech. All trainings are scheduled from 5 - 8 p.m. To register, contact Beth Cady at the ACE Network by phone at 302-739-5556 or, preferably, by email, acedir@yahoo.com.
A book has been described as a present you get to open over and over again. Thanks to Lillian Bryant, DCL, and the OAASIS workers, the children of Adult Ed students will be receiving books this holiday season. Among the many hats on Lillian Bryant’s head is DCL Board member. The Delaware Coalition for Literacy, a non-profit organization, has, as part of its mission, raising literacy awareness throughout the state. Lillian contacted the National Book Bank on behalf of Delaware’s children. The National Book Bank is an outgrowth of the First Book initiative. Publishers donate new books to the Bank which then distributes them to national and local non-profits that serve low income families. DCL was able to secure more than 2,000 books that were delivered in late November. In the meantime, OAASIS solicited wrapping materials and volunteer wrappers. It all came together on December 7 in Dover with a massive “wrap-in.” By day’s end, more that 1,100 gift sets were ready to go. Many hands make light work; many hearts add the glow. Many thanks to all who supported this project.
Short Takes
• Congrats to new AAACE President, Dr. Fran Tracy-Mumford
• OAASIS Legislative Dinner is January 15. Remember, when the people lead, the leaders will follow!
• Articles welcome for Synergy, due 3/1.
• Back to the Future is the theme for the 2003 DAACE conference. Will you be there?
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