Expanding the role of community colleges in adult school programs

Jesus Lupian works on a framing project in his carpentry class in San Jose, California. Photograph by Neil Hanshaw.

As school districts throughout California make major cuts or consider abandoning their adult schools, advocates for adult instruction programs are searching for ways to prevent their demise, including a possible heightened office for community colleges.

According to an EdSource report released today, At Risk: Adult Schools in California, 23 of the land's xxx largest districts have fabricated major cuts to their adult education programs since the beginning of the Bang-up Recession, including Anaheim Wedlock High Schoolhouse Commune, which eliminated its 73-year-erstwhile program in 2010–eleven. Only 1 district — Montebello Unified — reported no change. (The full EdSource study tin can be downloaded here.)

But last Friday, the Los Angeles Unified School District — which has a $138-million developed education plan — negotiated an interim agreement with spousal relationship negotiators, and backed away from the threat of terminating its developed schoolhouse plan entirely. Only the commune is yet planning on making significant cutbacks.

In a report issued before this year, the Lilliputian Hoover Commission, the independent country oversight bureau, recommended that customs colleges take over all adult education programs in the state.

Currently, community colleges run about a quarter of these programs, which include classes in English language as a 2nd Language (ESL), high school diploma/GED grooming, career-tech, basic reading and writing, citizenship, and parenting. The rest are managed past school districts, which since February 2009 have had the flexibility to use adult education funds to run into K–12 needs.

"With this flexible funding, we see those adult schoolhouse students being lost in the shuffle," said Stuart Drown, executive director of the Little Hoover Commission. "Community colleges are in a amend position to help them – they accept a pale in the effect."

Nigh ninety pct of all incoming community college students arrive unprepared for college-level math, while about 75 percent are not prepare for college-level English language, according to the commission's February 2022 report, Serving Students, Serving California: Updating the California Community Colleges to Meet Evolving Demands.

In the executive summary of its written report, based on a series of hearings held in 2011, the commission argues:

The community college arrangement explicitly states that basic instruction is one of its key missions and, as many of these students keep to take more community college classes, the organisation has a directly pale in having these students exercise well.

Colleges not only sympathize the need to prepare those adults, but they also know what college-level courses require, Drown said. "They have an incentive to do a skillful chore (with these older students)," he said. "Grand–12 districts don't have the same incentive."

Other advocates for adult education support keeping the programs under the jurisdiction of school districts. Assembly Beak 18, introduced past Assemblymember Julia Brownley, D-Santa Monica, the chairperson of the Assembly Didactics Committee, would restore funding for adult education every bit a separate "categorical program" so that funds previously designated for adult educational activity could non be spent on K–12 programs as is currently the instance.

The Little Hoover Commission's Drown said that finding the funding to implement its recommendation for an expanded role for community colleges would be a major claiming. He would like the state to allocate those funds previously earmarked for developed pedagogy programs in school districts to community colleges. But many districts accept already absorbed the funds to support their K–12 program, making it difficult to extricate them.

"We don't dispute that it would exist difficult," Drown said. "But it is a smart fashion to invest that money. It's the way to spend what petty there is nigh efficiently."

Currently 3 of the 30 largest school districts — San Francisco, Santa Ana, and San Diego — rely on community colleges to serve adult education students. San Diego does offer a high schoolhouse diploma preparation program, but San Diego Community Higher District provides the rest of the adult school classes.

Drown pointed to successful community college adult pedagogy programs, such as City College of San Francisco, which offers classes in 150 different locations throughout the city. The majority of City College students began as developed instruction students, according to Leslie Smith, acquaintance vice chancellor of Governmental Relations at City College.

"When nosotros call back most the health of the college, we demand adult education students," she said. "And if y'all are looking on a long-term basis nigh really serving your community, how practice you do it if you don't have adult education classes?"

Drown admitted that with public education at all levels facing state upkeep cuts, it is a hard time to launch a new policy proposal, fifty-fifty if the thought makes sense.

"Adult education is extraordinarily important and has to exist preserved," Drown said. "Legislators are aware of this and volition become more aware as more than districts cut adult didactics. They told us, let's start slowly with the campuses that want to do it. Build on positive examples such equally City Higher of San Francisco and San Diego Community Higher."

With the current state upkeep proposal keeping adult education funding for school districts flexible, it is not articulate if the commission'due south recommendation volition exist able to be implemented even on a express basis.

"Sometimes information technology takes years for ideas to accept hold," Drown said. "The first thing you take to practice is get the idea out there on the table."

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Source: https://edsource.org/2012/expanding-the-role-of-community-colleges-in-adult-school-programs/16887