Adult literacy learners in contemporary context: "education debt," unpaid

The publicly-funded adult literacy system constitutes the largest network of available adult basic education (ABE) programs (Beder, 1991). However, since the 1998 Workforce Investment Act (WIA) instituted accountability measures related to ABE students’ standardized test performance and their rapid acquisition of jobs, researchers and practitioners have been concerned that programs were implicitly being forced to limit program access for adults who have difficulty with reading, among whom students of color are disproportionately concentrated (Beder, 1999; Comings, 2007; Condelli, 2007; Pickard, 2016). With the 2014 Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act’s added emphasis on rapid transition of adult literacy students into post-secondary education, this concern has intensified (Pickard, 2016). This ethnographic study explored the experiences of learners enrolled in a publicly-funded ABE class targeted to adults who have difficulty reading and examined the relationship between the federal policies that fund and regulate adult literacy programs and these learners’ classroom experiences. Findings include that learners in this class encountered significant barriers of access to public literacy programs, were exposed to deficit-based programmatic practices that possibly worsened their educational marginalization, and had their cultural and personal strengths largely ignored during classroom instruction. Furthermore, it was observed that the pressures of federal accountability policy activated or deepened these practitioners’ deficit beliefs about learners. Critical race theory (CRT) methodology (Solórzano & Yosso, 2002) was used to construct counter-stories that focus on learners’ strengths and to imagine opportunities for adult literacy instruction that are grounded in learner assets, rather than driven by deficit beliefs. Ladson-Billings (2006) argued that there is an “education debt” owed to racially minoritized students in the U.S., rooted in the highly discriminatory “historical, economic, sociopolitical, and moral decisions and policies” (p.5) that shape our society and our educational systems. Similarly, the literacy issues of adults who have difficulty reading have been influenced by a multitude of complex, interwoven sociopolitical and educational factors. This study found that participation in a publicly-funded adult literacy class left the education debt owed to these learners largely unpaid.Ph.D.Includes bibliographical referencesby Amy Pickar