Start with the basic facts:

U.S. budget cuts 75% of adult education funds
Monday, May 23, 2005
By Karen MacPherson, Post-Gazette National Bureau

WASHINGTON — Pennsylvania faces a 75 percent cut in federal funding for its adult education programs if Congress approves budget reductions proposed by President Bush.

If the cuts are approved — as state adult education officials fear — federal funding for adult education programs in Pennsylvania would drop from $19.3 million this year to $4.8 million next year.

As a result, Pennsylvania would be able to serve only half of the 53,000 people currently enrolled in adult education classes to earn their high school diploma or equivalent, learn to read or learn basic math skills, said Rose Brandt, director of the Bureau of Adult Basic and Literacy Education of the Pennsylvania Department of Education.

Okay, this is obvious enough and bad enough on its face, right? It’s especially disgusting given that we have to “retrain” American workers whose careers have been exported to places like Bangalore as part of Bush’s mission to create jobs overseas, and now we’re attacking those very retraining budgets.

But if you keep reading, you realize that it’s actually even more sinister.

In presenting his fiscal 2006 budget request to Congress, Bush said he wants to reduce funding for the adult education program because an analysis by the Office of Management and Budget found that it was difficult to assess the program’s effectiveness.

Administration officials acknowledged in their budget proposal that the adult education program “was found to have a modest impact on adult literacy, skill attainment and job placement.” But they also said “data quality problems and the lack of a national evaluation made it difficult to assess the program’s effectiveness.”

Uh-huh. Read closely – what’s the big objection, the one that’s being used as the big justification? Right – the inability to “assess effectiveness.” Which means they can’t measure it. Which means they can’t quantify it. This is “No Child Left Behind” rationalization being brought to bear on adult ed programs – it’s not about learning, it’s about standardized testing. It’s about feeding grown-ups to the Teach to Test industry.

And those of us who teach know a bit about the results of these standardization methodologies.

I guess once you get programs in place to dumb the kids down the next step is to go after their parents, and the first ones to take out are the ones trying to educate themselves, huh?

[THX: to internautte for pointing out this story.]