RE: Adult Education

Susan has raised an interesting issue: the importance of 
adults having opportunities to socialize with other adults. 
However, from the adult literacy data, there is a far greater 
task at hand: empowering adults with low literacy levels to 
be able to meet the challenges of increasing complexity in 
our work, family, and society. 

With the approximate 11 million adults in California who 
have low literacy levels, California must make a strong 
commitment to serving the adults who are the hardest to 
reach, the hardest to teach. Without programs focused on 
the basic literacy skills to survive in our economy and 
society, we will have a bifurcated society - ones who have 
and ones who have not.

The challenge inherent in meeting the needs of such a 
large population is providing access to quality educational 
programs that meet the adult's educational goals. Access, 
however, is limited in some communities because of the 
funding limits of an ADA cap imposed in the late 1970s. 
These caps may have made sense at one time, but  the 
caps don't match the current demographics of communities.  
In some communities, funding levels for adult education 
programs now severely limit not only what can be offered to 
adults but who can be served. 

If funding is a major problem, what could we do to the 
funding structure that would increase access to the literacy 
programs needed by so many?