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The Office for Vocational and Adult Education specifies four geographical regions for adult programs: Eastern, Southern, Midwestern, and Western. Chapter 1 examined the distribution of adult education programs across these four regions based on responses to the Program Survey. This section presents characteristics of adult learners who attended these programs, based on responses in the Learner Survey.43_{As was}

noted in Chapter 1, examining the data by region is useful as it serves to highlight some of the variability in adult education across the country. However, because of the presence of a number of very large programs—particularly in the Western and Southern regions—it is important to keep in mind that the data for any one region does not represent every state in that region. For example, the data for the Southern region may more accurately reflect program or learner characteristics in Texas or Florida than other states that represent a much smaller segment of adult education programs and participants in that region.

The Eastern region was the smallest of the adult program regions and served 14 percent of learners in the United States. The Southern region was the largest and served 39 percent of adult learners. The two other regions, Midwestern and Western, served 19 and 28 percent of adult learners respectively. Table 2.17 shows percentages of adults and their average performance in prose literacy for a series of key demographic and social variables associated with the characteristics of adult program participants by the four regions.

43 _{See Table 1.16 for adult program characteristics for each of the four regions which include: the Eastern} region—Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Vermont; the Southern region—Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, and West Virginia; the Midwestern region—Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota, and Wisconsin.; and the Western region— Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming.

Prose literacy Document literacy Numeracy

Mean score Mean score

150 300 150 300 275 275 250 250 200 200 175 175 225 225

Class 1 Class 2 Class 3 Class 4

Figure 2.18

Skills on the prose literacy, document literacy and numeracy scales by levels of health, AEPS population

Classes of health

Chapter 2

The Eastern region had the largest concentration of Black adult learners and consequently, the smallest concentration of White learners. Forty-four percent of adult learners in this region were unemployed, with an unemployment rate of 66 percent among Black learners. The high unemployment rate for Black learners in this region compares with a national average of 50 percent unemployment for the same group (see the AEPS database). Among the four regions, the Midwest had the highest employment rate at 53 percent.

The Western region had 72 percent of non-native learners—a percentage that was more than twice that of other regions—with 62 percent of its learners in ESL. Hispanic adult learners represented 58 percent of participants in adult education programs in this region and 53 percent of its adult education participants reported Spanish as their mother tongue.

Although the states of Florida and Texas are included in the Southern region— states that are known to have high percentages of immigrants—Hispanic adults represented only 25 percent of adult education participants in this region. Only 26 percent of adult learners in the Southern region attended ESL classes while 49 percent attended ABE classes.

Across domains, the Midwestern region showed the smallest percentages of adults performing at Level 1. Thirty-nine percent of learners from the Midwestern region performed at Level 1 on the prose literacy scale as compared with 61 percent for the Western region (see Table 2.18). While these differences did not change the overall results of adult education participants on the literacy and numeracy measures, small differences existed across domains and across regions. For example, on the prose literacy scale, 79 percent of adults in the Midwestern region performed at Levels 1 and 2 compared with 89 percent in the Eastern region. These percentages were slightly higher on the numeracy scale. At the other end of the proficiency scale, over 3 percent of adults in the Midwestern region performed at Levels 4 and 5 on the document literacy scale while only half of a percent of learners in the Eastern and Western regions performed at these levels.

Final Remarks

Results from the AEPS assessment showed that adult education participants performed mostly in Levels 1 and 2 of the proficiency scales. While limited performance levels are to be expected given the nature of the adult education population, evidence that many of these learners perform at the very bottom of the proficiency scales has important implications for the kinds of educational interventions needed to bring their skills up to levels that will help ensure their successful participation in society.

As a group, adult education participants differed in many important aspects, ranging from demographic characteristics (i.e., age, place of birth, and educational background) to their reasons for attending adult education programs. For instance, 43 percent of these adults were non-native born, 44 percent had a mother tongue that was not English, their age ranged from 16 to 65, and 35 percent were of Hispanic background. Table 2.20 provides a profile of adult learners by skill levels on the

Adult Education in America: A First Look at Results from the Adult Education Program and Learner Surveys

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The three types of instruction provided in adult education—ABE, ASE, and ESL—are each designed to meet the needs of a specific portion of the adult learner population. Twenty-one percent of adult learners attended ASE classes and, as might be expected based on their educational backgrounds, this group demonstrated the highest level of performance on the literacy and numeracy scales. Forty-three percent of learners attended ABE classes and demonstrated the second highest level of performance. The lowest level of performance was demonstrated by adults attending ESL classes, a segment of the adult learner population that represented 37 percent of the adult learners. Comparisons both within and across programs can be seen in Table 2.19 which summarizes the demographic and social characteristics of learners in each type of instruction.

Rather than examining literacy in isolation, the influence of reading habits, wealth and health status complemented these analyses. A relationship between reading habits and performance in literacy was found, where adults who read more often and read a larger variety of materials performed significantly better. The data showed that 85 percent of the adult learners received income from traditional sources such as salaries and wages but their performance did not differ from those that depended more on social assistance as a source of income. No strong relationship was found between wealth or health status and performance on the Learner Survey.

In general, the data showed that age, race and ethnicity played a stronger role in literacy than gender. Reading habits were also important. The following chapters will further examine the adult education population by comparing these adult learners with adults in the general population and by exploring the role of testing language for Hispanic adult learners.

Adult Education Program

Study

Chapter 3

Comparing the Adult