Policy and Legislation - National

Update: FY 2011 U.S. Funding for Adult Literacy

April, 2011

The budget process is underway. The Senate and the House have been holding hearings and working on their appropriation bills in response to President Obama's requested budget, issued February 1. Jane Oates, the Assistant Secretary for Employment and Training at the Labor Department, and Martha Kanter, U.S. Under Secretary of Education, testified at a hearing of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies on March 25.
Here's a quick run-down of the President's proposed budget as it relates to adult literacy and education:

• $612.3 million for Adult Basic Literacy Education State Grants, $30 million more than the 2009 appropriation, but a $15.9 million decrease from last year. That's because last year, the program received a one-time increase of $45.9 million to correct for a past accounting error that left some states underfunded for several years.
• $75 million for the English Literacy/Civics Education set-aside, the same as last year's appropriation.
• A $30 million increase for National Leadership Activities. Along with an identical amount from Vocational Rehabilitation, the money supports a new Workforce Innovation Fund that is to be part of a Department of Labor and Department of Education Partnership for Workforce Innovation. According to the Administration, the partnership "will coordinate to award competitive grants that would encourage innovation and identify and validate effective strategies for improving the delivery of services and outcomes for beneficiaries under programs authorized by the Workforce Investment Act." We don't know yet what the scale or targets for these grants will be - whether individual programs and/or local community-based projects will be eligible, or whether Education and Labor will be looking to fund regional or statewide initiatives (or even national initiatives) - or some combination of both. Another question to be answered is whether adult literacy and education will have
  access to more than just the $30 million in National Leadership dollars that are going into the fund. ProLiteracy has been working with the Representatives from the Administration and members of Congress who are working on the details, and have recommended that the final appropriations bill provides community based adult education organizations with access to the fund.

Reauthorization of the Workforce Investment Act (WIA)
With health care reform settled, the adult literacy field had hoped that Congress would take up reauthorization of the Workforce Investment Act (WIA), which hasn't been reauthorized since it was enacted in 1998. (WIA Title II is the largest source of federal funding for adult literacy and education programs.) But as of this writing, there's no clear timetable for action on WIA. The Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee held a hearing on WIA on February 24, but it related primarily to Title I. Reauthorization was mentioned briefly by U.S. Under Secretary of Education Martha Kanter during the March 25 hearing held by the Labor/HHS Appropriations Committee; she made more prominent mention of reauthorization as a priority in her written testimony.

American Graduation Initiative (AGI)
This initiative, which would have invested roughly $12 billion in community colleges over 10 years, appears to be a dead issue for now. A provision to fund the initiative, announced by President Obama last summer, was included in the version of the Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act (SAFRA) that the House passed this past fall, but the budget reconciliation bill that was signed into law at the end of March dropped the provision.

Resources for National Legislative and Policy Updates:
 
ProLiteracy
 
The National Council of State Directors of Adult Education

National Coalition for Literacy
 
U.S. Department of Education (Legislative Section)