If you’ve looked at the president’s proposed budget for
education and the news accounts of it, you’ll see lots of disasters. For example, he’s proposing to give $5 billion
away in tax credits to wealthy donors who create “scholarships” to send
children to private schools. And it gets
worse from there.
What you may miss is a proposed 24% reduction to adult basic
education (ABE) state grants. Not many
people keep up with the federal ABE funding outside of the ABE world. You may not even know what ABE provides. But it’s an important component of the adult
education world as programs provide everything from basic literacy to
pre-employment training to GED preparation to high school completion for
adults. It’s part of the nation’s
educational safety net, and the current funding already isn’t enough to serve
the immigrants and refugees needing to learn English, people who left school
before graduating and need to develop pathways to economic independence, parents
who want to be able to read their children a bedtime story, and many more
categories of adults needing basic skills.
This initial presidential budget will go to Congress and not
look anything like its initial version when they’re through. Both houses will make many adjustments in the
final budget that is due in September. As
the largest funder of ABE in the nation, the U.S. Department of Education’s state
grants have a major impact. A 24%
reduction to already lean funding will be disastrous. And while the K-12 world has many supporters
who will advocate against the changes proposed in the budget, the ABE funding
could easily get overlooked as people focus on K-12 issues. I encourage you to become an ally to the ABE
world and offer your voice with those of us who work in this area. A reduction in this budget is just not
acceptable.
To that end, I’m including a link below to ProLiteracy’s
legislative update on the president’s budget.
Please read that document and consider sending your representatives a
note about this. And please share this message
widely in your networks.
