Yesterday President Obama announced the American Graduation Initiative — a $12 billion program over ten years that will provide more resources to community colleges for career pathways, including challenge grants to link these efforts with community partners and adult basic education and literacy programs. Some important details still need to be worked out between the White House and Congress, but this initiative has the potential to provide additional resources to ProLiteracy member programs like yours. In making the announcement, the President spoke to the need to “improve remedial and adult education programs, accelerating students’ progress and integrating developmental classes into academic and vocational classes.”
The announcement of this initiative comes after a series of consultation meetings were held with federal agencies and national organizations, including a meeting that ProLiteracy held with high-ranking White House officials. During the meeting, ProLiteracy presented a rationale for including adult basic education and literacy in the initiative, stressing the link between addressing adults with low-literacy levels and long-term, sustained, economic recovery, along with establishing career pathways for these adults. We also spoke to the specific role that community-based adult literacy programs can play in reaching adults with low literacy levels. Hours before the President’s announcement, ProLiteracy was included in a White House briefing conference call where we were assured that programs serving adult learners at the lowest literacy levels would have access to challenge grant money to partner with community colleges in developing programs that meet the needs of this particular population. We also were told that the Administration will “continue to work with the existing network of adult literacy providers.”
A copy of ProLiteracy’s press statement on this initiative is available on our Web site. For more information on the President’s speech and a description of the program, visit this link .
In the coming weeks, ProLiteracy will work with the Administration and Congress to further shape this initiative to ensure that the program is responsive to your concerns. If I or our team can answer any additional questions you may have about the American Graduation Initiative, please contact us. Meanwhile, I look forward to keeping you informed of how the final initiative takes form.
Thank you for all that you do for adult learners!
David C. Harvey
President/CEO
ProLiteracy
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