Nanette Shaw
Assistant Vice President for Public Affairs

PRESS CONTACT:
David Manning
212. 817.7177 or 7170
dmanning@gc.cuny.edu


January, 2004
for IMMEDIATE release

Adult Education x Dropouts = Lose-Lose

 

Problems that have been plaguing urban secondary schools may be shifting to adult education venues, according to a new study conducted by The Graduate Center, City University of New York, and commissioned by the U.S. Department of Education. Researchers from the Center for Advanced Study of Education (CASE) at The Graduate Center examined five urban adult education programs and discovered a rise in enrollment among 16-20 year-old high school dropouts along with increases in the difficulties those students brought. Overall, the results seem to indicate a lose-lose situation, with teenagers not getting the support services they need and adults being disrupted in their learning by needy teenagers.

An exploratory case study, the report was commissioned to examine a perceived trend in the increasing effect of high school dropouts on adult education and to see if that perception held up and warranted further concern. The results serve as an alert to policymakers that this trend must be more comprehensively identified, evaluated, and remedied.

The research focused on five adult education programs run by Local Education Agencies (LEAs), which were promised anonymity in return for their participation. The total current enrollment of 16 to 20 year-olds at the sites was estimated at 35,656, just short of 50% of the total enrollment of 71,981. Although individual sites had different periods and methods of tracking the numbers, they collectively reported a significant increase in 16 to 18 years olds, along with a rise in the percentage those high school age students represented of their total student population. In all cases, the students were primarily black and Hispanic, many scored low on standardized reading and mathematics tests, and most had either dropped out of or had been expelled from high school.

Interviews with teachers, administrators, and students revealed that many in the 16-20 year-old cohort were hard-working, motivated students. However, when compared with adult education students as a whole, the 16-20 year old students were perceived to be less motivated, more involved in drugs, more involved in gangs and fighting, more likely to exhibit behavior problems, more likely to manifest symptoms of learning disabilities and attention deficit disorder, and more often mandated to attend by courts and drug rehabilitation programs.

The net result of the increase enrollment of 16-20 year old students was a direct negative impact on the adult education programs, along with a need for greater and different resources to deal with what is generally characterized as a dropout population. Although it was not the intention to establish a causal link, the study did discuss a combination of factors contributing to the rise in teenage enrollment in adult education programs, including: a more flexible learning environment; increasingly more difficult secondary school graduation standards; students' behavioral difficulties in high school; an increase in referrals by the courts and drug rehabilitation agencies for GED instruction; high school student and counselor misperceptions about the nature of the GED; and more aggressive adult education marketing to a younger group because of reduced welfare-related adult enrollments.

In all, research areas the study investigated included:

• Relevant Federal, State, and Local Policies
  
• Changes in Adult Education Enrollment
  
• Qualitative and Quantitative Student Characteristics
  
• Reasons for Increased 16-20 Year-Old Enrollment in Adult Education
  
• Program Characteristics
  
• Program Effectiveness and Strategies