The NRS will improve the public accountability of the adult education program by documenting its ability to meet Federal policy and programmatic goals. The collection of State outcomes data will enable States to correlate practices and programs with successful outcomes, and also will assist States in assessing progress in meeting their adult education goals. For local providers, the NRS will help instructors and administrators plan instructional activities and services to enhance student outcomes and to relate effective practices and programs with successful outcomes.

The NRS has core and secondary measures. The core measures apply to all adult education students receiving 12 or more hours of service. There are three types of core measures: Core Outcome Measures (which include 5 measures); Core Descriptive and Participation Measures (which include 10 measures); and the Secondary Outcome and Student Status Measures which are optional for reporting and include 19 measures.

Outcome measures include educational gain, entered employment, retained employment, receipt of secondary school diploma or general education development (GED) certificate, and placement in postsecondary education and training.

Descriptive measures include student demographics, reasons for attending, and student status.

Participation measures include contact hours received and enrolment in instructional programs for special populations or topics, such as family literacy or workplace literacy.

The NRS secondary measures include additional outcome measures related to employment, family and community. Adult education stakeholders believe these are important to understanding and evaluating adult education programs. States are not required to report on the secondary measures and no performance standards are tied to them.

The five Core Outcome Measures of the NRS are: ^{Endnote 26}

1. Educational Gain - The percentage of adult learners in basic and English literacy programs who acquire the basic or English language skills needed (validated through standardized assessment) to complete the educational functioning level in which they were initially enrolled.
   
   To measure educational gain, the NRS established a hierarchy of six educational functioning levels, from beginning literacy through high school-level completion, and six levels for English literacy, from beginning literacy level to high advanced. The levels are defined through reading, writing, numeracy and functional and workplace skills (and, for English literacy, speaking and listening skills) at each level. Included for each level is a corresponding set of benchmarks on commonly used standardized assessments, such as the Test of Adult Basic Education (TABE) and the Comprehensive Adult Student Assessment System (CASAS), as examples of how students functioning at each level would perform on these tests.
2. High School Completion – The percentage of adult learners with a high school completion goal who earned a high school diploma or recognized equivalent.
3. Entered Postsecondary Education – The percentage of adult learners who established a goal to continue their education at the postsecondary level and who entered postsecondary education or training after program exit.
4. Entered Employment – The percentage of unemployed adult learners (in the workforce) with an employment goal who obtained a job within one quarter after program exit.
5. Retained Employment – The percentage of adult learners with a job retention goal who (a) entered employment within one quarter after exiting and (b) were still employed in the third quarter after program exit.