CALIFORNIA'S FEDERALLY FUNDED
ADULT BASIC EDUCATION PROGRAMS

The U. S. Department of Education funds adult basic education programs in the various states. The federal government requires that states receiving federal funds report data on achievement gains made by adult learners in the programs. The data presented in Figure 95 are pre-test and post-test scores for federally funded (section 321) adult basic education (ABE) programs in California for fiscal years 1985-86 through 1991-92.

California uses the Comprehensive Adult Student Assessment System ( CASAS) to measure gains for low (A), middle (B), and higher ability (C) learners in a sample of the federally funded 321 ABE programs. The CASAS assesses reading (among other things) using "functional literacy," "real world" tasks similar to those reviewed in Part 1 of this Compendium in every study from Buswell's 1937 work to the most recent young adult and national adult literacy surveys by the NALS. However, unlike the NALS, in which respondents must construct their responses, the CASAS uses multiple choice tasks in which respondents select the correct response from alternatives. Because of this, guessing has a higher probability of affecting CASAS scores than NALS scores.

The CASAS also differs from the NALS adult literacy surveys in that to be assigned to a given ability level on the CASAS, adults must have a 50% probability of being able to perform a task that is at the same level of difficulty. For instance, to score at the skill level of 215 on the CASAS means that a person has a 50% chance of being able to perform all items that are at the 215 level. They have a greater than 50% chance of performing items below the 215 level, and less than a 50% chance of performing items above the 215 difficulty level.

On the NALS adult literacy surveys, the standard for being assigned a skill level is that a person has an 80% probability of being able to perform tasks that are at that difficulty level. For instance, an ability level of 215 on the NALS literacy surveys means that people at that level have an 80% probability of being able to perform tasks at the 215 level of difficulty. Because the standard for performance is higher on the NALS adult literacy surveys than on the CASAS, the NALS is likely to assign more people to lower literacy levels than will the CASAS.

When assessing the reading skills of California's ABE students, pre-tests are given at the beginning of the program, and post-tests are administered following some 80-120 hours of instruction. Thus the gains shown in Figure 95 are for learners who have had about 100 hours of instruction on average.

The data of Figure 95 show that, despite some fairly wide-ranging shifts in pre-test scores, resulting to some extent from changes in population and data sampling procedures, learners at each of the three ability levels consistently make about 3-5 points improvement in 100 hours of instruction. This translates, roughly, to about a half to one "year" of gain in reading grade levels (CASAS does not report scores in reading grade levels, so those given are approximations from studies in which CASAS scores were correlated with scores from the Tests of Adult Basic Education - TABE).

In the California ABE programs in 1991-92, those entering at the 192 level made about a five point gain in 100 hours of instruction. By extrapolation, if the goal is set at having all adult basic education students reach a standard of 230 in reading (roughly the 10th grade level), then since (230 - 197 = 33) and (33/5 points of gain = 6.6) one may estimate that some 660 hours of instruction will be needed for level A students to achieve the 230 criterion on the average - if the rate of gain is constant across all hours.


Previous Page Table of Contents Next Page