In practice, community specificity and autonomy depend upon the extent to which governments devolve authority and resources to programs. All programs are regulated by the documentary procedures and controls of governments and institutions. The space for program autonomy and community specificity is effectively determined by funding formulas or grant requirements, requirements for reporting on student progress or other aspects of program operation, and teacher or tutor qualifications. It is in these various documentary procedures and controls that the real relations between policy rhetoric and programming practices are defined.

Such procedures do not bear only on institutional programs, and self-identified community-based programs do not avoid them. They are central in defining the space that any program has to respond to its particular students, and to shape itself specifically to its community. Of course, "standards" and "quality" can mean rigid systematization and cost-cutting provision, or inducements to community embeddedness and ample resources. They are not terms that announce a victory or defeat; they only define a terrain for struggle. Documentary procedures and controls may promote good practice, just as much as they may inhibit autonomy and community involvement. As a practical matter, defending program autonomy and community specificity means working to define these documentary procedures and controls in ways that promote, or at least in ways that do not restrict, programs' capacity to act.

Student and program evaluation

One set of documentary procedures and controls are those that organize student and program evaluation.

There are diverse methods of student evaluation, and they serve diverse purposes: placement of students, setting learning objectives, assessing individual learning, and measuring overall program outcomes. Testing may be oriented to either academic or functional knowledge and skills. Some "achievement tests" (e.g. the widely used Canadian Adult Achievement Test) modify test items originally designed for school children, or use items which are typical of school achievement measures. Other tests (e.g. the Ontario Test of Adult Functional Literacy) measure performance on items that simulate the reading tasks an adult might encounter in daily life.