Introduction
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Transitioning adult students through the stages of their educational experience is a challenging process. In today's society in particular, successful transition from adult literacy classes to community college and beyond, and on to the workforce, can mean the difference between achieving one's potential and struggling to get by. For service providers, it's clear that we must focus attention on the process of successful transition from one education program to another.
This discussion focuses on several different efforts to address the thorny issues of transitions - ABE and ESOL students to GED, GED to post-secondary and/or job training. While we will concentrate on assessment-related issues such as measuring application and transfer of skills, we welcome discussing issues in general that affect, or are affected by, transitions.
Collaboration among service providers is one such area that greatly affects the success or not of a transitions process. In his research on transitions, Forrest Chisman discovered how one community college worked toward better understanding and collaboration among ESL and ABE/ASE faculty; see the case study on Yakima Valley Community College listed below.
As a college placement test, the ACCUPLACER has its pluses and minuses. Massachusetts Chief GED Examiner Tom Mechem has pointed out that the correlations between the GED and the ACCUPLACER math scores are dubious at best, and that the tests' purposes seem to be at odds. To address this issue, Tom is developing a curriculum that can be used with both the GED and the ACCUPLACER. See his story below.
The National College Transition Network (NCTN) brings together the various efforts of educators, professional development providers, policy makers, and researchers concerned with effective college transitions to postsecondary education for GED, ASE, and ESOL graduates and other non-traditional learners (from the website, URL in Recommended Preparations for the Discussion). Cynthia Zafft's work with NCTN led her to identify five models of college transition programs, which are outlined in the National Center for the Study of Adult Learning and Literacy (NCSALL) Occasional Paper Transitioning adults to college: Adult Basic Education program models (URL in Recommended Preparations for the Discussion). Cynthia will discuss these program models with us.
Wendy Quinones will give us an overview of the transitions program she is involved in at the Community Learning Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She has noted the often striking differences between ESOL and ABE students in terms of their strengths and weaknesses, and suggests some resources that have helped her navigate these turbulent waters, such as the Assessment Strategies and Reading Profiles website (URL below). In addition, Wendy notes the following observations from John Strucker's work on patterns of reading (from What Silent Reading Tests Alone Can't Tell You: Two Case Studies in Adult Reading Differences; URL in Recommended Preparations for the Discussion):
Native speakers tended to have relatively stronger "meaning-based skills" as compared to "print-based skills," while non-native speakers exhibited the opposite pattern. Chall (1991) reported similar findings.
Many second-language speakers in ABE classes had surprisingly low levels of oral vocabulary in English (GE 2 to GE 4), despite their fluent levels of conversational English. Similarly low levels of oral vocabulary occurred among some inner-city young adults who were native speakers.
