Summary, Questions 5-7: Curriculum, Pell Grants & Focus of Instruction
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Question 5. "Re-entry education" for ex-offenders—what should the focus be? --Taylor Stoehr, English Department, University of Massachusetts Boston--
I work in a Massachusetts program for probationers called Changing Lives Through Literature. (See our website: http://cltl.umassd.edu/home-flash.cfm ) Started in 1991 in a single court, it has spread to a number of jurisdictions in Massachusetts and to six other states. I can speak for the men's program in Dorchester, the busiest criminal court in the state, where we have the experience of a dozen years - perhaps 250 graduates of our ten-week program offered every semester. We are currently involved in a study of recidivism in five jurisdictions, but the results will not be available for quite some time. For the moment, I can say that the probationers themselves believe that they change during this short period of intense focus on a few texts, and a set of concerns that are central in their lives. Our primary text is Frederick Douglass's Narrative of the Life of an American Slave, which serves as the starting point for discussion of problems faced by the students themselves - poverty and racism, the struggle for social justice, family breakdown, the weakening of community bonds and thinning out of spiritual sustenance. Short supplementary readings by other authors - black and white, American and foreign, contemporary and classic - clarify issues Douglass raises by putting them in a broader context, and a writing assignment helps us focus on their relevance today. For example, after reading how Douglass describes his childhood, and how Malcolm X, Bill Russell, Maxim Gorky, or Leo Tolstoy describe theirs, students are asked to state their own opinion of what is necessary for a "normal" childhood, and who has the responsibility to provide it. What was your childhood like? What kind of a father do you want to be? Those are the implied questions. We also ask how a man like Frederick Douglass or Malcolm X finds himself. "Where do people get their courage, self-esteem, and righteousness?"
With men like those I work with, it's probably better to concentrate on the literacy skills they already possess - a complicated mix of street smarts and a colloquial eloquence among friends and family - than to imagine that we are going to "improve" their reading, writing, or talking. To speak in their own voices in a public setting like our classroom, where we talk about serious issues that affect their lives, is the best training in literacy we can offer them. One of our aims is to demystify the whole realm of social control, schooling, and literacy. All their lives our students have been told they are incompetent readers and writers, and this tends to make them so. But the incompetence is superficial in most cases. Their speech skills are usually more than adequate, and often superb. In fact, their failure in school has protected them from certain kinds of glibness and beating about the bush.
All students, including ours, have the right to success in a truly democratic classroom - not just an opportunity to learn, but active exercise of language, taste, and ethics, in order to explore their own individual powers and ideals in relation to a growing sense of how others speak and judge and evaluate. "Success" means both discovering and making standards, rather than merely living up to them. "Failure" means being left out of the most essential aspects of civic life. Often the schools fail to do this important work, through a misguided notion of what kind of education is appropriate in an egalitarian society. The men we meet in Changing Lives typically think of themselves as failures.
From their earliest experiences in schooling to the regimen of incarceration and probation, they have stubbornly resisted demands and admonishments, have been labeled incorrigible, and have little or no sense of what it might mean to be part of a democratic forum deciding matters of concern for their own lives. We want to establish such a classroom, in which no one will be left out. Our aim is to give each man a chance to think better of himself, while simultaneously dispelling the illusion that success in school is the only route to respectability. We aren't trying to get people back on the educational track, but to let them judge for themselves what it would mean to return to school, or to decide not to go that route, a question that asks them to assess their own lives - Who am I, really, and what kind of future do I want for myself?
John Gordon, The Fortune Society Thanks to Taylor Stoehr for his thought-provoking piece. I think we have much to learn from such work. I'd like to hear more. I work at the Fortune Society, a 39 year old organization in New York City dedicated to (1) advocating for prison and criminal justice reform and (2) working with people after they leave prison. At Fortune, education is just one of a wide array of programs people coming out of prison can participate in. Even though most people who come to us do not have a high school diploma, education is usually not the first thing on their minds. The vast majority need a job and many are either homeless or one step from it. In addition, most people are dealing with a range of parole and probation mandates like substance abuse treatment and anger management. Approximately 250 people participate in our Education program each year; in the last few years, the percentage of younger students and particularly of people mandated to one of Fortune's Alternative to Incarceration program has grown dramatically. I think our underlying philosophy has much in common with the program described by Taylor Stoehr - we develop curriculum around the needs and issues brought to the class by the students themselves. However, a number of factors have undermined our ability to maintain that focus on content: (1) The sheer numbers of people coming through our doors every year has stretched our resources. We have struggled to keep up with the demand. Recently we have restructured our program so that it serves fewer people, but more intensively. (2) We are serving increasing numbers of court mandated students, many of whom really don't want to be in class. We have worked hard to develop a curriculum that honors their right and need to make autonomous decisions about the role of education in their lives and at the same time to insist on the integrity of the process in the classroom. (3) Perhaps though, the biggest obstacle has been the fact that we are caught up in the National Reporting System and its focus on educational gain as defined by test scores. The pressure to meet state targets, lumped together indiscriminately as we are with every other program in the state, has produced enormous pressure to test, test, test. This has not been all bad as it has led us to look closely at what we are doing and think about how we can do it better. But the narrow focus on test scores has made it difficult to shape the program around the real and individual needs of the students.
Ann Burruss -- I am a volunteer in a local jail. John, your third bullet is so true! Due to limited time and space, and the NRS system, we are often hard-pressed to determine the progress made - much less allow for meaningful instruction on any/all levels. Any ideas bout how we can made the reporting system work better for those inmates who have relatively short terms to serve :12 to 18 months?
Bill Muth -- First, Taylor Stoehr’s impressive program Changing Lives Through Literature reminds me very much of a Core Humanities program Stephen Duguid created in the late 1980?s in prisons in British Columbia. Like Taylor, Duguid's program encouraged learners to look critically at social power structures that defined them. Further, it forced practitioners as well as students to confront the myth that literacy learners--even those in ABE--do not have the intelligence or higher level thinking skills to discuss such “advanced” topics. (In a parallel way, the work by Robert Kegan et al. supports this point: the capacity for higher complexity of thought has little to do with formal educational attainment. See: http://www.ncsall.net/fileadmin/resources/research/brief19.pdf
Question 6. Given that the elimination of Pell Grants for prisoners has virtually ended the possibility of going to college while in prison, what do the panelists think is the importance of and possibility of reinstating that right? -- John Gordon, The Fortune Society. Here at Fortune where many of the staff have been incarcerated themselves, the value and significance of college level work in prison is a given. Many of the staff members in the leadership of the agency got their degrees (or at least started them) while in prison. Obviously, the college degree, or college level coursework, opens up job possibilities for people once they're out. But it also contributes to the development of leadership skills that will allow former prisoners to come back to their communities and play critical roles in shaping collective responses to the problems those communities are facing.
John Linton -- Wow -- I'm impressed with the thoughtful comments in this discussion already! On the question about college for inmates -- this is a dynamic topic and there is much to be said. First, there are still college programs in prisons. A recent Ford Foundation supported study by the Institute for Higher Education Policy documented the extent of postsecondary education in prisons -- and there are more programs out there than many had thought (myself included). This is a well documented and very forward thinking publication which needs to be seen by more people. ("Learning to Reduce Recidivism, A 50 State analysis of postsecondary correctional education policy," November 2005, http://www.ihep.org/organizations.php3?action=printContentItem&orgid=104&typeID=906&itemID=14017 There is still State money being invested in postsecondary education in a number of States, federal funds are being spent on postsecondary education in the Bureau of Prisons, and our Department provides more than $20 million annually for postsecondary State prisoner education in the Grants to States for Workplace and Community Transition Training for Incarcerated Youth Offenders Program. http://www.ed.gov/programs/transitiontraining/index.html http://www.ed.gov/programs/transitiontraining/index.html In a number of States, postsecondary education seems to be quite an issue -- still to be settled at a policy level. New York comes to mind. California seems very recently to have settled this issue at a policy level and is now developing and implementing new partnerships with colleges.
Will inmates become eligible for Pell grants again at some time in the future? That is for the lawmakers to decide, but it seems to be an issue that never goes away. CURE is one national organization that has worked hard year after year on this issue. http://www.curenational.org/new/index.html The Open Society Institute has also shown an ongoing interest.
John Nally, Indiana Department of Corrections -- Hello from the Hoosier State. A brief comment on the college programs in the Indiana Department of Correction: IDOC has contracts with six colleges and universities to provide associate/bachelor degree programs to offenders. This morning, 17% of all offenders who have a GED/hs diploma and enough time are enrolled in degree programs. At this time the only limiting factor on enrollment is projected release date. Our offenders have the highest completion rate of any college group in the state. The Department's recid rate for 2001 was 37.7%.The recid rate for bachelor completers was 6.9%. The recid rate for associate completers was 16.3%. The Department's recid rate for 2002 was 39.3%. The recid rate for bachelor completers was 18.0%. The recid rate for associate completers was 17.3%. We recently did a very detailed recidivist study on 856 offenders who completed programs that are aligned with the USDOE's Youthful Offender Grant program. Recid rate= Less than 10%. We accessed the state's workforce and welfare database to detail employment, retention, and access to social services. We are currently expanding that study to all offenders regardless of age who completed degrees in 2002, 2003, and 2004. (almost 2,000 individuals). Why? The prior study suggests to us that there are factors other than degree completion: Date of First Hire; Concurrent Substance Abuse Treatment; and, alignment of degrees to current workforce needs. Lastly, we just signed contracts for one female facility where the start to end education program is modeled on practices outlined by the NIFL. NIFL's documents were the basis for the RFP and the resulting contract. Undereducated offenders will be in literacy and GED programs that are focused from day-1 on successful enrollment in and completion of associate degree programs. I hope this adds a little to the on-going discussion.
Question 7. Question: As a curriculum developer, I am charged with adapting a currently existing literacy curriculum to the prison setting. What are the major factors I need to keep in mind as I view the curriculum through this new lens? --Helaine Marshall, Literacy Volunteers of Westchester County, NY – consultant.--
Bill Muth -- To begin to address Helaine Marshall’s question about adopting curricula to meet the needs of incarcerated learners, and in part to (hopefully) to provide another example of a student-centered program (this time a family literacy program in New York), I call the readers’ attention to an excellent guide put out by the Hudson River Center at: http://www.hudrivctr.org/products_ce.htm
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