Keynote Presentation to the New York Association for Continuing/Community Education
April 29, 2002
David J. Rosen, Director
Adult Literacy Resource Institute
University of Massachusetts at Boston
I’d like to begin with some words from the man who has been described by Studs Terkel as America’s most influential and inspiring educator. In his autobiography, The Long Haul, Myles Horton, the founder of the Highlander Education Center in Tennessee, said:
"...you learn from your experience of doing something and from your analysis of that experience."
I'd like to share with you today an analysis of my experience – our experience – doing adult literacy education advocacy in Massachusetts.
Some of you may be thinking – Advocacy? I’m a teacher, (or an administrator, or a counselor, or a staff development specialist.) I don’t do advocacy. I hope that an hour from now you’ll think differently about your work. I hope you'll become an active advocate. With what I believe lies ahead in New York – and other states – if you, your colleagues, and students do not advocate hard for adult literacy education, you may see its dismantling.
For those of you who are died-in-the-wool activists, I hope what I say today will help you think differently about your work, too, not necessarily to follow our path in Massachusetts, but to think critically about what you need to do here in New York.
Inspired by Myles Horton, I call this talk Adult Literacy Advocacy: In for the Long Haul.
My path into adult basic education began in 1982 when -- after being a teacher and administrator in an urban public high school, a public and private alternative high school, and a small private liberal arts college --I became Director of Education Services of a large community-based organization in Boston called Jobs For Youth. My job included teaching and administration. It was especially important for me to get and manage grants to support the education program.
When I arrived, Jobs For Youth was spending down the last of a three-year federal grant. This grant had provided the support to deliver an individualized education program for about 50 of the nearly 1500 young adults a year – all public school dropouts – who came to the agency looking for jobs. I learned that the State Department of Education had just issued a Request for Proposals and was told that I should write a new grant to support the Educational Services Department. I applied for $70,000 to serve 100 students. Although I thought that $700 per student per year wasn’t much money, I believed that some of the students would only need a few weeks or months to prepare for taking the GED, so I thought this would be enough to support those who were at a lower skill level and needed a full year or more.
I didn’t get the grant....I learned that my proposal scored very high, and I was invited to submit it again, but this time with a more realistic budget. I also learned then that Massachusetts' adult basic education funds all came from the federal government, and that this amounted to an investment of $47 per student per year.
I couldn't understand how a program could provide an education for $47 per student per year, so I asked the Massachusetts Department of Education staff how many instructional hours a week they expected a program to provide, and I learned that the federal Adult Education Act required a minimum of 12 hours. This wasn't 12 hours a week, and not 12 hours a month. It was 12 hours, period. If a young adult dropped out of school, where and investment of over $8,000 per year failed to help him learn, an adult education program was expected to see that he got enough skills to pass the GED with an annual investment of $47. Go figure.
I re-submitted the grant. This time I proposed to provide 12 hours of "job readiness basic skills" for 1500 Jobs For Youth clients and more extensive basic skills education for a hundred of these. This time I got the numbers right, I got the $70,000 grant, and we offered classes and individually-paced learning for the hundred students. But how, I wondered, did we get such a ridiculous policy?
In my education as an adult educator this was my first lesson.
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Lesson
#1. Quantity counts more
than quality does. |
Not long after this, I was asked to attend a bi-annual meeting of administrators of adult education programs funded by the Department of Education. At this one-day conference, in informal discussions with my public school adult education colleagues, I learned --and this was later confirmed by a Department of Education official --that the Department was encouraging community-based organizations like mine to apply for grants. This was because if they made grants to public schools, teachers had to be paid $18 per class hour. Community-based organizations, on the other hand, were willing to pay teachers $12 per class hour, and sometimes less. The State Department of Education staff had cleverly figured out how to stretch their meager resources to serve more students. And at that time, they even testified to the state legislature about what a bargain Adult Basic Education was. From this I learned lesson #2
Lesson #2. Fair
treatment of teachers doesn’t count.
A few months later I attended another required Adult Basic Education Program Administrators meeting. My new adult education program had begun, and, to do a good job and keep the funding in place, I knew I had to learn more of the rules of this game.
These meetings usually had three parts:
In the first part Massachusetts Department of Education officials explained new rules and procedures, often handed down by the U.S. Department of Education. They stood at a microphone and we sat in front of them in rows. That part usually took a couple of hours and consisted of a series of presentations, usually with handouts in nicely prepared three-ring binders.
In the second part it was our turn. Several colleagues stood up and asked questions which were phrased politely, but which had an edge. They were frustrated by the contradictions of their daily work trying to provide high quality services without the needed resources. What they really wanted to do was to shout "Hey, these rules don't make sense! Change them." But they didn't because they didn't want to offend their funder.
The third part was small group discussion where practitioners were organized into various interest groups to talk about whatever they wanted. There was an ESL group, a basic literacy group, a GED group, and so forth. I asked if there could be an out-of-school youth programs group, but it turned out that I was the only person there from a youth program; so I decided to join the discussion on public policy. I didn’t know what public policy meant but I hoped I could learn how the rules got made, and maybe how they could be changed.
This was a small group of program administrators, joined by the woman in charge of the Department of Education’s Bureau of Adult, Community and Student Services. I asked two questions in this group, and from the answers I learned more lessons.
I asked where adult education fit within the Department of Education, and I learned that it was pretty far down. There were large Divisions, and within these, Bureaus. Adult Basic Education was a little office within a Bureau which handled three things that didn't fit anywhere else, and didn't have enough money --or in the case of Adult Basic Education, any money -- to have a Bureau of their own. Lesson three was beginning to emerge:
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Lesson
#3: At state and national levels Adult Basic Education is usually a
marginal enterprise within a large bureaucracy which focuses on something
else. |
My second question, to the Director of this Bureau of motley and marginal programs, was "Do you think $47 per student is enough, and if not, why don't you do something to change this?" She agreed that it was inadequate. She explained that the only way that could change, however, was if the State Legislature began to fund Adult Basic Education. She also explained that as a state employee she was not allowed to advocate for funding with state legislators. She added that, as people who worked for independent community-based and volunteer organizations and public schools, however, we could talk to legislators. Lesson #4 was one of the most important I have learned:
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Lesson
#4: If we want change -- if we want high quality Adult Basic Education
services, reaching all those in need and with fair salaries for teachers
-- it is up to us to make that happen. |
I needed to find out who else was thinking the way I was, but I didn't know my colleagues in this field. I needed to find out, too, if there was already an organization trying to so something about this.
About this time, a teacher at Jobs For Youth said she wanted to meet colleagues from other adult and young adult education programs in Boston. She said she had taken the first steps a few months before by getting a list of programs and sending them a letter to see if anyone wanted to get together. She said she had had several phone calls from those who were interested, but that she hadn’t had time to follow up on this. She asked if I could help her, so I agreed to call everyone together.
This was the first gathering of adult and youth education programs in our area, and it led, in 1983, to forming the Boston Network for Alternative and Adult Education. The Boston Network met nearly every month for four years. At each meeting we passed the hat -- my hat -- to collect money for postage, coffee and cookies. Our purpose was to find out teachers' and administrators' needs and to do something about them. We kept the group local -- just the Boston area -- so it wasn't hard for us to meet regularly. Because at first our purpose was to get to know each other, we spent time at each meeting introducing ourselves and talking about what our programs did. We all felt the need for staff development activities, so we agreed to have a presentation at each meeting on a high priority staff development topic. The topics came from us, and often we were the presenters. We wanted to identify expertise in the field and share it. After a few meetings we were getting to know, help, and trust each other, and we formed some committees. One of these worked on teachers’ salaries, benefits and working conditions. Another continued to work on staff development.
(There is an adult basic education program in Boston called W.A.I.T.T. House. W.A.I.T.T. is an acronym, which stands for We Are All In This Together. That was the spirit of the Boston Network.)
In the early-to-mid 1980's there were several other important ways in which Adult Basic Education practitioners came together which built trust and laid the groundwork to organize for advocacy and change.
In 1983 the City of Boston created an Adult Literacy Initiative using $1 million of federal Community Development Block Grant funds. This supported 16 community-based programs to provide services tailored to the needs of Boston’s neighborhoods. Through this initiative, designed by a community activist who worked for the Mayor's Office of Jobs and Community services, several community activists became involved and met each other. This was also the beginning of the Adult Literacy Resource Institute, a funded effort to support and improve program quality by providing staff and program development. (This eventually led to the dissolution of the Boston network, as its functions were being met by this new organization.)
I began to wonder if Lesson #1, For Adult Basic Education funders, Quantity counts more than Quality had some exceptions. I also learned that one person, someone with a strong vision and good political and organization skills, could make changes within a bureaucracy which could have a huge impact over time. So I also needed to re-interpret lesson #4, It’s up to Us, to include those who wanted change and worked for it effectively within the funding bureaucracy. (There are good examples of those of you who have done that in New York State here today.)
In the1980's, too, grass-roots activists from community-based adult basic education organizations in the Western part of the state came together as the Boston Network had done to form the Western Massachusetts Adult Literacy Coalition. Several of these would continue to be active, and provide leadership in statewide public policy advocacy.
Several politically savvy practitioners from community-based organizations, volunteer organizations, public schools and other kinds of adult education providers were aware that the Massachusetts Board of Education had an advisory committee on Community, Adult and Student Services, advising the Board and the Department's Bureau. But this advisory committee had no adult educators or adult students, and knew little about Adult Basic Education. These practitioners persuaded the Advisory Committee to establish an Extended Committee just on Adult Basic Education and made up mostly of Adult Basic Education experts, that is, practitioners from the field. (Some of you may not have heard of an extended Committee. It's a useful tool. It's broader than a subcommittee, whose membership comes only from the committee. One purpose of an extended committee is to include expertise not available on the committee itself.)
The savvy members of the Extended Committee on Adult Education read the federal Adult Education Act legislation and knew that state Departments of Education were required to develop a multi-year plan to submit to the U.S. Department of Education, and that they were required, as part of this process to hold a public hearing on the proposed plan. The Extended Committee recommended to its parent Advisory Committee that they take on the role of hosting the hearing. The Extended Committee offered to do all the work, so the parent Committee agreed. Then the Extended Committee decided to hold the hearing at the State House -- where legislators might come -- and to invite all the members of the State Board of Education to attend. Practitioners and students came, too, in large numbers to testify about the importance, and the wretched condition of Adult Basic Education. Board members and many of the legislators present learned for the first time what Adult Basic Education did, what the needs were for it, and how underfunded it was. For me, attending this hearing -- and learning how it came about -- was a new lesson, how a tail can wag a sleeping dog awake
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Lesson #5: Well-meaning board or committee members,
who are responsible for an area where they have no expertise, may turn
to those who do. This can
lead to positive change. |
This hearing led to the awakening of the Board of Education and the Legislature to Adult Basic Education.
In 1987 Michael Dukakis took office as Governor of Massachusetts for the third time, and he and his wife, Kitty, had recently found an interest in adult literacy. Dukakis created a $1 million adult literacy campaign and he hired a new Commissioner of Education, Harold (Ron) Raynolds, who, when Commissioner of Education in Maine and Alaska had shown an interest in Adult Basic Education. Members of the Extended Committee -- by this time I had been invited to join this group -- saw an opportunity. We met with Raynolds and asked him for a Division of Adult Basic Education with a new Director who had experience in the field, and who would report directly to him. We also asked to be part of the hiring process.
We didn't get a Division, but we did get a new Bureau, had non-voting participation on the hiring committee, and Raynolds agreed that the new Director would report directly to him. Lesson #5 , committee members who have responsibility for an area where they have no expertise may listen to those who do, which can lead to positive change, played itself out in the hiring committee, and an experienced adult education leader and advocate was chosen as the Bureau's Director. Adult Basic Education would finally have assertive leadership and would be higher in the pecking order at the Department. From this I learned Lesson #6
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Lesson
#6: Be prepared – opportunity might knock. |
Later I learned that it could knock more than once, and from Democrats or Republicans.
F. The Massachusetts Coalition for Adult Literacy (MCAL)
In the mid 1980's three Boston area colleagues called a meeting of adult literacy practitioners from across the state to organize a Literacy Day to bring public attention to Adult Basic Education issues. The ambitious group that showed up decided that instead we needed a statewide adult literacy advocacy organization. Thus was born, in 1987, the Massachusetts Coalition for Adult Literacy (MCAL).
Although we had a statewide adult education organization, a AAACE affiliate, its focus was on being a professional organization for a broad spectrum of adult education, not just adult literacy or Adult Basic Education/ESOL. And as far as I know it didn't do advocacy.
This new organization, MCAL, drew together grassroots advocates from a range of programs across the state, and was run by a strong Board of volunteer practitioners. Opportunity knocked again, and MCAL soon won a grant from the Gannett Foundation, which was then providing support to new state literacy organizations in several places across the country. The MCAL Board hired two paid staff: a Director and a full-time state Literacy Hotline Co-ordinator. It also firmly established its volunteer public policy committee to inform legislators about the issues, and to begin
to organize the field.
MCAL's three goals were to: (1) increase public awareness of adult literacy in Massachusetts; (2) facilitate the coordination of information on available Literacy/ABE/ESOL services (through the statewide hotline and publications) ; and (3) seek increased resources for Literacy/ABE/ESOL programs in Massachusetts. We accomplished this work through several committees. One of these, later known as the Public Policy Committee, sponsored legislative briefing days. With the help of the Hotline Coordinator, it also created a telephone tree and fax tree through which we could reach programs quickly with critical information on public policy activities.
MCAL taught me Lesson #7:
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Lesson #7: Effective advocacy needs good organization:
a top-notch communication system, and attention to details of updating
and follow-up |
The MCAL Public Policy Committee began its work in Boston. Several of us invited three Boston-area legislators, who knew each other and shared similar values, to have breakfast with us in a local restaurant in my neighborhood. (The legislators paid for their own breakfasts.) We wanted to help them learn what the needs were for adult basic skills, what Adult Basic Education offered, and how we lacked funding to properly meet these needs. They agreed to work together, and one, a Representative from a wealthy suburb where few constituents needed these services, agreed to carry the flag. For her this wasn't a constituent issue: it was a moral issue. This opened my eyes to a new lesson.
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Lesson
#8: Political allies can come from unexpected places. |
This legislative triumvirate helped us get our first $1 million increase in state funds, and they did it that legislative session. As MCAL members met with these and other legislators, however, I began to have to re-think lesson #1. (Quantity counts, quality doesn’t) as it applied to legislators. Representatives and Senators who hadn't yet seen the new Bureau of Adult Education in action, were telling us that they had no confidence in the Massachusetts Department of Education, and that they didn't necessarily want these new state funds to go there. They didn’t think that Department staff who had come before them in past years to tout a bargain of $47 per student per year knew what they were doing. These legislators said they wanted to see quality services for their investment, and solid, meaningful outcomes. They also said the Department had not collaborated well with other state agencies which had a stake in adult basic skills: Welfare, and Employment and Training.
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Revised Lesson #1. Quantity too often counts more than quality, but… some
bureaucrats and legislators are interested in quality. |
G. Massachusetts Coalition for Adult Education (MCAE)
The Gannett Foundation grant ran out in a couple of years, but MCAL’s volunteer Board was strong enough to carry on the work for a while without paid staff. Soon, however, it was no longer a strong organization. At the same time, our state professional organization, the Massachusetts Association of Adult and Continuing Education (MAACE) was also weak, even though it had continued for many years to be funded by the Department of Education. The Director of the new Bureau of Adult Basic Education decided, wisely in my view, that instead of two weak state adult education organizations, Massachusetts needed one strong one. He announced that he would issue a Request For Proposals to fund a new organization, one with good representation from both MAACE and MCAL. The state funds could support the annual professional conference and information sharing; advocacy could be supported by individual memberships and state conference revenues. In 1991, MAACE and MCAL merged into the Massachusetts Coalition for Adult Education (MCAE).
MCAE is now over a decade old. It has a membership of over 1000 and offers an outstanding annual state conference. (The conference had an attendance in 2001 of over 1100 participants.)
Early on, MCAE developed a volunteer Public Policy Advocacy Committee, a group with feisty, committed members and seasoned advocacy leadership. This committee is well organized, and has continued and expanded many of the efforts of earlier organizations. For example, we:
· hold regular monthly meetings;
· sponsor legislative briefings;
· inform adult literacy programs about opportunities to testify at state and regional adult education hearings;
· develop new adult literacy public policy;
· sponsor state-wide "Tax Teach-ins" and budget crisis workshop curricula to help students understand state tax policy, and where their tax dollars go; and
· organize massive advocacy campaigns when we’re in crises.
From my experience with MCAE and its forerunners, I have learned lesson #9.
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Lesson #9: State advocacy organizations need committed
volunteer advocates and paid staff. |
They need the passion and time of volunteers to meet with policymakers and the passion, talent and time of paid staff to carry out the organizing details.
H. Massachusetts
Alliance for Adult Literacy (MassAAL)
In the mid 1990's, at the Highlander Center in New Market Tennessee, adult learners formed a new national adult literacy organization, called VALUE. Several states had already had adult learner organizations: California, Illinois, Ohio, Delaware, Pennsylvania, and others, but Massachusetts did not. There had been some efforts in Massachusetts: a statewide adult learner conference, some discussions, and learner leadership at the program level. Participation in VALUE's founding by two Massachusetts adult learners, and energetic leadership by other Massachusetts adult learners and practitioners led to the forming of the Massachusetts Alliance for Adult Literacy (MassAAL). From the beginning, the adult learner leaders saw this as an advocacy organization, one which would work with practitioners to strengthen advocacy efforts that lead to program improvement.
MassAAL now has a small amount of state funding, and collaborates with our System of Adult Basic Education Support (SABES). It has organized students and graduates to speak with and testify before legislators; it has supported student health and leadership projects; and recently it has provided trainings on how to start or maintain student councils at programs. MassAAL advocates for increased funding to improve quality and reduce waiting lists for services. As part of improving quality, it advocates for raising teacher salaries and benefits, which would enable good teachers to afford to stay in the field and to attract new, well-trained teachers.
MassAAL is an important part of the Massachusetts literacy advocacy effort. It has the potential, as it reaches more students and graduates who want to "give back," to be a major force in reaching and persuading legislators. We have learned, as others have, that policy makers are more interested in talking with students, graduates, and volunteers who are their constituents than to paid practitioners who earn our living in the field and have a vested interest in increasing the resources.
The Masachusetts Adult Literacy advocacy long haul is in mountainous country. In some years we climb; in others we slide back; and in some years funding has just plateaued. But over time we have seen a steady upward growth of state resources for Adult Basic Education, from $600,000 in 1983 to nearly $30 million today.
The MCAE Public Policy Committee forms an annual agenda each fall, often seeking advice and information from practitioners, as well as from the State Department of Education. However, this agenda is usually buffeted by the unpredictable winds of politics. One year we began with a goal of increasing funds and ended up fighting efforts to subsume all literacy services under an employment and training agenda. Another year we began with the same goal and spent the year fighting disastrous cuts in funding. One year we claimed victory because adult basic education was the only discretionary line item in the state Department of Education which wasn't cut. One year we focused on getting more funding and settled for the first statutory language recognizing the legitimacy of adult basic education. In more years than not we have succeeded in getting increases in the state budget; for FY99, for the fourth year in a row, we significantly increased the Massachusetts Department of Education line item for adult basic education by $7 million, resulting in a 700% increase in funding over a five-year period.
Nearly eight years ago, working with the Massachusetts Department of Education, and several other state agencies which support adult education, a task force which was commissioned by the legislature was asked to look at the need and supply of adult education services. The committee also chose to distinguish need (based on census data) from demand, based on waiting lists. The committee recommended to the Massachusetts Board of Education (which voted unanimously to endorse its recommendation) and to the state legislature, a five-year, $35,000,000 increase to meet the current demand. This brought about the significant increases.
A "No thanks" Thanksgiving
In November, 2001, however, four state legislators rammed through the FY02 budget at the last possible moment with some big surprises, including a nearly 50% cut to adult basic education. This would have meant closing nearly all publicly-funded programs by February. Within hours we were able to organize a response, and between Thanksgiving and Christmas, with hundreds of student visits to the State House, with thousands of phone calls and letters and faxes to legislators from students and practitioners, and with over 150 articles, letters to the editior, editorials, news clips on radio and TV, we succeeded in getting all but 2% back in the budget. Legislators recognized our efforts not only with restoration of funds but also by congratulating us for one of the best-organized advocacy efforts they had seen.
Although we expect to face further struggles in 2002 and 2003, given that the state faces a $2 billion shortfall in revenues, cuts to adult education this time will not be so radical. It looks like we’re fighting a nearly 10% cut at this point.
Those involved in this work are not "policy wonks." We’re advocates. The burning issues, the things we are trying to change, are part of our daily world as adult learners, teachers and administrators:
· Long waiting lists for services. Between 8,000-15,000 students per year in Massachusetts are on waiting lists. The average wait, across the state has been about 6 months, but in Boston it’s a year. There are several ESOL programs with class enrollment waits of up to three years
· Low teacher salaries, often without benefits, and too many part-time instead of full-time jobs. (There has been some improvement on this issue, fully supported by the leadership at the Massachusetts Department of Education.)
· Poor working conditions such as: inadequate space, job instability, and lack of substitutes so that teachers can attend staff development sessions
· Increasing challenges for students who are immigrants: getting services, that a social security number will be required soon for enrollment, general cuts to all services for immigrants, a hostile environment for some immigrants after 911. (But Boston's Mayor's Office for New Bostonians has provided some new hope for immigrants.)
Over the years we have tried many strategies. Some have worked better than others. Some of these are what I would describe as routine or ongoing; others are crisis strategies. Both are important.
Ongoing Activities
Some people deplore waiting lists, saying that everyone must be served with whatever resources we have. We've found that insisting on quality has actually led to more resources to serve even more students -- and to serve them better.
When people sign up for a program they are told how long the wait will be to enroll (average 6 months in Massachusetts, one year in Boston) and they are asked (or helped) to complete postcards to their state Representative and Senator which say that they are on a waiting list for (how long) at (the name of the program.) The postcard says "I would like to begin adult basic education classes right away. I hope you can help by providing more funds so this program can offer classes for me and others on the waiting list." The card includes a place for students to write their name, signature and address.
A second kind of postcard is sent when a student graduates and thanks the legislators for "providing the funds needed to help me achieve my goals." It adds "Please increase funding so that others can complete their classes, and those on the waiting list, can begin classes soon." (When I talked about the first postcard strategy at the adult education conference in Pennsylvania a couple of years ago -- they came up with this Graduation thank you postcard idea -- which we liked and are implementing now.)
Crisis Activities
In times of crisis, when our budget line item is threatened or when legislators have thought of consolidating all adult education under employment and training or under community colleges, we use the following additional strategies:
1. Every teacher, student, administrator,volunteer and friend of adult literacy needs to see advocacy as a regular and important part of their work.
2. An active, ongoing advocacy organizing committee meets monthly.
3. There is an adult literacy champion or flag bearer in the House and Senate.
4. You use an "all politics is local" approach winning over each legislator, one at a time, and keeping track of how you're doing.
5. When talking with legislators, you politely pin them down. You don't accept "I support this" or "I will do everything I can" for an answer. You Ask questions like: "Will you vote for this?" "Will you talk with the Senate President and ask for his support for this?" "Will you co-sponsor this bill?"
6. Students and volunteers are in the forefront as legislators are more influenced by them.
7. When you get new funding, you use it to increase quality, not only to expand existing services:
a) increase investment per student;
b) increase intensity of instruction;
c) increase teachers' salaries;
d) track and report outcomes to funders (NRS -- and more).
8. You hang on like bulldogs.
9. You chart your growth. You fight hard to win big in the good years, and to lose as little as possible in the tough years.
10. You show funders why adult education is a good investment, why it leads to good jobs and a stronger economy, to stronger families, to lower incarceration or recidivism, to better health, and to better communities.
Further Reading on the Web
Massachusetts Coalition for Adult Education Purpose and History http://www.mcae.net/aboutmcae/aboutmain.htm
David J. Rosen, Ed.D. Boston, MA, Updated April 6, 2002
http://www.alri.org/Rosen/advocacy/advocacydocs.html
A strategy which helped Massachusetts adult learners let their legislators know about long waiting lists for services, a strategy which -- with other actions -- helped Massachusetts increase its state education budget line item for adult basic education by 700% in five years.
http://www.alri.org/advocacydocs.html#postcard
The Civic Center on E-Square -- Public Policy Advocacy by Adult Learners
This includes a Virtual Visit to the Massachusetts State House, information about the legislative process in Massachusetts, information for immigrants, and a how adult learners and practitioners should prepare when talking with legislators.
http://www.alri.org/esquare/civic/meet.htm