Advocacy Strategies

Individuals and groups have been successful in advocating for adult education and literacy. Below are examples of these successes as well as strategies states have used to increase support for adult literacy.

Successes

Examples:

• In Pennsylvania, PAACE was able to collect over 2000 signatures on a petition to the Governor urging him not to recommend to the Legislature transferring the Bureau of Adult Basic and Literacy Education from the Department of Education to the Department of Labor and Industry. Signatories included administrators, teachers, board members, volunteer tutors, adult learners, and community partners.

• More than 50 Massachusetts adult basic education programs statewide participated in the Voter Education, Registration and Action (VERA) campaign, representing almost 6900 adult learners in Massachusetts.  The VERA campaign was a non-partisan effort to educate adult learners about voting and topical electoral issues, and mobilize them to vote in the 2008 elections.

• In New Hampshire, an adult learner testified at a hearing before the House Finance Committee, the group that makes the appropriations decisions, and delivered a powerful story. She was the only recipient of services who testified.

• In Georgia, a program leader secured $500,000 from the state legislature to build an addition on to the program.

• An adult learner in a New Hampshire TANF program wrote a letter to her state legislator—who then surprisingly showed up on her doorstep with questions about adult literacy. So, she invited the legislator in for coffee to discuss the issues. Advocates that year collectively insured that adult education received a significant increase from the legislature.

• In Tennessee, an advocate convinced her Senator to change his mind and sign a Dear Colleague Letter to restore funding for adult education—one of the early Republican co-signers bringing bipartisanship to the effort.

• Since FY1995, Massachusetts advocates have increased the state line item for ABE from $4.2 million to $30.1 million—an increase of 617%.

Strategies

Washington State’s “Adult Literacy Week”
In Washington State, the governor established an annual “Adult Literacy Week.”
This web site offers ways to engage the community, business leaders, and policymakers in raising the priority of adult literacy around one message: Better Skills. Better Jobs. Better Lives. The web site offers a collection of tools and other information about how adult literacy plays a key role in economic vitality for individuals, communities and the state. You will find copies of flyers and campaign materials for raising the priority of adult literacy with the public, including resources and tip sheets on:

• Messaging
• Answering difficult questions
• Involving key stakeholder groups

  
We Are Adult Education
We Are Adult Education is a video that tells the story: Arizona EL Civics programs banded together to mobilize adult learners, teachers, and community members to reverse a proposal in the state legislature to zero-out support for adult education. Students wrote letters, met in small groups with their legislators, invited and hosted representatives and state officials at programs, and testified before legislative committees. Based on this intense experience, not only was the funding restored, but the programs were energized. Pima College Adult Education EL Civics programs subsequently created a DVD of digital stories and interviews about the process as a means of continuing student advocacy.

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