Adult Education Programs Can Offer Hope For A Better Life :: Now They Face Budget Cuts via News Observer

Adult Education Programs Can Offer Hope For A Better Life.

National Skills Coalition

Now They Face Budget Cuts

News Observer: 12.10.2018 by Danielle Chemtob

Faye Alston reached into her mailbox at Kingswood Apartments in Chapel Hill and pulled out an envelope.

It contained the last piece of what she’d been working toward for seven years — her GED math test results.

She opened the letter, looked at her score and burst into tears. It was a 400. She needed a 410 to pass.

Alston, now 58, had taken the test 13 times, and her resolve was wearing down.

“I would just wait for the paper and just pray,” she said.

Every time, she was within reach of a passing score, but just missed the mark. She’d passed every other subject on the first try.

“After a while, I would get so aggravated with math that I would just have to leave it alone for a while and just do the next subject,” Alston said.

After receiving her score, she confessed during her regular tutoring session at Orange Literacy Center that she wasn’t sure she could continue.

“I am so tired of this 400,” she told her tutor, Patrick. “I just don’t think that I can do it anymore.”

But he told her not to give up. She had one more shot: Less than three months later, she could take the test again, and if she didn’t pass, she’d have to start her GED over again.

According to nonprofit ProLiteracy America, 36 million adults cannot write, read or do math above a third-grade level.

Literacy centers across North Carolina help adults such as Alston improve their skills in reading, writing, mathematics and other subjects. They offer courses in basic adult education, GED, English for Speakers of Other Languages, citizenship and family literacy.

But adult literacy programs, which already struggle to find funding, are at even more risk after the federal government issued new guidance on how states should administer funds for adult education. In North Carolina, the changes left five community colleges and six nonprofit organizations, including the Durham Literacy Center, without federal funding.  READ MORE >>