| Learning to read and write is a serious challenge for
adult students, many of whom enter literacy programs with low skills,
special learning needs, or negative past experiences in school. Adult
responsibilities make it especially challenging for these students to
persist in a literacy program long enough to make meaningful progress
toward reaching their literacy goals.
Launched in 1999 and funded by the Wallace-Reader's
Digest Funds, the Literacy in Libraries Across America (LILAA) initiative
is aimed at helping literacy programs at public libraries across the country
implement strategies to improve persistence among adult students. These
strategies aim to make program attendance easier by offering child care,
transportation, and expanded hours of operation. Instructional priorities
include making program instruction more engaging and relevant by adapting
curricula (often designed for children) to adult interests and needs,
improving teacher and tutor training, and identifying potential barriers
to persistence at program entry.
As part of the LILAA initiative, in 2000 MDRC and the
National Center for the Study of Adult Learning and Literacy (NCSALL)
began a three-year study of the implementation and effectiveness of strategies
to increase student persistence in the adult literacy programs of five
public libraries: Redwood City Public Library and Oakland Public Library
in California, New York Public Library and Queens Borough Public Library
in New York City, and Greensboro Public Library in North Carolina. Researchers
are (1) collecting and analyzing data on demographic characteristics,
program retention, hours spent in literacy activities, and student goals;
and (2) studying students' experiences in the programs by conducting extensive
ethnographic interviews, observations of classes and tutoring sessions,
and focus groups.
This report describes the design of the LILAA persistence
study, the strategies that participating libraries are using to increase
student persistence, and emerging implementation issues. It describes
existing patterns in student persistence, identifies factors that support
or inhibit persistence, and begins to explore the relationship between
program strategies and persistence. Early emerging findings, to be tested
in later analysis, suggest that three categories of themes and their related
strategies are particularly important in explaining student persistence:
- Programmatic. The programs in this study
are able to provide individualized attention to students because they
have stable leadership, access to technology, solid financial support,
and relatively small student populations. Differences among the literacy
programs do emerge, however, in terms of their integration into the
larger library organization, which can affect program strategies.
- Instructional. The programs in this study
try to be innovative in tailoring instructional methods to students'
needs while maintaining an assessment system that allows them to measure
learning gains. Relevant, high-quality instruction, appropriate to the
reading level of students, is important.
- Student-based. Because the programs must
address the needs of highly diverse students, they seek to develop strategies
that can accommodate students' cultural and personal identities, goals,
and learning disabilities as well as the interests of those who encouraged
them to enter the program.
Further lessons about the implementation and impacts
of persistence strategies in library literacy programs will emerge over
the next two years - through reports on program implementation, levels
of student persistence, and the relationship between persistence and literacy
test scores - and will culminate in recommendations for program design
and policy.
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