Each year in the United States, hundreds of thousands of people enroll in adult basic education (ABE) classes but leave before completing a level or accomplishing their goals. The persistence of this phenomenon may indicate that it is a feature of the system, rather than an unforeseen outcome. Research on other types of social service provision…

The purpose of this qualitative, ethnographic case study was to compare the experiences of stakeholders connected to adult high schools and adult literacy programs in Manitoba, Canada. This is an important study, because it gathered information about providing educational services to adults who have dropped out of school. The researcher used…

Social science research often uses educational qualification as a signifier for characteristics such as abilities, earnings potential, and civic participation in adulthood. This study focused on two types of adult literacy students who were native speakers of English and identified words at the 3rd to 5th grade levels but differed in one key…

Initiated by a "Pilot workshop on developing capacity for establishing lifelong learning systems in UNESCO Member States" held at the UNESCO Institute for Lifelong Learning, the purpose of this study was to develop a Lifelong Learning system in Ethiopia. Preparations for its conceptualisation included the review of relevant national…

Professor Stephen Reder presented the Longitudinal Study of Adult Learning (LSAL) at The Centre's 2011 Fall Institute--IALS: Its Meaning and Impact for Policy and Practice--whose findings had implications far beyond assessment. Based on evidence from the ten-year study of more than a thousand adult high school drop-outs, Dr. Reder challenges many…

Drop-out from upper secondary school is considered a widespread problem, closely connected with youth unemployment. The aim of the current study was to examine whether parents' level of education predicted drop-out for 16-24-year-olds when accounting for basic skills. For this purpose, data from the Norwegian (n = 996) and American (n = 641)…

While a long tradition of sociocultural literacy research suggests that out-of-school youth engage in a range of meaningful literacy practices, we know little about how programs for returning students foster or constrain students' literate identities. Drawing on data from a qualitative study conducted in a community college-based program for…

In 2003, a study of two Canadian adult literacy programs included 37 learners who revealed a variety of reasons for having dropped out of school as teenagers and younger adults. Chief among these were the influences of parents, siblings, and peers both in and out of school. This article considers these research findings, in light of the…

The 2019 edition of the "Digest of Education Statistics" is the 55th in a series of publications initiated in 1962. The purpose of the "Digest" is to provide a compilation of statistical information covering the broad field of American education from prekindergarten through graduate school. It contains data on a variety of…

The 2015 edition of the "Digest of Education Statistics" is the 51st in a series of publications initiated in 1962. The "Digest" has been issued annually except for combined editions for the years 1977-78, 1983-84, and 1985-86. Its primary purpose is to provide a compilation of statistical information covering the broad field…

This study challenged the assumption that all adults who did not complete high school are representative of the same low literate population. The 15-month qualitative study entailed conducting 79 in-depth biographical interviews with a diverse group of subjects. Several underlying concepts appeared to influence the adult development of the…

The 2017 edition of the "Digest of Education Statistics" is the 53rd in a series of publications initiated in 1962. The "Digest" has been issued annually except for combined editions for the years 1977-78, 1983-84, and 1985-86. Its primary purpose is to provide a compilation of statistical information covering the broad field…

The 54th in a series of publications initiated in 1962, the purpose of the "Digest" is to provide a compilation of statistical information covering the broad field of education from prekindergarten through graduate school. It contains data on a variety of topics, including the number of schools and colleges, teachers, enrollments, and…

The 2016 edition of the "Digest of Education Statistics" is the 52nd in a series of publications initiated in 1962. The "Digest" has been issued annually except for combined editions for the years 1977-78, 1983-84, and 1985-86. Its primary purpose is to provide a compilation of statistical information covering the broad field…

A study investigated the nature and extent of adult illiteracy and the characteristics of the less literate populations in Philadelphia. Data were collected through 2,197 telephone interviews and 607 personal interviews. The personal interviews involved use of a modified version of the instrument developed by the National Assessment of Educational…