The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act ("welfare reform") and the Workforce Investment Act (WIA) have influenced greatly the provision of services in adult basic education (ABE). WIA and welfare reform provide two excellent cases for the study of questions related to how federal legislation affects ABE practice at the program and classroom level. This study gathered data from six states through in-depth interviews on practitioners' perceptions of how WIA and welfare reform changed their practices. Although all state agencies studied had a similar problem to solve, they responded to the WIA and welfare reform policy shifts in diverse ways. The responses were shaped by the agencies' anticipation of the policies, their perception of their role in supporting programs, the infrastructure they had in place for professional development, and a range of other contextual factors. Individual programs responded in a variety of ways to the requirements the state agencies placed on them as a result of the new policies. The data provide hypotheses that can be explored through analysis of other data now available from the National Reporting System (NRS). It can also provide insights that may be helpful for policy discussions and plans related to the reauthorization of these two statutes, as well as future policy initiatives. A list of programs is appended. (Contains 10 footnotes and 1 table.)