Grubb, W. N., Kalman, J., Castellano, M., Brown, C., & Bradby, D. (1991). Readin', writin' and 'rithmetic one more time: The role of remediation in vocational education and job training (MDS-309). Berkeley: National Center for Research in Vocational Education, University of California.

THE CURRENT STATE OF REMEDIAL EFFORTS

• Postsecondary Vocational Education: Community Colleges and Technical Institutes
• Adult Basic Education
• The Job Training Partnership Act
• Welfare-to-Work Programs
• Secondary Vocational Education
• Guessing the Scope of the Remediation System
• The Nature of Remediation in the Education and Training System
• Coordination in Remedial Programs: Its Status and Value
• Information and Evaluation

While there has been a surge of writing about literacy and skill deficiencies, there have been almost no examinations of what programs are offered and what the relationships among them are.[5] To provide some initial information, we conducted telephone interviews with administrators of vocational education and job training programs and providers of remedial education in twenty-three regions located within nine states (see Appendix A). Eight states--California, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Michigan, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Wisconsin--were chosen because of some feature of interest to this study. For example, several of them (California, Florida, and Michigan) have welfare-to-work programs that have been operating for some time; North Carolina has resource centers in its community colleges that we knew to be widely used by JTPA and welfare recipients; California has a large number of community colleges as well as a long-running welfare-to-work program. Tennessee has JTPA programs operated by community colleges, and also has a basic skills and adult education program at the state level that channels JTPA 8-percent funds to literacy programs; and Michigan and Wisconsin have relatively well-developed mechanisms of coordination. In addition, we interviewed programs in Hartford, Connecticut because that city has pooled all its education and training funds, providing a potentially interesting case of coordination. We had previously visited each of these states (except Connecticut) to examine coordination in their job skills training, so we were relatively familiar with state policies and institutional structures.

Within each state, we tried to choose one urban area, one rural region, and one suburban or semi-urban region; the regions where we conducted our interviews are typically cities or collections of neighboring counties.[6] We began each interview with the director of the JTPA Service Delivery Area, and then interviewed administrators in charge of remediation in any local community colleges, technical institutes, area vocational schools serving adults, adult education schools, and welfare-to-work programs. (We did not interview individuals associated with secondary vocational programs.) In each institution that provided remedial education, we also interviewed the individual in charge of remediation--that is, the individual operating the learning lab or overseeing the teachers within the remedial programs, an individual who would be likely to know the curriculum and philosophy of the program. In Service Delivery Areas (SDAs) that provide remedial services through several different subcontractors, we interviewed one or two subcontractors; in community colleges that provide remediation within English and math departments, we interviewed the heads of those departments. Through this set of interviews we hoped to develop a comprehensive picture of remedial education within each region, including the patterns of referrals among programs; and we also gathered information about policies and funding--information administrators are likely to know--and about the programmatic details of curriculum, philosophy, and purpose.

The questions we asked covered descriptive aspects such as the numbers of individuals enrolled and the types of programs offered; funding; relationships among programs, including practices of referring individuals to or receiving students from other programs; the effects of state and federal policies; and a long list of questions designed to elicit as full a description of the programs' methods and curricula as possible. In addition, we asked for information about the numbers of individuals who enrolled and who completed any evaluation evidence, including pre- and posttests, and any follow-up information. The questionnaires we used are included in Appendix C.

In general, these questionnaires were too ambitious, and the information they elicited proved to be incomplete.[7] Many programs lack information about their own operations; many JTPA programs, for example, are unable to say how many individuals receive basic education because the decision to provide remediation is often left to subcontractors; many welfare-to-work programs were only barely underway, and had not yet developed information systems that allowed them to report what services individuals receive. Even simple figures such as enrollments are difficult to collect on a consistent basis since institutions establish different ways of counting individuals. This poses a serious problem for remediation in educational institutions because students may or may not receive credit or the courses themselves may be difficult to distinguish from college-level English or math. The time period of remediation programs, with many relatively short or operated as open-entry/open-exit programs in which students determine the amount of time they spend, creates yet other problems. Describing the curricula offered proved simple only in the cases where providers are using well-known curricula (e.g., the Comprehensive Competencies Program or the PLATO computer-based system). In other cases, it was difficult to tell what the curriculum was meant to be, though visits to selected programs (listed in Appendix B) provided information that helped interpret responses; most providers had a difficult time articulating their philosophy and methods.

Despite the incomplete responses to our questionnaires, unmistakable patterns emerged. We first describe remedial efforts for specific types of vocational education and job training programs, and we then draw together our results into three larger issues: coordination among programs, the nature of what is provided, and evidence about effectiveness.

[5] For an attempt to survey adult education programs in California, see Solorzano, Stecher, and Perez (1989). There have been a few surveys of developmental education in community colleges; see, for example, Lederman, Ribaudo, and Ryzewic (1985); S. D. Roueche (1983); Boylan (1985); and Spann and Thompson (1986).

[6] Acute readers will note that we interviewed individuals in only two areas of California and Florida. In these states, the third region we chose seemed populated by individuals who did not return phone calls, and we ran out of time, steam, and patience.

[7] The only other effort we know of to administer questionnaires to large numbers of providers is the survey of literacy programs in California by Solorzano, Stecher, and Perez (1989). Their responses seem relatively complete, but only because their questions were simplified to be relatively closed-ended--in contrast to the open-ended questions we tended to ask. In addition, their survey did not try to collect information about enrollments, completion, and effectiveness. In a talk with Brian Stecher, the individual in charge of the survey described the process of obtaining information as "painful," as it was for us, too. In general, we conclude that it is more informative to visit programs than to gather information by telephone or written survey methods.

Grubb, W. N., Kalman, J., Castellano, M., Brown, C., & Bradby, D. (1991). Readin', writin' and 'rithmetic one more time: The role of remediation in vocational education and job training (MDS-309). Berkeley: National Center for Research in Vocational Education, University of California.