Adult Education in America. Policy Notes. Volume 16 Number 1 Winter 2008

This issue of ETS Policy Notes briefly summarizes the results of the Adult Education Program Survey (AEPS) sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education and conducted by ETS. The results provide a comprehensive picture of federally supported adult education activities in the United States. This picture includes a description of adult education programs, along with a profile of the learners who are being served by these programs and a description of their prose, document, and numeracy literacy skills. This survey can, in many ways, be considered a survey of firsts. It represents the first time comparable literacy measures have been used to assess the skills of a nationally representative sample of adult education participants. It is the first time such measurement allows comparisons with a household sample, by comparing the general adult population with adult learners from the Adult Literacy and Life Skills Survey (ALL). It is the first time this kind of assessment has been conducted in both Spanish and English. (Contains 6 figures and 2 tables.)