A r c h i v e d  I n f o r m a t i o n

National Evaluation of The Even Start Family Literacy Program, 1998

Chapter 7

What Were the Outcomes on Other Progress Indicators?

In addition to tests and interviews, this evaluation collected information about adults' progress in education, employment, and other credentials such as obtaining a driver's license and U.S. citizenship. This information is available for both the Universe Study and the Sample Study. In this section, we present findings on progress made on these indicators, and, where comparable data are available, compare these results to progress reported in the earlier Even Start evaluation. It is important to note that some of these other indicators are not necessarily goals for most adult participants; we report progress on the indicators as one additional snapshot of adult participants.

GED Certificate

Receiving the GED certificate is a goal for many participants in adult education programs, including Even Start. However, Even Start project staff believe that the GED may be an unreasonable or unattainable goal for many adults with low-level skills. The ESIS includes questions about whether, in fact, Even Start adults describe GED attainment as one of their goals as well as questions about the number of adults who attained the GED certificate. This is somewhat more detailed information than was obtained in the first national Even Start evaluation.

Changes in GED attainment

Approximately half of the adults in both the Universe Study and the Sample Study were working toward the GED certificate (Exhibit 7.15). A greater proportion (16 percent) of adults in the Sample Study attained the GED during the 1996-97 program year than did adults in the Universe Study (11 percent).¹⁰⁷ This is based on those adults who did not have a high school diploma or GED at the beginning of the Even Start project year. Interestingly, attainment of the GED was not a goal for approximately one-third of the adults, a proportion that remains stable for those adults who continued to participate in Even Start for more than one program year.

The proportion of adults who attain the GED increases for each subsequent year of continued participation (although only approximately 40 percent of adults continue into a second program year, and 14 percent continue into a third program year). For those who entered in 1994-95, for example, about 8 percent attained a GED during that year; of those who also participated in program year 1995-96, about 11 percent did so, and for those who continued for a third program year, 14 percent attained a GED. When we look across years, the average GED attainment is approximately 8 percent for those who participate in only one year, approximately 13 percent for those who participate in two program years, and 16 percent for those who participate in three program years.

In the first Even Start evaluation, the NEIS reported that 7.1 percent of adults without a high school diploma at intake attained the certificate over one program year. This figure is quite comparable to what we see among the Universe Study participants. In the earlier In-Depth Study (IDS), 14.3 percent of adults in Even Start and 3.6 percent of the control group attained a GED over a nine-month period. The proportion of adults in the Sample Study (for the 1996-97 program year) who attained the GED certificate was less than that of the In-Depth Study and remained somewhat higher than the proportion in the IDS control group.

When we examine data on GED preparation in other settings, we learn that approximately 30 percent of those who take the GED have been enrolled in a program that focuses on basic skills and that low-literacy learners are more likely to participate in such a program than those learners with stronger literacy skills (Baldwin, Kirsch, Rock, and Yamamoto, 1995).

Employment Status

Participants were asked when they enrolled in Even Start and again at the end of the program year whether they were employed either part-time or full-time. This information is available for adults in the Universe Study and the Sample Study. Although employment is not a primary goal of the Even Start program, it is possible that increased education and literacy levels will result in changes in employment status.

Changes in Employment Status

About half (49 percent) of adults in the Universe Study, and nearly two-thirds (64 percent) of adults in the Sample Study were not employed either at the beginning or the end of the 1996-97 program year (Exhibit 7.16). For 1996-97, only 10 percent of the adults in the Universe Study, contrasted to 20 percent of those in the Sample Study, were employed at both points in time. This represents a change from the previous two years, when the proportion remained closer to 20 percent. Approximately twice as many of adults in the Universe Study than in the Sample Study (25 percent, contrasted to 12 percent) who had been unemployed at the beginning of the year were employed at the end of the year. This marks a change in the patterns between these two groups, which had shown quite comparable patterns for the two prior years.

In the first evaluation, the results were reported slightly differently, restricting the sample to those adults who were not employed at the start of the year. For that study, nearly 78 percent of adults were not employed at intake; of those, nearly 10 percent found employment by the end of the program year. In the In-Depth Study, 12 percent of the program group and 15 percent of the control group found work by the end of the first program year. When data from the current study are restricted to those adults who were not employed at the start of the program year, we find that 28 percent of adults in the Universe Study and 15 percent of adults in the Sample Study found work by the end of the program year. (These figures differ from those displayed in the table below because in order to compare data from the current evaluation with data from the first evaluation the sample has to be defined differently.)

Other Progress Indicators

Even Start program staff at the local, state, and federal levels were interested in the extent to which Even Start participants achieve other credentials that require reading and completing written tests or other criteria. Examples include becoming an American citizen and obtaining a driver's license. Each of these represents a goal that is likely to have more tangible meaning for adults than simply taking a test. For the current evaluation, project staff indicated whether each of these progress indicators was a goal for adults this year and whether they were working on or achieved the goal during the Even Start year. These data are available for both the Universe Study and the Sample Study, but they were not collected during the first Even Start evaluation.

Changes in Other Progress Indicators

For most adults, these progress indicators were not goals during the current year (Exhibit 7.17). In the Sample Study, a greater proportion (10 percent) reported that citizenship was a goal, and that they were working toward it, and of those, about 10 percent became citizens during the 1996-97 program year. Of the 15 percent of adults who reported that obtaining a driver's license was a goal and that they were working toward it, two-thirds (of those adults) obtained their licenses. Approximately 1 percent of adults in the Universe Study obtained U.S. citizenship during the 1996-97 program year, and less than 5 percent obtained a driver's license.

Footnotes:

¹⁰⁷ We may have incomplete information on GED attainment in a given year because of the constraints of our reporting period (i.e., July 15th submission deadline for all data on incoming educational status collected only at time of enrollment and changes in educational status (collected annually for participating adults).

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[ What Were the Adult Education Outcomes? ]

[ Findings from Two Evaluations ]