September 2011

Welcome to the September 2011NRS eNotes!

Every few months NRS eNotes highlight additions and attractions of the NRSWeb site, as well as inform you of any upcoming events. Forward this on to other adult education staff in your state and encourage others to sign up to eNotes by emailing nrs@air.org!

Did you know...?

Changes to the NRS discussed last year at the August 2010 national meeting have been approved and will go into effect July 2012.  A webinar on this topic is planned for October 2011 to review these changes, and NRS staff is developing materials that will summarize these changes. Watch for a revised NRS Implementation Guidelines in the coming weeks.

Farewell to Mike Dean

Mike Dean, Adult Education Program Specialist for the Office of Vocational and Adult Education (OVAE), retired on June 30 after spending over 30 years as a leader in adult education. One of the founders of the NRS, he worked tirelessly to make sure it was the best system that it could be.  Jay LeMaster will take over Mike’s job of monitoring the NRS project for OVAE. View the NRSWeb page bidding farewell to Mike Dean here: http://www.nrsweb.org/about/MikeDeanFarewellTribute.aspx.

The NRS FastFacts

The NRS FastFacts present different statistics about adult education at the national level with state highlights. Each report focuses on the current state of adult education and summarizes the trends over the last five years. The most recent NRS FastFacts looked at the characteristics of the least-literate participants in Adult Basic Education beginning literacy programs, Adult Education personnel and volunteers, and the characteristics of English Literacy participants, and can be found here: http://www.nrsweb.org/reports/fast_facts.aspx

NRS Report to Congress                   

The Report to Congress on State Performance is an annual report to Congress on the status of adult education programs funded through the Adult Education and Family Literacy Act. The report provides the Federal government and the public with an overview of the adult education program, including data on student enrollment and demographics and a summary of student outcomes over time. State pages in the appendix provide analysis of state-specific data. The Reports for Program Years 2004-05, 2005-06, and 2006-07 are currently available at: http://www.nrsweb.org/reports/congress_report.aspx

New Online Course: Developing Report Cards for Adult Education

Added to our lineup of online offerings is a new course, Developing Report Cards for Adult Education.  As an offshoot to our popular face-to-face training on the same topic, this 4-part online course provides an overview of how report cards are used in adult education and walks users through the five steps of developing a report card.  The course takes approximately 2 hours to complete and can be done at your own pace. To access the new course on report cards or to view our other courses, visit the Online Course section of NRSWeb: http://www.nrsweb.org/trainings/online.aspx#reportcards.

Your Ideas on Data Systems are a Tweet for Us

How good is your data system?  NRS staff is developing a new data system self-assessment tool for adult education programs that will help you evaluate your system.  We will reach out to state and local program staff to learn about your challenges and joys of working with your data systems to help us develop this tool.  If you would like to receive an occasional Tweet from the NRS team and share your experiences and thoughts on this and other NRS topics, please follow us on Twitter @ED_NRS: http://twitter.com/#!/ED_NRS, or, email us and we will send you our Tweets by email. You can also email us (nrs@air.org) with your twitter handle, and we will “follow” you.  

Quiz

Which of the following states has the highest percentage of least-literate participants relative to the total number of ABE participants in the state (program year 2008-09)?

• Arkansas
• Massachusetts
• California
• North Carolina