Don’t Rush to Charter School-ize Adult Ed, Invest in What Works
Adult high schools in Maryland have the potential to change our neighbors’ lives for the better. Specifically, this model works best for adults seeking a Maryland high school diploma who can attend classes full-time. But the story behind and effects of this policy change are more complex than local news outlets portrayed.
Federal and state officials who set policy and budget priorities should not rush to fund what is essentially a charter school model for adult education unless and until they fulfil their commitments to existing Baltimore-area providers. These providers include community colleges, non-profit 501(c)3 organizations, and faith-based organizations that have for decades empowered Marylanders through adult education, GED-preparation, and National External Diploma Program services to earn their high school diplomas later in life after facing adversity in primary and secondary schools. This unsung work — too often performed by underpaid part-time faculty — takes place across our region in humble church basements, unglamorous satellite community college campuses, and offsite locations in partnership with trusted community organizations.
Notably, Governor Wes Moore’s first budget proposal increases state appropriations for the long-underfunded community college Cade formula by 18.5%. Meanwhile, Maryland’s federal legislators like Senator Chris Van Hollen, Representative Kweisi Mfume, and their colleagues are considering reauthorization of the Workforce Innovation and Opportunities Act and bipartisan legislation that would extend eligibility for Pell grants to short-term job training programs.
Policymakers, philanthropic executives, higher education administrators, and adult educators are capable of multitasking. The urgency of our work compels us to do as much as we can to advocate for our students while also noting the origins of the 2016 state legislation on adult high schools. We need to ensure its roll out is transparent and equitable, to apply lessons from our state’s relative success in PreKindergarten-12 charter school policy, and to learn from other states’ adult education models.
While it took seven years to come to fruition, the writing was on the wall from the origins of this policy’s creation. In 2016 Delegate Luke Clippinger, who introduced the bill to create adult high schools, came before the state association of adult, continuing, and community educators at our annual conference. A leader at a non-profit adult education provider in his district stated firmly that she had not been consulted prior to the introduction of the bill. Community college adult education department staff who have produced results for two decades with almost entirely part-time faculty questioned why legislation to create a new full-time model that will likely require full-time faculty was being introduced instead of investing in full-time faculty in programs with track records. Others questioned why no state funding was being allocated upfront, suggesting that only a well-funded organization would be able to stand up an adult high school without it. Lastly, some wondered aloud whether new well-branded providers would pull students (and the state funding that follows them) away from current adult education programs, just as researchers have demonstrated charter schools often pull students and resources away from neighborhood zoned schools.
Again, high quality adult high schools have an important niche to fill: serving students who are able to attend classes full-time. If there had been sufficient student demand and funding for this schedule, it is possible existing providers would already have moved in this direction. Therefore, it is important that as adult high schools open, state auditors like Comptroller Brooke Lierman and Treasurer Dereck E. Davis track enrollment and state dollars to ensure they are not cannibalizing existing programs. This is especially important in Baltimore City, where in the last five years Baltimore City Community College experienced capacity-diminishing cuts to its adult education and English language learning departments’ staffing and Strong City Baltimore was engulfed in scandal threatening the viability of its decades-old Adult Learning Center.
In this context, it is essential that emerging adult high schools are held to the same standards as existing programs, just as PK-12 charter schools in Maryland are held to the same standards as neighborhood schools. This includes respect for workers’ rights and collective bargaining, as it is notable that Maryland’s first adult high school is appearing in downtown Baltimore the same year full-time and part-time faculty at the community college less than half a mile away won the right to organize unions.
Another lesson policymakers should note is how Maryland’s regulations make charter school networks more answerable to local school districts, elected school board members, and the state department of education than in other states. Maryland’s policies, unfortunately, do not make adult high schools accountable in similar ways.
While the adult high school legislation seems almost entirely based on a model from Indiana, there are other states and cities we can learn from. Unlike California, Maryland’s community college boards of trustees are appointed, not elected. Unlike Virginia, Maryland does not have a consolidated state governing entity dedicated to supporting community colleges. And unlike Washington, DC, which as of 2017 funds adult education students in the District’s public adult charter high schools at a rate of $8,448 per student, Maryland funds equivalent providers at a measly rate of $800 per student.
State and federal policymakers should not fund new adult education providers unless and until they fulfil their commitments to existing Baltimore-area adult education programs with proven local track records. Once that obligation is met fully, they should apply lessons learned from other states and Maryland’s experience with PK-12 charter school accountability to adult education. To meet these obligations and apply these lessons, public officials must listen to their constituents who have been doing this work locally for decades and to the adult students most directly affected by these policies.
