For the sixth time in nine years, Kentucky Adult Education has qualified for additional federal fundings through a competitive program based on performance. Clearly, when it comes to reaching adults who need additional education, Kentucky is doing something right.
In the latest funding cycle, Kentucky is one of only 11 states to qualify for a Federal Workforce Investment Act incentive grant based on its fiscal year 2007-08 performance. To qualify for the grants, states must exceed agreed upon performance levels.
Kentucky Adult Education will work with partner agencies to develop an application for the use of the $851,748 grant. The act requires the funds be used to carry out innovative activities consistent with the requirements of the programs within the act.
By qualifying for the incentive funds during six of the nine years of the grant, Kentucky Adult Education has received an additional $8,793,202 in federal funds for its programs.
Since the days when Martha Wilkinson, wife of former Gov. Wallace Wilkinson, launched Martha’s GED Army, thousands of Kentucky adults who did not complete high school have received their GEDs. In fact, 11 percent more Kentucky adults received their GEDs during fiscal year 2007-2008 than in the previous fiscal year, reresenting the most significant growth in seven years. As part of the Council on Postsecondary Education’s 2020 goals, Kentucky Adult Education has set a goal of reaching 15,000 GED diplomas annually by 2020.
It was not so many years ago that Kentucky had the nation’s highest percentage of adults without high school degrees. Coupled with having among the nation’s lowest percentage of adults with college degrees, a woefully undereducated adult workforce remains one of the biggest impediments to economic growth and development in this state. Every time an adult earns an GED in Kentucky, not only does that indivdual benefit but so does the entire state.
At one time adult education was the poor, neglected stepchild of education in Kentucky. That changed when the 1997 Higher Education Reform Act placed adult education under the umbrella of the Council on Postsecondary Education.
We commend Kentucky Adult Education for not only consistently meeting its goals, but exceeding them.
Editorials
Exceeding goals — 06/02/09
Adult Education doing it right
- Editorials
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Charles Chattin
Before it merged with Ashland Community College to form Ashland Community and Technical College as a result of the 1997 Higher Education Reform Act, the Ashland Area Vocational-Technical School compiled an impressive record for teaching job skills to young adults and placing more than 85 percent in jobs for which they were trained.
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Try again
It is time for Kentucky Speaker of the House Greg Stumbo, D-Prestonsburg, and Senate President David Williams, R-Burkesville, to cease playing political games and redraw district lines that are compact and are based far more on population changes during the first decade of this century than on partisan politics.
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'Asset poor'
More than one in four Kentucky households are “asset poor,” meaning that they are living from paycheck to paycheck with little or no financial cushion to fall back on should they suddenly lose their jobs or have another emergency resulting in a temporary loss of or delcine in income.
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Safer mines
The head of the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) says coal operators throughout the country are improving their operations and, as a result, mines are becoming safer. However, MSHA chief Joe Main said too many coal operators still “don’t get it” and are continuing to cut costs by ignoring safety. That’s why MSHA plans to continue targeting mines with a history of repeated violations for additional inspections.
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Not far enough
For the past three sessions of the Kentucky General Assembly, bills that would raise the minimum dropout age from 16 to 18 have been approved by the Kentucky House of Representatives by wide bipartisan margins only to die in the Senate without even a vote.
Now the Senate Education Committee has unanimously approved a dropout bill hailed as an alternative to the House bill, but it does not go nearly far enough. It is a halfway measure that would have only a limited effect on preventing teenagers from quitting high school before graduation and virtually assuring themselves of lives on the lowest rungs of the economic ladder.
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Not their job
The local government committee of the Kentucky House of Representatives has wisely killed a bill — dubbed “Cooper’s Law” — that would have allowed the family of the Lexington toddler with cerebral palsy to have a playhouse on their property despite a deed restriction that apparently prohibits such structures.
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Keeping FADE
Despite an increase in cost to the department, Carter County Sheriff Casey Brammell told the Carter County Fiscal Court that his department will continue to be active in the FIVCO Area Development Drug Enforcement (FADE) Task Force — at least for now.
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Needed changes
The soaring enrollment that Kentucky’s community and technical colleges have experienced in recent years could come to a sudden end — or at least be slowed — as about 5,500 students in the statewide system that includes Ashalnd Community and Technical College are expected to lose their financial aid under new rules being implemented by the federal government.
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Released early
While it is disappointing that 75 of the 952 prisoners granted early release in January have violated the terms of their releases, the good news is that none of the former inmates have been charged with new felonies. That’s an early, but positive, indication that the nonviolent felons released before their sentences were up have been carefully selected and are among those least likely to return to a life of crime.
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Obese children
Almost a decade after former Gov. Ernie Fletcher called childhood obesity an “epidemic” in Kentucky, a majority of Kentucky adults still think that there are too many overweight children in the state and they place the bulk of the blame squarely on the shoulders of their parents.
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Charles Chattin
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