“During my 18 years, I came to bat almost 10,000 times. I struck out about 1,700 times and walked maybe 1,800 times. You figure a ballplayer will average about 500 at bats a season. That means I played seven years without ever hitting the ball.”
–Mickey Mantle
Each year, more than a million people in America participate in adult basic education programs, like English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) classes, high school equivalency preparation and testing, and incarcerated individuals preparing life and vocational skills for their release and reintegration into their communities.
These programs are largely supported by funding from the nearly thirty-year-old Adult Education and Family Literacy Act (AEFLA) which, if the Trump Administration has its way, will be completely eliminated next year.
In its proposed budget for fiscal year 2027, the White House recommends zeroing out the $715 million distributed to states by AEFLA, along with billions of dollars for TRIO, GEAR UP, work-study, Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grants and other programs meant to serve some of the most overlooked and vulnerable populations in our country.
Secretary of Education Linda McMahon has argued that adult education programs funded by AEFLA have “dismal results—in the most recent reported year, only 43 percent of participants had any measurable skills gains.”
On the surface, and to the untrained eye, those results might indeed seem “dismal.” Less than 50% success? That drives the cost for each newly skilled person from $729 to $1,695, or more than twice the public investment if everyone enrolled in an adult education program succeeded.
But is 100% success expected from adult education programs?
If it’s not, what’s reasonable?
And how much should it cost?
After all, we accept that in many other, far more expensive endeavors, challenging conditions affect outcomes, and failure rates are consistently quite high.
Yet we support them—even applaud them—anyway.
- The research and development success rate (FDA approval) of leading pharmaceutical companies is less than 15%. It takes 10-15 years and around $2.6 billion to develop one new medicine (including the cost of all the failures along the way).
- The success rate of start-up companies backed by venture capital is between 15-20%. A typical venture capital fund invests in 25-40 start-ups at a time. Investment amounts vary by the “stage” of the company, but a conservative estimate is around $5 million per start-up. Since at least four start-ups will fail for every one that succeeds, that means a $25 million investment for each successful company, with investors getting paid back, on average, more than ten years later.
- In Major League Baseball, a batting average of .250 (hitting the ball and either getting on base or scoring a home run one out of every four times at bat) is considered normal and respectable, and anything approaching .300 (three out of every ten times at bat) is outstanding. An everyday starter, playing 150 games a season, will bat an average of four times each game, for a total of 600 times at the plate. The average salary of a MLB player last year hit a new record, at more than $5 million. That means that every hit by a professional baseball player costs more than $33,000 (and he will fail more than two-thirds of the time).
Should we stop researching new drugs to cure heart disease, cancer, Alzheimer’s and other leading killers because it is so expensive, time-consuming, and will most likely fail?
Should we discourage entrepreneurs and investors from developing new software products, clean energy solutions, medical devices, and agricultural processes because the ROI is too risky?
Should we give up on America’s Pastime because there are way more misses than hits in a three-hour game (and each hit costs as much as a new car)?
If not, and if demanding 100% success for any of these endeavors, or for adult education programs, is unreasonable, what amount of success should we strive toward and how much should we spend on it?
Just as each of these endeavors is applauded for the challenges it overcomes—the undiscovered mysteries of science, the vagaries of economics, and a 95-mile-a-hour fastball—teachers in adult ed programs must surmount some of the most difficult conditions in all of education.
Students preparing for high school equivalency tests like the GED or taking classes to build basic literacy and numeracy skills have often struggled in traditional academic settings, sometimes with learning disabilities. They have frequently faced poverty, discrimination and unstable living conditions.
Students learning English as another language come from a wide variety of backgrounds, though those in free or low-cost adult education programs often face similar problems, in addition to increasing worries about immigration status for many.
Most adult ed students are juggling competing priorities like multiple jobs, childcare, and elder care, and may have limited transportation options.
On top of the difficulties confronting their students, adult ed teachers are usually part-time, working for modest hourly wages or flat rates for the classes they teach, which often have much less support than degree programs, requiring teachers to also be counselors, case managers and lifelines to some of the most vulnerable people in our communities.
Given the long odds and stacked deck, it’s a miracle, and a tribute to the talent and dedication of adult ed teachers everywhere, that even 43% of adult ed students are succeeding.
Instead of seeking to eliminate funding for adult education, perhaps what the White House should consider instead is taking a page from venture capitalists and investing more in a form of education that, properly funded, pays for itself.
A recent study in the American Economic Journal examining adult education programs in Massachusetts that provide English language classes found that voting rates doubled for participants, their wages increased by $2,400 compared to immigrants who did not take the classes, and they were three times as likely to report annual earnings of $60,000-70,000 a year. The increased tax revenue from their earnings gains covers the cost of the program over time, generating an estimated six percent return for taxpayers.
No, not everyone who enrolled in the classes completed them, and the ones who did not are an unfortunate though seemingly necessary cost of doing the challenging work of adult education, in much the same way as most initial pharmaceutical tests fail, most start-up businesses go bankrupt, and most batters swing and miss the ball.
Hopefully, they will return another day and succeed.
In adult education, as in science, baseball and venture capital investing, we strive for a perfection we know we will never reach, and celebrate every discovery, hit, and launch that overcomes the odds and changes lives for the better.
