Cuts to basic skills classes hurt workforce (California)

Cuts to basic skills classes hurt workforce
Tom Abate, Chronicle Staff Writer

Thursday, October 1, 2009

(10-01) 18:55 PDT -- The next generation of Californians could enter the workforce lacking basic skills as the two state institutions that help adults improve in reading, writing and arithmetic suffer from a lack of funding and coordination, a new report says.

The study being issued by the California Budget Project looks at the Adult Education Program and community colleges, two separate systems that offer remedial classes to 1.5 million adults who need help to prepare for jobs or additional education.

"We're talking about basic English literacy, basic math and English as a second language," said project analyst Vicky Lovell. "These are skills you need to get entry level work right away, and they're also the skills you need to succeed in higher education to get a better job."

Poor K-12 education, a high school dropout rate of about 19 percent and a large population of people for whom English is a second language are among the reasons why so many Californians are entering the workforce unprepared for simple tasks such as making change or reading an instruction manual.

Economist Sean Randolph with the Bay Area Economic Forum said this lack of basic skills will not only make it harder for affected individuals to find good jobs but hurt California in competition on a national and global scale.

"Businesses are well aware of this problem," he said.


Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/10/01/BU3J19VSHO.DTL&tsp=1#ixzz0Sk2rzVRw

And we'll sure rob the education budget even more so we can build even more jails.

Eventually nobody will have any job skills and everybody will be in fuckin jail.

the future's lookng bright here in the golden state.

n/t

grammar and geography are not taught. :(

because none of his students knew any. :(

south of the equator.

The absolute consternation of some of the students in trying to figure out which side of the equator different countries in Latin America were on was very depressing. :(

Theres really no excuse for kids to go through 12 grades of education and be unable to speak and write in English.

I went to 6th grade in the hood, and most of my classmates were illiterate or barely literate, and I would guess they were 100% American-born with "English"-speaking parents.