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One of the programs targeted for elimination in the grim that President Trump sent to Congress last week is the $715 million Adult Education and Family Literacy Act (AEFLA), which provides educational services to people who are English learners, who do not have a high school credential, or others who want to improve their foundational skills.

The administration’s chief rationale for gutting the program conjures some magic: fewer adults will need “remedial education” next year, you see, because the President’s K-12 block grant proposal–which would be implemented next year–will dramatically improve student achievement. It’s laughable. But the administration also thrashes AEFLA for its “dismal results.” They’re wrong.

The budget proposal comes not long after the December 2024 announcement of the alarming U.S results on the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD’s) , which assessed the literacy, numeracy, and problem-solving skills of working-age adults in 31 countries. Nearly one-quarter of the U.S. working-age population (23 percent) scored at or below the lowest level in all three of those domains, much higher than the OECD average of 18 percent. Skills at the bottom level of proficiency put you in the margins of the economy.

As OECD puts it, “skills are key drivers of employability and wages.” For example, U.S. adults at the lowest end of the numeracy scale have a high rate of unemployment (7 percent), lower wages ($19 in median hourly earnings), and one of the lowest labor force participation rates among the surveyed countries (62 percent). That’s why adult education is so important. The organization notes that increasing the literacy skills of an adult at the lowest end of the proficiency scale by one level makes it 50 percent less likely that they will live in poverty.

AEFLA was as part of the War on Poverty, and it is still fighting that battle. Now authorized by Title II of the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA), AEFLA enrolled 1.3 million learners in program year 2023-24, serving more participants than any of the other four core education and workforce development programs authorized by WIOA. AEFLA is also the largest federal youth-serving workforce program, enrolling 321,046 youth ages 16 to 24 in 2023-24, more than twice the number of youth served by the WIOA Title I Youth program in that year.

People access adult education services through a network of community-based organizations, community colleges, school districts, correctional institutions, and other training providers who compete for funds at the state level. In 2023-24, about 60 percent of AEFLA learners were enrolled in English language acquisition programs (some of which also included ), 33 percent were in adult basic education programs that are generally for learners with skills below the 8th grade level, and 7 percent were enrolled in secondary education programs to earn a high school credential. Å·²©ÌåÓýͶע 41 percent of learners were employed, with 38 percent unemployed and 21 percent out of the labor force. Nine percent of AEFLA learners were educated in correctional or other institutions. Almost half of AEFLA learners were Latino (47 percent), 21 percent were Black, 20 percent were White, and 8 percent were Asian.

The Department holds states and local providers by using standardized tests administered when a learner enrolls and then again during the program year. Educational gains are reported when a learner advances roughly the equivalent of two grade levels during the program year on the assessment, earns a high school credential, enrolls in postsecondary education, or achieves some other significant skill benchmarks. That sets a pretty high bar for programs serving learners who attend classes a weeknight or two and whose studies can be interrupted by work or family demands or transportation problems at any moment. A lower bar might be better budget politics, but the high bar reflects the ambitions of learners themselves. During the 2023-24 program year, about of learners demonstrated an educational gain. Learners who don’t take a post-test are counted as having not made an educational gain, but among those learners who did take both a pre-test and a post-test, demonstrated an educational gain.

Congress also imposed on AEFLA the same as the other core workforce programs in WIOA, including job placement, job retention, and median quarterly earnings, even though they did not authorize the program to provide job placement or other employment services that might improve those outcomes. As might be expected from a program that only provides educational services to people with foundational skill needs, on the employment indicators is considerably lower than that of the other WIOA programs.

The Department has provided extensive technical assistance to the field to improve the program’s performance. The chief priority has been building capacity to develop (IET) programs that combine academic instruction with skills training. has been another line of work. There also have been efforts to help states and programs improve the of learners, create “ that better connect learners to postsecondary education, and offer services to enhance into communities. (The Trump Administration recently laid off the Department employees who provided this technical assistance, however).

But providing IET programs or any services beyond regular instruction is expensive. In 2023-24, AEFLA programs spent an average of roughly $750 per learner, with about one-third of those funds provided by the federal government. Evidence-based programs that causal research has found effective cost much more than that. For example, , a program that combines English language instruction with career coaching that evaluators found was effective in increasing earnings, cost $5,007 per learner. Similarly, it cost $6,569 per learner to deliver a that MDRC found to be effective in increasing high school equivalency attainment and postsecondary enrollment.

At AEFLA’s current funding levels, the call to offer IETs and other more costly programs puts states and providers in a tough spot because of the enormous demand for services. Spending more per learner can require reducing enrollment, turning away people eager to learn, and starting a waiting list. Most providers seem to be choosing to keep their doors open to as many learners as they can. A carried out during the 2019-20 program year found that 36 percent of them had a waiting list for at least one program. The Survey of Adult Skills results make clear that demand is not likely to let up anytime soon.

in Massachusetts offers a glimpse of what’s possible if AEFLA had a larger budget. Researchers were able to take advantage of the state’s waiting lists and admissions lotteries to compare the outcomes of learners who were admitted to an English language acquisition program in Framingham with those of learners who lost the lottery and were turned away. The program spent $2,788 per learner per year. Researchers found that participation boosted the annual earnings of learners by 56 percent over the 10 years following their admission to the program. Participants were three times as likely to have middle-class annual earnings in the range of $60,000 to $70,000 in any year as those who were not admitted. Importantly, the increased tax revenue generated by those earning gains fully covered the costs of the program.

In other words, adult education, if adequately funded and well-implemented, can pay for itself. Given those findings and the great needs documented by the Survey of Adult Skills, Congress should dismiss the Trump Administration’s magical thinking and cheap shots and increase the federal investment in AEFLA.