Tucson Weekly – The elimination of state adult-education funding would harm both Arizona’s citizens and our economy

For full article click here

………Having the GED program for one extra year is good news. But one year is not good enough; we need a permanent GED program. One way we might come up with the funding is to pay more in taxes. Even though I’m only 15, I know that when I grow up and begin my career here, I want to know I’m joining an educated workforce.

Over the past few months, adult-education activists have been organizing across the state. Betty Stauffer, the executive director of Literacy Volunteers of Tucson, is in the middle of this effort. Literacy Volunteers, which provides tutors to adults who are learning English or hoping to increase their literacy skills, knows how important GED classes are for the students they serve.

“We know that when a parent is well-educated or is working on their education, 100 percent of the time, their child’s performance in school improves,” Stauffer says. “It is a cyclical effect.”

According to Pima Community College spokeswoman Rachelle Howell, PCC Adult Education awarded 1,787 GEDs in 2008-2009 and served 7,846 students in its adult-education programs. Eighty percent of these students are younger than 45.

After her GED class, my mom comes home and cleans until I get home. Our house is small, but good enough for the two of us. When I walk in, she asks me how my day went, and I ask her the same. We sit down at the round kitchen table and do our homework together; this is our bonding time, when we talk and help each other out. Most of the time, my mama only has math homework. When she asks for help, and I don’t know the answer, we always look it up in one of our math books in our small home library. We eat dinner—always before 8—and go to bed early, because we want to be ready for the next day. For full article click here

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.