The inadequate K-12 public school system in California may be responsible in part for the sorry state of the local workforce, but it is only part of the problem. A new study points out that the economic future of Los Angeles will be determined in large part by adult education programs.
The study by the Public Policy Institute of California found that a majority of high school dropouts in California are immigrants, about three-quarters of whom left school before coming to California. Making them a more productive part of the local workforce will require that more resources be spent on adult education programs, over and above K-12 education.
That runs contrary to current public policy on education, which focuses almost exclusively on bolstering test scores and reducing the drop-out rate in K-12, not on adult programs.
“You have to look at where people come from if you want to examine the educational attainment of the workforce,” said Julian Betts, a senior fellow with the Public Policy Institute and the author of the study. “Because the immigrant population has grown so fast in California, there needs to be a greater focus on community colleges, ESL programs, and high school equivalency classes that cater to this population.”
While businesses search high and low for workers with basic English and math skills, there is an enormous untapped potential of workers in the immigrant population. At the same time, better-educated workers command higher wages, so a greater supply of them would bring more money into historically low-income regions of L.A. That, in turn, would help bridge the growing gap between the wealthy and the poor here.
“The wage gap between people with a college education, on the one hand, and high school graduates and dropouts, on the other hand, is growing faster in California than in the rest of the United States,” said Betts. “This is primarily due to a large number of immigrants in California.
What’s more, immigrants in California and, especially in L.A., tend to be less well educated than immigrants in other parts of the United States, according to Betts. The reason is that L.A. has been a magnet for poor, rural immigrants from Mexico and Central America, who have been attracted by the low-skill, low-wage jobs in the area.
But educational resources have been scarce, and deploying them to adult ed hasn’t been a priority for lawmakers.
“We get overlooked because a lot of the attention is focused on the children, which is understandable,” said Lupe Reyes, administrator of the Adult Education program of the Los Angeles Unified School District. “We need to make people understand the role we play in providing important educational services for a large part of the local population.”
The LAUSD’s adult education program serves up to 450,000 adult students over the course of a year, by providing ESL courses, citizenship classes and a high school diploma program. The classes are free and demand is great, but the program faces chronic money worries.
“Money is always an issue,” said Reyes. “Because we have started to offer classes in the daytime as well, we have to rent space and that’s very expensive in Los Angeles right now.”
Add to that the need to offer competitive salaries to teachers in a tight labor market. And despite those higher expenses, and the tremendous demand, the adult ed program’s budget this year is only 2 percent more than last year.
Local community colleges, which have traditionally done the trench work in educating many new immigrants, are also facing an uphill battle in securing the badly needed funds to provide their adult education programs.
“It’s easier for taxpayers to understand and to support spending on K-12 education,” said Mary Spangler, president of Los Angeles City College. “But it’s harder to find support for educating adults who many believe should be paying themselves for their education.”
Still, Spangler believes that the state Legislature is generally supportive of community colleges, and she is hopeful that it will divert more funding their way.
