Update from the ACCC Conference - Ottawa

The ACCC Conference ran from Sunday May 25 through Tuesday evening May 27. I was asked to deliver two sessions.

The first session was in a section of the program entitled "Serving Impoverished Communities". I think the title was supposed to mean something like, "How will colleges work with the poor and vulnerable in our community?" The critical theorist and deconstructivist in me had a reaction to the title and created a very different meaning:

• The term 'community' has its roots in both a Roman military unit and in something held in common. It also has shares roots with the word 'munitions'. In effect community stresses insiders and outsiders. Communities tend to protect themselves from those on the outside - fortified cities, gated communities, and economic barriers all work to keep "others" outside. 
• The term 'impoverished' has its roots in an interesting dichotomy: "producing little" and "getting little". The 'im-' means 'not' but has a sense about it of being made to be in a certain way such is im-print. This condition of producing little for the economy is set against a condition of getting little from the economy. Either way an economic determinant is set.

Taken together, the sense of the title that I started my presentation with is how will those with economic privileges - those on the inside, or the beneficiaries of our market economy - change the circumstances of those outside so that they can become productive and move inside. Another sense of this - how do colleges move people from a community of "have-nots" into a community of "haves"?.

The focus of the presentation was on adults with developmental disabilities. In particular I addressed the Government of Alberta's expectations that in three years we will move from 30% employment to around 60% when there has been effectively $37M removed from the support structures that would be needed to grow employment amongst this group. Clearly this "outside" group was getting little but expected to produce more... something not likely to happen. That the CEFL is trying to be creative with partnerships, for example working with Prospect, is important because we are accessing opportunities that already exist and offering things we already do in a way that will touch the lives of more people that we currently do.

The second session was focussed on the Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC).  PIAAC is being used to guide the recent Labour Market Agreement between the provinces and the federal government. In that agreement funding became concentrated in the areas closer to achieving a trades credential of some kind. PIAAC statistics suggested that moving people between comparatively higher literacy levels was a better investment.  What was not mentioned except deep within the survey results, was that persons with disabilities and others with very low literacy levels were a "missing category. (OECD. (2013). Skills outlook: First results from the survey of adult skills. Paris: OECD Publishing. P. 69). Further, PIAAC participants that did not complete the background questionnaire were described as “not able to read the language of the assessment” and had “difficulty reading or writing, or had learning and mental disabilities”. PIAAC concluded that, “in most cases, these persons are likely to have low levels of proficiency (p. 69).

The image below is part a Level 1 Literacy question. I think that you will agree that for our low level literacy students, the question (on the left) and the text they are to refer to (on the right) would be above their reading and likely their comprehension level. I would suggest that the PIAAC instrument lacks even face validity.

Out of a room of around 25 people - mostly Deans and Directors of colleges - only one person had heard of PIAAC. None had grasped how recent policy and hence funding priority changes derived from PIAAC. A number hung back after the presentation to talk about what could be done... and that was one of the outcomes that I was hoping for.

Let me know if you have questions or comments.