Dear NCL Members, I promised Jeff Carter to send along a report of recent important education and reentry efforts happening in corrections. I really appreciate being able to participate in your listserve and keep up with various literacy activities. As some of you might have noticed this is actually an optimistic time for correctional education. Even though the US Congress is not getting much done there have been some significant things going on within the Obama administration and with various nonprofit liberal and conservative groups. What follows is a somewhat abbreviated report that I will be giving at the American Correctional Association convention in early August in Boston. Although I have retired after 29 years as Executive Director of CEA I am just as involved with correctional education as before as the Reentry/Education Advocate for CURE National, a nonprofit prison and justice reform group. If you have any questions please feel free to email or call me. My contact information is at the end of this email. Happy 4th of July. *Steve* *NCL and Reentry Correctional Education Summary* *Stephen J. Steurer, Ph.D. CURE National Advocate* *June 27, 2016* *Pell* *Grants for the Incarcerated* – The Higher Education Act will likely not go very far in the 2016 session of Congress. Pell grants are part of HEA and there has been a significant effort recently within the correctional community to restore Pell grant eligibility for prison inmates. The ineligibility of state and federal inmates from access to Pell grants dates back to 1994 with the “Get Tough on Crime” movement. During this session Congresswoman Donna Edwards (MD-D) introduced the REAL Act to remove the prohibition on inmate access to Pell grants. There might be another Senate bill introduced as well, but the likelihood of either the House or Senate bills reaching the floor is very low. John Linton, recently retired USDOE Correctional Education Program Director, and I have been working very closely with a number of advocacy groups to help plan a campaign for the restoration of Pell Grants. All the groups concur that the campaign would best be launched after the conclusion of the national elections. Meantime, we are working diligently to put together a brochure and a series of campaign activities. As things develop I will keep everyone informed. It deserves mention that Pell grants are available for incarcerated youth and adults in local and county jails as well as juvenile facilities. Congress accidentally left them out of the definition of prisoners, mentioning only state and federal adult prisons. Very few jail programs currently use Pell grants because of the generally fast turnover of jail populations . However, a number of juvenile facilities have developed post -secondary programs using Pell funding. The national trend to depopulate state and federal prisons and keep shorter term inmates (2 years or less sentence length) incarcerated in local jurisdictions means that Pell grants may become more attractive for community colleges. The big push for reentry programs includes post-secondary credit program. Last week in a webinar broadcast the Center for American Progress, four Cabinet members discussed reentry efforts in their agencies. The discussants included Department Secretaries Tom Perez (Labor), Loretta Lynch (Justice), Julian Castro (HUD) and John King (Education). Each laid out their new actions to eliminate artificial roadblocks for ex-offenders to reenter society, such as “ban the box”. Ban the box policies recommend that applicants are not asked about their criminal history until the end of the application process for jobs, college registration, housing and other areas. When it was his turn to speak Secretary of Education John King announced the awardees for the 2016 experimental Pell grant sites. On July 1, 2016 $30,000,000 in grants will be awarded in 27 states to 67 colleges and cooperating corrections departments. These grants will last four years. Texas topped the list with 9 grants, followed by New York (7) and California (6). In my own state of Maryland four colleges - Goucher, the University of Baltimore, Anne Arundel Community College and WorWic Tech – received grants to provide college courses in various state prisons. In Virginia Danville and Rappahannock Community Colleges received grants. Please go to http://www2.ed.gov/documents/press-releases/second-chance-pell-institutions.pdf in order to see the complete list of grantees. This is a big step forward because many Republicans and Democrats support correctional education and other reentry efforts as well as sentencing reform. It is a bit ironic, however, because while post- secondary education is extremely important, most inmates lack adult basic, high school completion, career vocational and English language skills. Hopefully, there will be an increase in funding for programs at this level in the near future as well. In addition to Pell grants, other restrictions and limits were placed on federal funds for inmate education in the *Perkins and the Adult Education Act* during and after 1994. The Adult Education Act restricted state prison and local jail funds to no more than 10% of the federal grant to each state. With the re-authorization of WIA (now WIAO)the 10% restriction was increased to 20%. The Perkins Act had been an excellent source of funding for career and vocational education programs in state prisons until the mid-1990s. State prisons were then restricted to no more than 1% of the state allotment. A good number of states had used these funds to buy equipment and support vocational education instruction. These cuts adversely affected prison programs in my state of Maryland where. Many of us are meeting at the Open Society in Washington, DC and cooperating in a Reentry Workgroup to change or eliminate the 1% limit when the Perkins Act is re-authorized, hopefully next year. *PIAAC Prison Study* Some of us have been working with staff at PIACC to develop the following summary of their prison study which will be released sometime this autumn. Below is a partial summary that I recently sent to the Association of State Correctional Administrators Research Committee. ASCA is the professional association of the commissioners/secretaries of corrections who run the state and federal prison systems. ASCA has as much influence on the direction of correctional policy as any correctional organization. ASCA meets for 4 days twice a year at the American Correctional Association summer and winter conventions. ASCA has their own research and policy committees and, as the CURE Reentry/Education Advocate, I am able to update ASCA on all issues regarding education. *PIAAC Prison Study* In the fall of 2016, the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) will release a report about its 2014 U.S. Prison Study. The report will provide information about the basic skills of adults incarcerated in U.S. federal, state, and private prisons and how their literacy skills compare with those of the U.S. household population. In addition, the findings will provide insight into the relationships between skills, education, and job training, as well as between skills and non-academic experiences in prison, such as work assignments. The report will be complemented by the release of an interactive web portal, data files, and extensive web-based search tools that will enable researchers at different levels to conduct in-depth secondary analyses. The 2014 U.S. Prison Study is part of the U.S. National Supplement of the Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC), also known as the Survey of Adult Skills. *What Is PIAAC? *The Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies is a large-scale study of adult skills and life experiences. It was developed and organized by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). PIAAC measures key cognitive skills of adults and the relationships between individuals’ educational background, workplace experiences and skills, and use of information and communication technology. In the United States, the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) collected U.S. household data in 2011-2012 and released the results in 2013. Twenty-three other countries also participated in this round of data collection. In 2013-2014, NCES expanded the U.S. sample through a second round of data collection (known as the PIAAC U.S. National Supplement), oversampling young adults (ages 16-34), unemployed adults, and older adults (ages 66-74). In addition, during the second round, NCES conducted a study of incarcerated adults in U.S. federal, state, and private prisons. Similar to the PIAAC main study, the prison study includes direct assessments of the literacy, numeracy, and digital problem-solving skills. However, the prison background questionnaire is specifically tailored to address the needs and experiences of the incarcerated adults, including participation in academic programs; experiences with prison work assignments; and involvement in nonacademic programs, such as life skills and employment readiness classes; and educational attainment and employment prior to incarceration *Barbara Bush Foundation* Many of you attended the BBF meeting on June 8th in Washington, DC to discuss the future of adult education on the celebration of the 25th anniversary of Adult Education Act. The meeting looked at various ways to broaden access to adult education services for the millions of people who do not have the resources. Here is a link to the various proposals which were developed at this meeting: http://barbarabush.org/conversation-on-the-future-of-adult-literacy-fye/. *Vera Institute* *Reimagining Prison* On June 20, 2016, Vera launched a national initiative, *Reimagining Prison*, designed to re-examine the purpose and goals of incarceration and set out an unprecedented vision for the future of justice and incarceration in the U.S. We met for the kick-off at the Eastern State Penitentiary. ESP opened in Philadelphia in 1829 setting the tone for prison construction and theory for more than a century in the US and, literally, around the world. In the next year and a half many of us will continue to meet with Vera to build a new concept and lay out a plan for reform. The meeting was sponsored by the Koch brothers who have allied with liberal correctional thinkers to reform a justice system we all feel has not worked and actually caused more harm to our country than good. Instead of reducing crime it has actually done great damage to minority communities. For those of you who are interested here is a link that describes *Reimagining Prison*. So please check the Vera Institute website for more information: http://www.vera.org/project/reimagining-prison. -- *Steve* Stephen J Steurer, PhD Reentry/Education Advocate cell:443-474-1196 sjsteurer@gmail.com *"Education Reduces Recidivism"* *CURE National* www.curenational.org