In the United States, the nomenclature of adult education includes adult literacy, adult secondary education, and English for speakers of other languages (ESOL) services provided to undereducated and limited English proficient adults. Those receiving adult education services have diverse reasons for seeking additional education. With the passage of the WIA, the assessment of adult education students became mandatory-regardless of their reasons for seeking services. The law does allow the states and local programs flexibility in selecting the most appropriate assessment for the student. The purpose of the NRC's workshop was to explore issues related to efforts to measure learning gains in adult basic education programs, with a focus on performance-based assessments.

This professional development program is designed to improve the understanding of Australian personnel working in adult literacy and basic education (ALBE) of the range of approaches and methods used to achieve different evaluation purposes. It is an adaptation of "A Guide to Program Evaluation" (included here), a detailed guide for people working in the ALBE field. The course is composed of six modules. The modules cover the following: introduction to evaluation and an overview of evaluation issues; evaluation approaches and methodologies; information collection alternatives; collecting and analyzing evaluative information; reporting and ensuring outcomes; and good practice in evaluation. Components of each module are as follows: an overview (duration; purpose; pre- or corequisites; summary of content; delivery; learning outcome; assessment criteria, conditions, and method; suggested resources); contents page; presenter's guidelines that provide a detailed description on how to present the units; transparency masters; and handouts. An appendix contains three case studies (evaluations) of ALBE projects that have been rewritten in an easily accessible style to provide examples of how evaluation projects have been conducted. (YLB)