In this episode of Work in Progress, we’re talking about the integral role adult basic education plays in helping working-age adults achieve literacy and numeracy, increasing their employability. My guests are Sharon Bonney, CEO of Coalition on Adult Basic Education (COABE), and Jacqueline Aguilera, project manager for Houston Mayor’s Office for Adult Literacy.

Adult basic education covers a range of literacy skills beyond just reading and writing, including numeracy, critical thinking, digital literacy, and contextual skills for careers and life.

COABE works to inspire educators and help adults succeed, with national, state, and local partnerships to provide education and skills training for adult learners. Bonney says it is a vast network.

“We work with many different partners, over a hundred national partners such as IBM SkillsBuild, Google, Amazon, and Tyson Foods. There’s 49 state partners that we work with called State Associations. We have over 2,300 local programs and then we also have 60,000 individual members,” she explains.

Bonney adds that adult education programs serve a diverse population with significant barriers to employment and economic mobility, including migrants, those who have aged out of foster care, the homeless, formerly incarcerated, and immigrants.

The Houston Mayor’s Office for Adult Literacy is one of those local programs. “Some individuals need language skills. They need career prep. They need pre-skilling or upskilling. There are different types of programs that actually help to connect the learners to career opportunities. That is very important because adult ed is a talent pool developer,” says Aguilera, who manages that program.

Bonney continues, “They’re working with learners with the most barriers to life and employment, and they have a great success rate. Helping get people to work, and helping to break generational curses. We’re helping to feed these learners into the workforce and into community college.”

Adult education matters and it makes a difference to the community, says Aguilera. “Passion, commitment, and the dedication to the success of not only the individuals, but of the community and the families, and then the impact that they can have, again, returning to the economic health of the city, which benefits the states, which benefits the nation.”

Bonney, Aguilera, and I discuss how, despite their enormous impact, these programs are often significantly underfunded and how they try to overcome that.

You can listen to the entire podcast here or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also find our podcasts on the Work in Progress YouTube channel.

Episode 357: Sharon Bonney, CEO, COABE, and Jacqueline Aguilera, Houston Mayor’s Office for Adult Literacy
Host & Executive Producer: Ramona Schindelheim, Editor-in-Chief, WorkingNation
Producer: Larry Buhl
Theme Music: Composed by Lee Rosevere and licensed under CC by 4
Transcript: Download the transcript for this episode here
Work in Progress Podcast: Catch up on previous episodes here