The National Research Council has identified that adult education teachers help to advance learner goals when they:

• Explicitly address foundation of reading and writing

• Combine teaching and extensive practice using diverse and differentiated materials and approaches well-suited to learner

• Develop leaners’ skills to ensure transference to highly valued tasks external to the classroom

• Adjust instruction through frequent monitoring of and feedback on student progress.

An overview of studies on evidence-based research also suggests that effective instruction includes:

• Designing learner-centered instruction

• Developing standards-based instructional units and lesson plans

• Using instructional techniques based in adult learning theory

• Designing instruction to build on learners’ technology and media skills.

What does research tell us about adults learning to read? Unlike normally progressing young readers who have even reading profiles, 95% of ABE readers tend to have very uneven reading profiles. Standardized reading assessments are not sufficient. The TABE (Tests of Adult Basic Education) only measures text comprehension and does not provide any information about learners’ alphabetic, vocabulary and fluency skills. Educators find that it is helpful to use diagnostic assessments to pinpoint the individual needs of their learners and plan instruction that accelerates their reading acquisition. We determined that there is a need to provide our students with diagnostic testing. The answer came when we were invited to participate in STudent Achievement in Reading (STAR) Trainings.

The U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Career, Technical, and Adult Education (OCTAE) has developed STAR to provide states with the resources and training needed to improve the quality of reading instruction in adult education. STudent Achievement in Reading (STAR) was created to improve the reading achievement of intermediate-level adult learners (GLE 4.0-8.9) in ABE. STAR provides teachers and administrators with web-based tools that translate reading research into practice, and high-quality training and technical assistance to build capacity for reading reform. The research produced findings that together form the basis of evidence-based practices. Among them:

There are four key component areas of reading: alphabetics (phonemic awareness, phonics, decoding), fluency (the ability to read accurately, at an appropriate rate, and with prosody), vocabulary, and comprehension. Learners’ strengths and weaknesses need to be assessed in each of the four components. Instruction should be based on assessment results. Instruction should be systematic, sequenced, direct, and explicit. Instruction and materials need to be engaging and relevant to learners’ needs. Instruction must be continuously monitored, by teacher and learners, to gauge its effectiveness. Those are exactly the practices that we use in education classes.