The Adult Education and Family Literacy Act (AEFLA) Program, authorized under Title II of the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA), is the main source of federal support for adult basic and literacy education programs for adults who lack basic skills, a high school diploma, or proficiency in English. The National Study of the Implementation of Adult Education Under the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act is the first study in the evaluation of WIOA Title II, and will collect data for the first time in over a decade on how adult education programs are providing services under AEFLA.

With a 2009 federal call for U.S. adults to pursue at least one year of higher education and training leading to a credential, it was imperative to measure whether industry-recognized certifications, state and local government-issued licenses, subbaccalaureate educational certificates, and other nondegree credentials were being obtained and the impact they were having on employment outcomes. As the primary technical support contractor for the Adult Training and Education Survey, AIR does survey development and testing, sampling, and data preparation, analysis, and reporting for NCES. The first official data and report were released in 2017-18.

Despite the important role that adult education can play in students’ lives, research on teachers of adult education is limited. AIR produced four research briefs to provide descriptive information about the characteristics of teachers in adult education and to explore whether teacher characteristics are associated with student achievement in adult education.

The Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies studies the cognitive and workplace skills of adults in 24 countries to determine how well they can participate in a 21st century society and global economy. AIR and the Educational Testing Service are partnering on a three-year training project focused on building the capacity of the U.S. research community to utilize the new data sets and tools from PIAAC.

U.S. Department of Education statistics from 2008 showed that 44 percent of the 2.4 million students in the federally funded adult education program were English as a second language (ESL) students, and of these, about 185,000 were at the lowest ESL level, beginning literacy. The What Works Study for Adult ESL Literacy Students study identified effective instructional practices for improving the literacy skills of low-literate adult ESL learners.