How Federal Adult Education Policy Intersects With the Carceral State: A Critical Policy Analysis

• In Event: People and Policy: Counternarratives of Challenges and Support

Abstract

Federal adult education laws—specifically the Workforce Innovation and Opportunities Act of 2014 (WIOA)—demonstrate how federal prerogatives have shifted from learner-centered to employer-centered, from qualitative measures to quantitative accountability, from a focus on social justice to a focus on economics. This latest legislation also shows little regard to one of the United States’ most marginalized populations—those who are incarcerated or formerly incarcerated. This paper will seek to demonstrate through Critical Policy Analysis and a cross-state comparison, how these shifts in policies have not worked to fully address the racist and unjust functions of the criminal legal system in which these educational policies are implemented thus preventing the change needed to dismantle the prison industrial complex.

Author

• Diana Brace, The University of Iowa