The WELL Strategy. Workforce Education & Lifelong Learning for Education and Economic Reform.

Overview & Synopsis

National concerns linking education and economic development have been stated in "America 2000: An Education Strategy." The America 2000 strategy represents the direction to educational and economic reform in a metaphor of four trains leaving a station on four parallel tracks. However, this misses the point that the tracks are actually related. The Workforce Education and Lifelong Learning (WELL) Strategy emphasizes the interrelatedness of all four of the tracks in the America 2000 strategy. The WELL Strategy addresses the call for educational reform in the schools through reform of education for adults. Track Three, adult education, particularly the education of adults in the work force, is seen as the fulcrum to lever the achievement of the other three tracks because the education of adults transfers intergenerationally to improve the educability of children, makes adults more productive, increases the tax base, and hence provides for better schools and safer communities. (Appendixes include nine references and a figure that depicts adult education as the central point for new investments in education.) (YLB)