Kirsten Slungaard Mumma
What happened to adult education in the United States?
In 2000, federally funded public adult education programs provided basic skills training and English language instruction to over 2.6 million students, or about 1.5% of the U.S. adult population. By 2021, enrollment had plummeted to under 900,000, or less than 0.4% of adults. What explains these… more →
Politics and Children’s Books: Evidence from School Library Collections
Topics: Policy, Politics, and GovernanceThe recent spike in book challenges has put school libraries at the center of heated political debates. I investigate the relationship between local politics and school library collections using data on books with controversial content in 6,631 public school libraries. Libraries in conservative… more →
Immigrant Integration in the United States: The Role of Adult English Language Training
While current debates center on whether and how to admit immigrants to the United States, little attention has been paid to interventions designed to help immigrants integrate after they arrive. Public adult education programs are the primary policy lever for building the language skills of the… more →