B. History

The Adult Basic Education Authorization (ABEA), formerly the Literacy Instruction Authorization (LIA), became Colorado’s first State Board governed certification program for adult educators in 2004.

The need for for something like the ABEA was brought to the forefront by the passage of the federal Literacy Involves Families Together (LIFT) Act of 2000, which reauthorized and amended legislation to include staff qualifications (including adult education instructors) as a new required program element.

As a result, in 2002, CDE and the Colorado Family Literacy Consortium convened the Adult Education Certification Workgroup with the goal of aligning all federally-funded programs in Colorado with these requirements through certification.

The workgroup, which was comprised of adult education instructors and administrators, identified competencies needed by instructors of adults based on: the Pro-Net Instructor Competencies and Performance Indicators for the Improvement of Adult Education Programs; TESOL’s Standards for Teachers of Adult Learners; and other states’ teacher competencies and standards. They also recommended courses and course content, and negotiated a series of courses with Colorado Community College System. A subcommittee was also created to develop an alternative route to certification (what is now the ABEA Portfolio Process).

This first version of the ABEA, as developed by the Adult Education Certification Workgroup, was called the Literacy Instruction Authorization (LIA) and was approved in May 2004 as part of amendments to the Colorado Educator Licensing Act of 1991.

Following the creation of the LIA, the first version of the portfolio process was made available in January 2005. This first version of the ABEA Portfolio Process relied on a portfolio review committee that used a variety of rubrics to determine whether the portfolio met the competencies outlined in the LIA courses.

The first LIA was issued by CDE in April of 2005.

Over the following years, a number of revisions were made to the ABEA Portfolio Process with input from the field and the community college system.

In July 2008, conversations began with Colorado State University’s Adult Education and Training department around approving some of their graduate courses as equivalents of some of the LIA courses. These courses were approved starting in spring 2010.

After continued revisions to the LIA, in August 2012, the State Board of Education approved a change to the authorization’s name. At which point, the Literacy Instruction Authorization became the Adult Basic Education Authorization (ABEA).

Over the next two years, the ABEA course competencies were revised with input from the field, and the portfolio committee was indefinitely suspended in favor of a CDE-managed portfolio review process. The revised ABEA course competencies were accepted by the community college system in May 2014, and the portfolio process was revised to match.

In 2016, the field identified some issues with the current process, particularly related to the availability of the ABEA courses, and difficulty of the portfolio process. In response, in the fall of 2016, CDE began developing an alternative option for EDU-131. The result of this work was an AEI-offered asynchronous online course based on the EDU-131 course competencies. It was made available to instructors in federally-funded programs from March-June 2017.

Through the creation and piloting of the AEI-offered EDU-131, and in conjunction with feedback from the field, a variety of opportunities for improvement to the course competencies and portfolio process were identified. As a result, AEI, with support and input from the field, has once again begun the process of revising and improving the ABEA course competencies and portfolio process with the goal of having the new process available in spring 2018.