"Federal Register" www.federalregistar.gov the daily journal of the united states government. N.P. web 26 Oct. 2010.
HEP stands for "High School Equivalency Program"
What does that mean? What does it do? Who is it for?
First off the HEP is a program implemented to help migrant and seasonal farm workers and there family obtain the skills necessary to gain a GED(General Educational Development) credential.
There are several programs after HEP to assist individuals in continuing there education after obtaining there GED.
As I delve deeper into my research some of the questions I hope to answer are. Does the program work and to what extent? Also how many individuals utilize these programs and to what end?
While looking through the federal website I came across this discussion.
" One commenter inquired as to whether HEP would only benefit farm workers and their families and stated that there were others, not necessarily in that group, who could potentially be helped by this program."
The response to this comment was "We appreciate the commenter's view that HEP could potentially help individuals who are not migrant and seasonal farm-workers. However, section 418A of the HEA, which authorizes both HEP and CAMP, requires that program activities focus on migrant and seasonal farm-workers and their immediate family. The Department does not have the authority to expand this statutorily prescribed requirement."
I found this to be very interesting and it poses the question for me that if this program is working why hasn't it been implemented for other people that do not fall into the category of migrant or seasonal workers.
There are a lot of Americans that would like to take advantage of programs like these to increase there education thus increasing work potential and income.
I am glad that you posted what exactly the purpose of the HEP program is. I also want to know the answer to the questions, "does the program work and to what extent, and how many utilize the program and to what extent?" I suppose that your questions regardless of what the answers are, will still raise more questions. Although they are a great place to start. I would want to ask what does work, and what does not work and how can we change it? Does the legislation that put HEP into effect have any lead way?
ReplyDeleteSomething I would like to address, is the conversation you included where the person asked about the HEP program helping others obtain their GED's. I also found this conversation interesting, but would want to ask if you did any research to find out if there are programs out there for others who are not migrant workers. I also do not know the answer to that question.
There seems to be a lot more to this HEP program than I originally thought, I have many questions as it seems you do as well. I am very excited to learn more about it. I am glad we are asking similar questions, perhaps we will come up with some very different answers to make a larger picture more complete.
Hi Travis:
ReplyDeleteThanks for your initial response, and I do think the Federal Register is an excellent resource through which to develop background information on your topic. The questions you pose about the HEP program--whether it works, who has access, etc--are definitely important and warranted.
To improve your responses in the future, you'll want to spend more time summarizing and paraphrasing your source. At the moment, I feel like you're excluding a lot of the information you found on the federal website. And while I realize that you focused on the information most significant to you, because the summary/paraphrase were so abbreviated I wasn’t able to tell why, specifically, you focused in on the information that you did. Putting emphasis on summary/paraphrase prior to your response will help you mitigate this concern in the future. Otherwise, keep up the good work!
I’d be lying if I didn’t say I was concerned about some of your initial questions. But my purpose isn't to argue with you, but rather to share some thinking you should take into account.
First, the HEP program doesn’t exist in isolation from other federal or state commitments. So while HEP is focused on serving immigrant workers, there are other educational pipelines available for non-immigrants. They just have different pathways for their funding. I point this out, specifically, because when I left high-school at sixteen I benefited from such a program.
Second, while I agree with your initial suspicion that, statistically, obtaining a GED has very little effect on wages, it does seem this could be related to factors other than the GED or the HEP program itself: eg, the marginalized social, economic, and cultural status of people who acquire their GED’s in the first place. But it does seem like the GED is nonetheless a precondition for any American to have any opportunity whatsoever? I think any argument about the effectiveness of GED programs should probably take this into account?
I look forward to seeing where your work takes you from here!