Federal accountability policies requiring rapid, measurable outcomes have increasingly shaped the nature and type of public literacy services available to adults. However, little empirical research has explored the impact of accountability policies on program practice in adult basic education, and almost no research has focused on the effect on services for adults who have difficulty reading. This ethnographically grounded research article explores one publicly funded adult basic education program’s efforts to comply with federal accountability policy and the impact these efforts had on services for adults with difficulty reading. Findings suggest that efforts to comply with accountability policies resulted in instructional practices that limited students’ opportunities for substantive engagement with reading and in program policies that excluded students who did not produce outcomes from participation. The findings also suggest that in the context of accountability pressures, student marginalization became normalized as an ordinary part of practice.

要求迅速，可衡量的结果的联邦问责制政策越来越多地影响了成年人可获得的公共扫盲服务的性质和类型。但是，很少有实证研究探讨问责制政策对成人基础教育中计划实践的影响，几乎没有研究集中在对阅读困难的成年人的服务影响上。这份基于人种学的研究文章探讨了一个公共资助的成人基础教育计划为遵守联邦问责制政策所做的努力，以及这些努力对阅读困难的成年人的服务产生的影响。研究结果表明，遵守问责政策的努力导致了教学实践，从而限制了学生进行阅读的实质性参与的机会，而计划政策则将没有产生参与成果的学生排除在外。调查结果还表明，在问责制压力的情况下，学生边缘化已成为常规做法的正常部分。