Meet NAFTAE: The Voice for Adult Education
- Erin Vobornik
- 8 hours ago
- 2 min read
Before we go further with this blog, we want to introduce ourselves.
NAFTAE — the National Association For the Transformation of Adult Education — is a national advocacy organization with one clear focus: adult education. Not as a side issue, not as an afterthought to K-12 or higher education policy, but as a field that deserves its own dedicated voice in Washington D.C. and beyond.
Why We Exist
Adult education touches millions of lives through a variety of wraparound services including literacy programs, high school equivalency preparation, English language instruction, and workforce training. But the field has often lacked what other education sectors have: a unified, national advocacy presence pushing for its interests at the federal level.
NAFTAE was built to fill that gap. We work to advance public policy, elevate the voices of adult learners and educators, and transform how the country invests in and thinks about adult education.
What We Do
Strategic Advocacy - We work directly with lawmakers to shape the legislation, rulemaking, and funding decisions that affect adult education programs nationwide.
Public Policy Leadership - We track, analyze, and respond to federal policy changes so the field doesn't have to navigate them alone.
National Awareness - We work to raise the profile of adult education as a policy priority, not a rounding error in a larger budget conversation.
Mobilizing Partners - We unite educators, learners, workforce partners, community organizations, and policymakers around a shared goal: equitable access to adult learning opportunities.
Who We're For
If you're an adult educator, a program director, a learner, a workforce partner, or simply someone who believes adult education deserves a real seat at the policy table — NAFTAE is your organization. We don't advocate for the field from a distance. We advocate with it, because the people closest to the work are the ones who understand what's actually at stake.
What This Means for You
Adult education is shaped every year by decisions made far from the classroom — appropriations bills, reauthorization fights, agency rule changes. NAFTAE's job is to make sure those decisions don't happen without the field's input, and this blog is one of the ways we bring that work directly to you.
In our next post, we'll dig into a live example of exactly that: what the passing of the continuing resolution in Congress means for adult education funding, right now.
