Duchesne County Jail Adult Education Online Program - Utah

Educational Opportunity Comes to Duchesne County Jail

Duchesne County Jail is about 100 miles east of Provo in an area of rural Utah almost completely surrounded by national forest, an area rich in scenic wilderness, oil, and Ute tribal culture.

The area is also a regional center for higher education: Union High School, the Uintah Basin Applied Technology College, and the Roosevelt Regional Campus of Utah State University offer a broad range of educational opportunities to most of Duchesne County’s residents.

However, bringing educational opportunity to the residents of the Duchesne County Jail calls for a distinctive approach. “We are an adult correctional facility,” says Cynthia Wardle, the Jail’s administrative assistant. “We can house up to 160 inmates who serve both state and county sentences.”
High school completion is the focus of educational efforts in the Duchesne County Jail.

The Duchesne County program is, in turn, a component of Utah’s statewide program for education in its correctional facilities. In accordance with state guidelines, the Duchesne program delivers its courses with the A+nyWhere Learning System® (A+LS™) courseware.

Wardle describes the jail’s somewhat unusual system setup: “We run A+LS on a server in the jail itself and make workstations available to the inmates at scheduled times. Every three months, our IT people carry the server to the administration building and update the system over the Internet. The A+LS tech support staff has been very helpful. And the system has been wonderful. Wardle notes that the high school is affiliated with the Duchesne County School District. The awarding of credits and diplomas is overseen by the principal of Union High School in Roosevelt.”

No Prom

Duchesne County Jail is clearly not a typical high school. “There are restrictions,” says Wardle. “For example, our students are not permitted to have maps. And, for security reasons, they are not allowed access to the Internet.” Despite the operational constraints, the Duchesne County program represents an open door in terms of educational opportunity.

“Any inmate who does not have a high school diploma is eligible,” says Wardle. “An inmate who wants to enter the program just submits a request.”

The A+LS curriculum, which offers complete, regularly updated coverage of the four core subjects—language arts, mathematics, science, and social studies—is specifically aligned to Utah’s state standards at the high school level, as it is to the standards in all 50 states.

This alignment can be confirmed down to the individual lesson level by teachers and administrators using the system’s own reporting capabilities.

Essentially, the high school program in the Duchesne County Jail is a specialized form of credit recovery and adult education. “Right now,” says Wardle, “we have six inmates taking courses in the high school program.” Completing high school may not be easy for these students. Educational risks have become actualities, often reinforced by long-term patterns of failure that must be reversed. But the potential benefits are significant—for the students and for society.

Even a small number of inmates avoiding recidivism can mean a great deal.

Ronda Crook is the teaching assistant in the Duchesne County Jail. “Many of my students are between 40 and 60 years old,” says Crook. “And many of them haven’t done anything like high school coursework for a long time. But, for some, their lives have made them wiser. And they have a strong desire to learn.”

This is where the technology can make a difference. A+LS courseware, developed by The American Education Corporation, employs a research-validated methodology of Assess (determine the student’s placement), Prescribe (define an individualized learning path), Instruct, and Report (measure achievement against accepted standards). During instruction, A+LS gains the student’s attention, supplies cues, prompts relevant knowledge, and progresses step-by-step through topics.

Learning proceeds incrementally, establishing a pattern of accomplishment.

In the hands of a skilled teacher, A+LS is a powerful, flexible mentoring tool. “Since April 2008, when I began working in the program, we’ve graduated 17 inmates in the 2008-09 school year and we are currently at 7 graduates for 2009-10,” says Wardle. “Each year we have a little graduation ceremony. The graduates can invite three people to come to the jail.

Usually, it’s family. The two or three graduates with the highest grades speak. Just staff, the graduates, and the people they invite are there. It’s a big deal for them and for us, because there are some guys in this program that—on the outside—might not have the incentive to go back to high school and get their diplomas.”

The ultimate objective of the high school program in the Duchesne County Jail is to prepare inmates to lead productive lives. “That’s our main goal,” says Wardle, “to give them the ability to step out of our facility and back into society successfully.”

Read Published A+ Success for Duchesne County Jail HERE: Utah Adult Education Online Program

Tags: Duchesne County Jail Adult Education, High School Graduation for Incarcerated Adults, Utah Adult Education Online Program