This volume revisits, problematizes, and expands the meaning of quality in the context of adult basic education. Covering a wide range of relevant topics, it includes contributors from the realms of both policy and practice and encompasses both the major instructional areas--reading, writing, and mathematics--as well as larger issues of literacy, learning, and adulthood. Each chapter focuses on what improving quality in the field might look like through the particular lens of the author's work. As a whole, the broad scope of topics and ideas addressed will raise the level of discussion, knowledge, and practice regarding quality in adult basic education. In this book, the term "adult basic education" refers to the broad range of services for adults who wish to improve their literacy and language skills, including beginning and intermediate writing, writing and numeracy, preGED, GED/Adult Secondary Education, and ESL instruction that takes place in a range of contexts including schools, community-based programs, and workplace development programs. The volume is organized around three themes: (1) Accountability, Standards, and the Use of Documentation and Research; (2) Program Structures and Instruction; and (3) Rethinking Our Assumptions and Concepts. Following a preface, Part I, Accountability, Standards, and the Use of Documentation and Research, presents the following chapters: (1) Introduction: Why Quality? Why Now? (A. Belzer); (2) Accountability and Program Quality: The Third Wave (L. Condelli); (3) Equipped for the Future and Standards-Based Educational Improvement: Achieving Results That Matter for Adult Learners (S. G. Stein); (4) Tales from the Field: Struggles and Challenges of Conducting Ethical and Quality Research in the Field of Adult Literacy (D. Greenberg); and (5) Professional Development and Evidence-Based Practice in Adult Education (M. B. Bingman and C. Smith). Part II, Program Structures and Instruction, presents the next series of chapters: (6) Quality Introduction in Adult Literacy Education (H. Beder); (7) Volunteer One-to-One Tutoring: Critical Factors in Providing Quality Instruction (A. Belzer); (8) Supporting Persistence of Adult Basic Education Students (J. P. Comings and S. Cuban); (9) Learning to Read as a Cultural Process (J. P. Gee); (10) The Forgotten R: Why Adult Educators Should Care about Writing Instruction (M. K. Gillespie); and (11) The EMPower Project: Connecting Curriculum Development and Research (M. J. Schmitt and M. Merson). Part III, Rethinking Our Assumptions and Concepts, contains these concluding chapters: (12) Reconceptualizing Adult Basic Education and the Digital Divide (E. Hayes); (13) Beyond the Life Boat: Improving Language, Citizenship, and Training Services for Immigrants and Refugees (H. S. Wrigley); (14) Filling in the "Black Box" of Family Literacy: Implications of Research for Practice and Policy (E. N. Askov, C. Kassab, E. L. Grinder, L. M. Semali, D. Weirauch, E. L. Saenz, and B. Van Horn); (15) Giving Literacy Away, Again: New Concepts of Promising Practice (S. Reder); (16) The Adult Learner in Adult and Family Literacy: Gender and Its Intersection with Role and Context (V. L. Gadsen); and (17) Possible Selves: Literacy, Identity, and Development in Work, School, and Community (G. A. Hull, M. Jury, and J. Zacher).