[AAACE-NLA] ABC's of Investing in Adult Literacy Education

[tsticht@znet.com]

May 29, 2005

ABC’s of Investing in Adult Literacy Education

Tom Sticht
International Consultant in Adult Education

A- An investment in adult literacy education usually produces "double duty 
dollars," meaning a dollar spent for adult literacy education usually 
produces many dollars of returns on investment in improved productivity at 
work, at home, in the schools and in the community.

B – Better educated parents tend to produce better educated children.

C – Childhood education and adulthood education are part of the "life 
cycles" of education; adults’ education produces an intergenerational 
transfer of language and literacy to their children.

D – Developing integrated basic skills and workplace skills programs is a 
cost-effective way to increase higher paying job prospects in welfare-to-
work programs.

E – Educating adult literacy students has been found to improve self-
esteem, motivation to learn, and overall mental health; thus cost-
effectively providing health outcomes along with literacy.

F – Federal funding for adult literacy education does not exceed $220 per 
student while funding for Head Start exceeds $6,000 per student, K-12 
exceeds $6500 per student and higher education exceeds $16,000 per student. 
This is unfair and unjust. 

G – Globalization of work means that America’s workforce will need to 
compete with workforces around the world, and adult workplace literacy 
programs can help workers acquire new levels of skills as new demands 
arise. 

H – Health literacy programs can produce increases in adults’ understanding 
of medical problems before they become critical and contribute to medical 
cost-savings.

I – Intergenerational transfer from parents to their children of motivation 
for learning has been found to occur when adults are involved in literacy 
programs. 

J – Just-in-time basic skills education in workplaces has helped adults 
retain and advance in jobs that would have been lost to foreign 
competition. 

K – Knowledge development is as important as skill development, and faster 
to achieve,  in adult literacy programs that focus on helping adults meet 
daily demands for reading, writing, and mathematics in functional contexts.

L – Literacy education in adulthood has been found to be an important 
contributor to the success of pre-school programs of literacy development 
in early childhood. 

M – Military services have valued adult literacy education since General 
George Washington ordered chaplains at Valley Forge to convert an old 
hospital into a classroom and use it to teach the ABC’s to illiterate 
soldiers.

N – Navy research near the turn of the 21st century found that each dollar 
invested in academic (basic) skills training returned $14-$22 dollars in 
recruitment and training savings. 

O – Organizational effectiveness in the areas of recruitment, training, job 
placement, job promotion, and job productivity has been found in cases 
where workplace literacy programs have been initiated. 

P – Promoting the Adult Education and Literacy System (AELS) of the United 
States ought to be a major undertaking for communications media, business 
and industry, and educators at all levels because of the many benefits that 
this system provides. 

Q – Quantitative and qualitative data from research across the last century 
show that adults can be learn to read, write, compute, and develop 
functionally relevant knowledge and that this knowledge and skill has 
contributed to the growth of democracy in our nation. 

R – Renewed commitment to adult literacy education by our federal and state 
policymakers will return itself in greater national achievements in the 
education of children and the increased global competitiveness of the 
American workforce.  

S – Social inclusion with increased social justice requires that 
investments in adult literacy education be increased from present poverty 
levels to levels comparable to the other components of our national 
education system. 

T – Training programs that help under-educated adults move more quickly 
from poverty or working poor into well paying jobs are possible using cost-
effective, functional context designs in which basic skills and job skills 
education are integrated together into coherent, supportive, developmental 
programs. 

U – Under-educated adults without high school degrees in the United States 
number in the tens of millions and are presently under-served by a grossly 
under-funded and marginalized education system. Policymakers need to 
provide funds to move this educational system from the margins to the 
mainstream of education. 

V – Volunteers have served adults in need of literacy training ever since 
our nation’s beginnings and they continue to serve today. But the services 
of hundreds of thousands of volunteers need to be reinforced by even 
greater numbers of full time, paid teachers if the United States is to 
fully meet the needs for lifelong learning and transfer across life cycles 
in this more complex age. 

W – Women’s literacy education is of special importance because research 
shows that better educated women have fewer children, get better pre-natal 
and post-natal care, have more full-term babies, send children to school 
better prepared to learn, and produce greater numbers of secondary school 
and college graduates. 

X – Xenophobia, i.e., fear and hatred of strangers or foreigners, is being 
fought every day in the Adult Literacy and Education System of the United 
States by tens of thousands of teachers in programs for both native born 
and immigrant adults. Better educated adults are less fearful and more 
accepting of others and this is conducive to better community safety and 
harmony. 

Y – Young adults who are positioned to become parents and who are school 
dropouts or just poorly educated in the basic skills can receive literacy 
education and thereby improve not only their own life chances but those of 
their children when they arrive. Adult literacy education is a form of 
early childhood education that starts even before children are conceived.

Z – Zeal for life, greater health, wealth, social inclusion, social 
justice, family devotion,  greater concern for and caring for the diversity 
of humanity and a greater chance for success in the pursuit of happiness. 
All these are the realities as well as the intangibles resulting from adult 
literacy education. 

SUPPORT THE ADULT EDUCATION AND LITERACY SYSTEM TODAY!

Thomas G. Sticht
International Consultant in Adult Education
2062 Valley View Blvd. 
El Cajon, CA 92019-2059
Tel/fax: (619) 444-9133
Email: Tsticht at aznet.net