[AAACE-NLA] An Early Adulthood Education Initiative

[Anita Landoll]

Well many schools are still just "playing the system".
Makes me wonder if scores will ever improve...

Anita  www.learntoreadnow.com



--- tsticht at znet.com wrote:

> January 7, 2006
> 
> An Early Adulthood Education (EAE) Initiative
> For Early Childhood Education (ECE):
> A Life Cycles Education Policy Program
> 
> Tom Sticht
> International Consultant in Adult Education
> 
> The 2003 National Assessment of Adult Literacy
> (NAAL) concluded that some 11
> million adults in the U. S.  are not able to read in
> English, and an
> additional 20% or so are below basic levels of
> literacy and this has not
> changed in the decade from 1993 to 2003. In
> response, the Secretary of
> Education has said that more needs to be done in the
> K-12 system, with a
> focus on President Bush’s high school initiative.
> 
> This is a response to the adult literacy problem of
> the sort that is
> sometimes called "stopping illiteracy at the
> source." The argument is that
> there are so many functionally illiterate adults
> because the high schools
> are graduating too many students who cannot read at
> functional levels. In
> turn, the high schools say this is because the
> middle schools send them
> students who can’t read, the middle schools blame
> the primary grades, the
> primary grades blame the pre-schools, like
> kindergarten and Head Start, and
> now Head Start can blame the new pre-school, Early
> Head Start which was put
> in place to prepare children for education starting
> at birth.
> 
> Unfortunately, as the NAAL indicates,  attempts to
> "stop illiteracy at the
> source" using numerous pre-school, special
> education, and compensatory
> education  programs, along with the regular K-12
> system has not stopped
> functional illiteracy as of yet.
> 
> Data from the National Center for Education
> Statistics in the U.S. released
> in 2005 confirms the NAAL results and shows 30 year
> trends for reading
> scores on the National Assessment of Educational
> Progress (NAEP). A graph
> of average scores on the NAEP for 9, 13, or 17 year
> olds for the thirty
> year period from 1971 to 2004 shows that 9 year olds
> increased from 208 in
> 1971 to 215 in 1980, then fell to 209 in 1990 and
> then rose again to 219 in
> 2004. This is only 4 scale score points higher than
> in 1980. There is a
> similar lack of evidence of any practically useful
> improvement for 13 and
> 17 year olds over this 30 year period.
> 
> Importantly, long term trend data also indicated
> that for children in all
> three age groups, there were no improvements for
> those at the 10th, 25th,
> 50th, 75th, or 90th percentiles across the 30 years
> of reporting. This
> means that from 1971 to the present the K-12 system
> still produces young
> adults (17 year olds) at the 10th percentile with
> reading scores equivalent
> to those of 10 year old children in the 5th grade.
> While there were some
> improvements in achievements for African-Americans
> and Hispanics on
> average, if they were at the lower percentiles of
> achievement, then they
> are still facing considerable problems with
> literacy.
> 
> A finding of considerable significance in the NCES
> long term trends report
> is that, from 1980 to 2004, for 13 and 17 year olds,
> reading achievement
> increases as their parent’s amount of education
> increases. But the reading
> achievement for students whose parents had less than
> high school education
> have not improved over the last quarter century, nor
> have the scores for
> students whose parents have more education.
> 
> Since attempts to "stop illiteracy at the source" do
> not seem to have worked
> out up to now, even though we have put in place
> programs that start at
> birth, it seems we need to ask an important
> question: Why are so many
> children born unprepared to be prepared to learn to
> read?
> 
> Answer: It’s too late by birth. Too many young
> adults are functionally
> illiterate and unable to take care of themselves.
> Often they get involved
> with drugs or other activities that destroy their
> bodies and harm their
> minds. They often have many out-of-wedlock births,
> they are frequently
> unable to make informed choices about good prenatal
> and postnatal care, and
> they are unable to afford such care because they
> can’t qualify for
> well-paying jobs.
> 
> Toward a "Life Cycles" Education Policy
> 
> The "stopping illiteracy at the source" approach as
> illustrated above is
> representative of a policy of education that looks
> at a life cycle
> (singular), "cradle to grave", "lifelong learning"
> perspective on
> education,  but fails to acknowledge a life cycles
> (plural)  policy which
> explicitly recognizes  the intergenerational
> transfer of language and
> literacy from parents to their children and how the
> parent’s education
> affects the subsequent educational achievement of
> their children, as
> illustrated in the recent NCES report.
> 
> Because of the pervasive finding of the influence of
> parent’s education on
> their children’s educational achievement we need to
> move away from thinking
> about literacy education as developed over one
> lifespan, a "cradle to
> grave", "lifelong" perspective, and instead we need
> to think in terms of a
> "life cycles" education policy. We need to shift
> from a "one life cycle" to
> a"multiple life cycles" policy for education that
> embraces adult literacy
> development with the same enthusiasm and commitment
> as is made to early
> childhood and K-12 literacy development. As the NCES
> data suggest, 30 years
> of trying to "fix" children’s literacy while
> ignoring the lack of literacy
> of their parents has not worked out very well. This
> suggests, further, that
> new thinking is called for in our efforts to improve
> literacy in the U. S.
> Perhaps thinking in a "Life Cycles" education policy
> perspective will help.
> 
> An Early Adulthood Education (EAE) Initiative
> 
> As an example of a program of literacy development
> based on a "life cycles"
> policy perspective I am suggesting  that in addition
> to thinking about
> "early childhood education-ECE" we need to think
> about "early adulthood
> education-EAE." This builds on the Bush
> administration’s emphasis upon high
> school education but extends the idea to young
> adults 16 to 30 years of age,
> who lack a high school diploma, are out of school
> and not enrolled in any
> training or education programs. These young adults
> will become the parents
> of a new generation and in addition to other
> child-rearing responsibilities
> and duties they will pass on their motivation for
> education, their
> knowledge, and their language skills to their
> children.
> 
> Then, through the "oracy to literacy transfer
> effect" the acquired greater
> extent of knowledge and language  may transfer to
> the young adult’s 
> children and help them to learn to read more
> effectively and efficiently
> and go on to do better in school. These are the same
> aims as ECE and they
> can be accomplished in a well funded EAE program
> that reaches the millions
> of young adults lacking well developed literacy
> skills
> 
> In a 2004 report for the Economic Policy Institute
> of Washington, DC, R. G.
> 
=== message truncated ===



		
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