[AAACE-NLA] AAACE-NLA Digest, Vol 47, Issue 8

[Merle Ayres]

Well you are somewhat right that voter supression still exists. It is not 
rich or poor but the laws on the books that make it harder to vote. Example 
in Iowa you need to register 2 wks before to cast a ballot. The new law says 
same day voting if you show and identification or proof of residency or a 
bill such as gas bill or other showing addresses. Then if it is suspect a 
provisional ballot is given to be futher scrutinized at the election board. 
Then that is hashed over. The incumbants now want a paper trail and new 
machines are needed as the old ones are 5 to 6 months old are not good 
enough.  The parties in power want to suppress voters may be true to some 
extent. I think we have gone to far to vote.  What would be next background 
checks? I think your arguments may have some merit.


Merle Ayres
412 8th st. North
Humboldt,Iowa 50548
Tel.1-515-332-4630
Fax 515-332-1738





>From: Kearney Lykins <kearney_lykins at yahoo.com>
>Reply-To: National Literacy Advocacy List sponsored by 
>AAACE<aaace-nla at lists.literacytent.org>
>To: aaace-nla at lists.literacytent.org
>Subject: Re: [AAACE-NLA] AAACE-NLA Digest, Vol 47, Issue 8
>Date: Tue, 10 Apr 2007 18:33:37 -0700 (PDT)
>
>
>I am confused. On one hand Andres suggests that millions of votes for 
>George Bush is evidence of rampant illiteracy. On the other hand Peter 
>claims that franchised persons consciously act to maintain illiteracy among 
>the disenfranchised, a group which tends to vote Democratic, "when they do 
>get to vote." In other words, if it weren't for those nasty middle and 
>upper class people, more illiterate victims could find their way out of 
>their homes and into the polls [to vote for Democrats of course].
>
>It is not possible that both Andre and Peter are right. Possibly neither 
>are.
>
>
>Kearney_Lykins at yahoo.com
>
>
>
>
>
>----- Original Message ----
>From: "aaace-nla-request at lists.literacytent.org" 
><aaace-nla-request at lists.literacytent.org>
>To: aaace-nla at lists.literacytent.org
>Sent: Tuesday, April 10, 2007 1:57:04 PM
>Subject: AAACE-NLA Digest, Vol 47, Issue 8
>
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>Today's Topics:
>
>    1. Re:  What literacy problem? reply (Peter MacMonagle)
>    2. Re:  Good Instruction (William R Muth/FS/VCU)
>
>
>----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>Message: 1
>Date: Tue, 10 Apr 2007 11:57:35 -0400
>From: "Peter MacMonagle" <Peter.MacMonagle at cpcc.edu>
>Subject: Re: [AAACE-NLA] What literacy problem? reply
>To: "National Literacy Advocacy List sponsored by AAACE"
>     <aaace-nla at lists.literacytent.org>
>Message-ID:
>     <5BF1A803EF20EC4B84060330C8D706CC89D96B at CEVS6-CENTRAL.cpcc.edu>
>Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
>
>To the Group,
>
>If it is true that there is a direct correlation between participation in 
>civic life and literacy levels, then you have your answer as to why the 
>administration and congress are not inclined to fund literacy program at 
>the level we need to to have an impact.
>
>It is not just current obvious efforts at voter suppression that are in 
>play here.  The poor and usually disenfranchised (and minorities on the 
>voter roles in Florida for instance) have a greater tendency to vote for 
>Democrats when they do get to vote. Keeping literacy levels low in lower 
>SES groups keeps these people too busy scrambling to stay alive and indoors 
>to think about who is running their  government.
>
>I think the real issue here is the effort to keep only the middle class and 
>higher voting as they are percieved as having a financial stake in how the 
>government runs and supports programs that benefit them.  Those with no 
>property and in low wage jobs are perceived as not being stakeholders and 
>hence are discounted and kept off the voter registration lists.  We have an 
>historical penchant for poll taxes, proof of literacy, etc. especially in 
>the South where racial issues still lie very close to the surface in the 
>discourse of politics.
>
>Peter MacMonagle
>Wm. Peter MacMonagle, M.Ed.
>Central Piedmont Community College
>Community Development/Workplace Basic Skills
>West Campus 2219
>704-330-4668
>
>Teach People; not things.
>
>________________________________
>
>From: aaace-nla-bounces at lists.literacytent.org on behalf of 
>tsticht at znet.com
>Sent: Mon 4/9/2007 7:25 PM
>To: aaace-nla at lists.literacytent.org
>Subject: [AAACE-NLA] What literacy problem?
>
>
>
>April 9, 2007
>
>Who Believes America has an Adult Literacy Problem?
>
>Tom Sticht
>International Consultant in Adult Education
>
>"The NAAL, the first assessment of adult English reading and writing 
>ability
>in the U.S. since 1992, estimated that 30 million people over age 16 are
>barely able to read and write."
>Robert Wedgeworth, president and CEO of ProLiteracy Worldwide
>
>This statement by the head of the largest organization of adult basic
>education and literacy in the world occurs in the midst of a longer message
>calling for increased funding for the Adult Education and Literacy System
>(AELS) of the U. S. so it can serve more than the 3 million or so adults
>that it presently serves. Yet in the past, when similar pleas have been
>made for increases in adult literacy funding, in the wake of surveys
>showing 30 to 40 million adults with low literacy skills, the President and
>the Congress have responded with either no or very little increases in 
>adult
>literacy education resources.
>
>Why is this so? Is it possible that neither government officials or any one
>else for that matter, actually believes what the National Assessment of
>Adult Literacy (NAAL) or its predecessor, the National Adult Literacy
>Survey (NALS) reports about the literacy skills of America's adults?
>
>The latest report on adult literacy in the United States, entitled Literacy
>in Everyday Life (LEL)  (Kutner et. al, 2007), once again reports the
>litany of social problems that have been shown to be correlated with low
>cognitive skills, including low literacy, for almost a century. Adults with
>lower literacy skills tend to be in the lower socioeconomic classes, to be
>in minority ethnic groups, to not be native English language speakers, they
>are more likely to be unemployed or to hold low wage jobs, are less likely
>to vote or participate in other civic and community activities, are less
>likely to read to their children a lot, and more likely to be on welfare or
>other forms of public assistance (see Sticht & Armstrong, 1994 for an
>historical review of adult literacy assessments from 1917 to the present).
>
>The LEL report presents data from the 2003 National Assessment of Adult
>Literacy (NAAL) which measured literacy using three literacy scales: Prose,
>Document, and Quantitative and reported results in four major categories of
>skills: Below Basic (the lowest level), Basic, Intermediate and Proficient.
>Another category, those non-proficient in English or Spanish could not take
>the test, and made up about 2 percent (4 million) adults. Some 14 percent
>of adults were in the Below Basic category for Prose literacy and 12
>percent for the Document literacy scale. The Quantitative scale had about
>22 percent in the Below Basic category.
>
>But does being in the lowest level of literacy, the Below Basic level,
>indicate that these adults can "barely read and write?" According to the
>LEL report, being placed in the Below Basic level "indicates no more than
>the most simple and concrete literacy skills. ... Adults at the Below Basic
>level range from being nonliterate in English to having the abilities
>listed below:
>olocating easily identifiable information in short, commonplace prose texts
>[Prose scale]
>olocating easily identifiable information and following written 
>instructions
>in
>simple documents (e.g., charts or forms) [Document scale]
>olocating numbers and using them to perform simple quantitative operations
>(primarily addition) when the mathematical information is very concrete and
>familiar." [Quantitative scale]
>
>The foregoing indicate that adults in the Below Basic level of literacy 
>may,
>in fact, be able to read and write with some real degree of skill above the
>ability to "barely read and write."  One suggestion that adults in the
>Below Basic literacy level have some degree of functional literacy was the
>finding that only around a third (34-35 percent) of adults with Below Basic
>Prose and Document skills thought their reading skills limited their job
>opportunities "a lot."  Another third (33-35 percent) thought that their
>reading skills limited them "some" or "a little" and a final third (32-33
>percent) of these adults reported that their reading skills limited their
>job opportunities "not at all." So two-thirds of adults categorized as
>possessing Below Basic literacy skills did not seem to perceive themselves
>as very limited in their job opportunities due to their poor reading
>skills.
>
>Why don't these adults in the Below Basic category of Prose and Document
>literacy, the lowest level, perceive themselves as limited in their job
>opportunities? There is no information explicitly given in the LEL report
>about this. However, there are some data in the report that may be relevant
>to addressing this issue.
>
>The LEL report states that the correlations among Prose, Document, and
>Quantitative scales were between +.86 and +.89 out of a perfect correlation
>of +1.00. This indicates that all three scales placed people in roughly the
>same rank orders. This means that those who scored poorly on the Prose
>scale were likely to be low on both the Document and Quantitative scales,
>those in the middle range of the Prose scale would be in the middle of the
>ranges of the Document and Quantitative scales, and those with the higher
>Prose scores would also tend to have the higher Document and Quantitative
>scales.
>
>This suggests that in estimating people's literacy skills we should 
>consider
>the sum of the Prose, Document, and Quantitative skills for any given
>person. Presumably all adults have some of each sort of literacy. But when
>the skills are discussed, they are discussed as separate in terms of a
>particular scale. But persons at the Below Basic level on Prose literacy
>presumably also have Below Basic skills on both Document and Quantitative
>scales, too. But without adding up skills across the three scales it is not
>certain how to characterize these people in terms of what they can actually
>do in the real world of literacy. They would seem to have some ability in
>all three domains, but exactly how these add together to form an overall
>estimate of what the Below Basic adults can do with their Prose, Document,
>and Quantitative literacy combined is not clear.
>
>It may be that the combined literacy skills across the three NAAL scales
>render people more capable at getting, keeping, and progressing in a job
>than a discussion of just one scale would suggest. In turn, this might
>influence people's judgments about how little or how much their literacy
>skills limit their job opportunities.
>
>For policymakers in federal or state governments, low unemployment rates,
>below 5 percent, may render the results of the NAAL and the claim that 30
>million or so adults are functionally illiterate less than critical. In
>this case, the policymakers seem to be of the same mind as the adults in
>the Below Basic literacy level themselves. In both groups, adult literacy
>may seem to be somewhat of a problem, but not one serious enough to require
>a major increase in funds for adult literacy education.
>
>Who believes America has an adult literacy problem? If most of the adults
>with Below Basic literacy skills themselves do not think they have much of
>a literacy problem, why should their governmental representatives or anyone
>else think so?
>
>
>References
>
>Kutner,M.,Greenberg,E.,Jin,Y.,Boyle,B.,Hsu,Y.,and 
>Dunleavy,E.(2007).Literacy
>in Everyday Life: Results From the 2003 National Assessment of Adult
>Literacy (NCES 2007-480). U.S. Department of Education. Washington, DC:
>National Center for Education Statistics.
>
>Sticht, T. G. (2001). The International Adult Literacy Survey: How Well 
>Does
>It Represent the Literacy of Adults?. The Canadian Journal for the Study of
>Adult Education, 15, 19-36.
>
>Sticht, T. & Armstrong, W. (1994, February). Adult Literacy in the United
>States: A Compendium of Quantitative Data and Interpretative Comments.
>Washington, DC: National Institute for Literacy.
>
>Wedgeworth, R. (2007, April). ProLiteracy Worldwide's President Reacts to
>the NAAL Comprehensive Report. Downloaded April 9, 2007 at
>www.proliteracy.org/news/index.asp?aid=235
>
>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
>
>
>
>_______________________________________________
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>http://literacytent.org
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>Message: 2
>Date: Tue, 10 Apr 2007 13:38:56 -0400
>From: William R Muth/FS/VCU <wrmuth at vcu.edu>
>Subject: Re: [AAACE-NLA] Good Instruction
>To: National Literacy Advocacy List sponsored by AAACE
>     <aaace-nla at lists.literacytent.org>
>Message-ID:
>     <OF70BDD8B9.A664CB92-ON852572B9.0060CF81-852572B9.0060F318 at vcu.edu>
>Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
>
>Judy - I have heard this method applied to the California State Department
>of Corrections. You might check with someone from Sacramento...
>Bill
>
>
>
>
>
>
>"judy" <jsorg3 at comcast.net>
>Sent by: aaace-nla-bounces at lists.literacytent.org
>04/10/2007 07:15 AM
>Please respond to
>National Literacy Advocacy List sponsored by AAACE
><aaace-nla at lists.literacytent.org>
>
>
>To
>"National Literacy Advocacy List sponsored by AAACE"
><aaace-nla at lists.literacytent.org>
>cc
>
>Subject
>Re: [AAACE-NLA] Good Instruction
>
>
>
>
>
>
>Can anyone help me locate the statistic about building jails based on the
>number of fourth graders reading at proficiency? I have heard of such a
>stat, but can't pinpoint the source. Thank you for any help.
>Judy Sorg
>TerraFirma
>jsorg3 at comcast.net
>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: <tsticht at znet.com>
>To: <aaace-nla at lists.literacytent.org>
>Sent: Wednesday, April 04, 2007 9:01 PM
>Subject: Re: [AAACE-NLA] Good Instruction
>
>
> > Aaace-nla Colleagues: I was pleasantly surprised and somewhat amused
>when
> > I
> > read John Comings note about his visit with teachers doing the STAR and
> > the
> > work based on health circles and then his saying that, "It made me think
> > that combining the two, one that helps teachers improve their teaching
>of
> > skills and the other that helps teachers contextualize learning around
>the
> > interests and needs of  students, could be an exteamly (sic) effective
>way
> > to improve instruction." My mild surprise and amusement resulted from
>the
> > fact that that is exactly what Functional Context Education (FCE)
> > workshops
> > on how to integrate content of interest to students with basic literacy,
> > language, and numeracy skills education have been doing for the last 20
> > years. Indeed, I have given FCE workshops and provided lectures on this
>in
> > all ten Canadian provinces, England, Wales, Ireland, and New Zealand,
>and
> > many of the states in the United States. The FCE approach formed the
>basis
> > for the National Workplace Literacy Program of the U. S. Department of
> > Education and it is the primary approach used in workplace literacy and
> > vocational programs, including health occupations education. Two
>workshop
> > notebooks on FCE are available for free downloading on the www.nald.ca
> > Library web site. I strongly endorse John's somewhat belated recognition
>
> > of
> > the importance of the FCE approach and like him I urge state governments
>
> > and
> > other agencies to look strongly at applying Functional Context Education
>
> > in
> > their areas of responsibility.
> >
> > Tom Sticht
> >
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > AAACE-NLA mailing list: AAACE-NLA at lists.literacytent.org
> > http://lists.literacytent.org/mailman/listinfo/aaace-nla
> > LiteracyTent: web hosting, news, community and goodies for literacy
> > http://literacytent.org
>
>_______________________________________________
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>End of AAACE-NLA Digest, Vol 47, Issue 8
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