[NLA] Meeting Adult Literacy Needs: Reality vs Rhetoric

[Thomas Sticht]

Research Note   2/17/02
Tom Sticht

Meeting the Education and Literacy Needs of 
Adults in the United States: Reality vs Rhetoric

In 1983,  the influential report entitled "A Nation At Risk" hit a
rhetorical high in trying to scare the American public and government
policymakers into spending more on education. It began, "Our Nation is
at risk. Our once unchallenged preeminence in commerce, industry,
science, and technological innovation is being overtaken by competitors
throughout the world
the educational foundations of our society are
presently being eroded by a rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our
very future as a Nation and a people. 
If an unfriendly foreign power
had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance
that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war." 

The report went on to sound the alarm that among the "educational
dimensions of the risk before us" was the finding that "Some 23 million
American adults are functionally illiterate by the simplest tests of
everyday reading, writing, and comprehension." For the next three years
after this startling revelation, the funding for the Adult Education and
Literacy System (AELS) averaged almost a flat line at FY 84-$160million,
FY85-$166million, FY86-$156million (constant 2001 dollars). 

A decade after the 1983 "A Nation at Risk" report, the results  of the
National Adult Literacy Survey (NALS) came out in 1993. The headline of
the Press Release about the report from the U. S. Secretary of
Education’s office carried the dire warning in all caps "LITERACY LEVELS
DEFICIENT FOR 90 MILLION ADULTS." The Press Release quoted Secretary of
Education Richard Riley as saying, "This report is a wake-up call to the
sheer magnitude of illiteracy in this country and underscores literacy’s
strong connection to economic status." Following this "wake-up call,"
for the next three years the funding for the AELS dropped over eight
percent from FY94-$301million, FY95-$290, to FY96-$275million (constant
2001 dollars).  

Now, almost a decade after the release of the NALS report, comes another
report entitled "The Twin Challenges of Mediocrity and Inequality:
Literacy in the U.S. from an International Perspective." This report,
released by the Educational Testing Service in February 2002, uses data
from the International Adult Literacy Survey and indicates that the
average literacy skills of U.S. adults 16-65 years of age are only good
enough to rank in the middle range of 19 highly industrialized nations
and are therefore just "mediocre." Further, the range of scores between
the 10th  percentile and the 90th percentile are among the largest in
these nations indicating a greater inequality of literacy among U.S.
adults than in most other nations in the study. 

The report goes on to resurrect the specter of skills  "mediocrity" and
to make economic arguments similar to those of the 1983 A Nation At Risk
report and states (p. 30) that "The United States needs "world class"
literacy and numeracy skills if it is to remain a leader in real output
per capita, economic growth, productivity, and competitiveness in the
21st century. "After making several arguments for what the report’s
authors believe are policy relevant findings, the report goes on to
state that "If these arguments are accepted, then the current mediocrity
and inequality in the distribution of literacy skills in the U.S. must
be accepted as preeminent national problems and priorities." 

In the same month of February 2002, President Bush released his FY 2003
budget proposal for the AELS in which he requested the same amount of
funding for FY03, $575 million, as was available for FY02. If eventually
accepted by Congress, this would result in an inflation adjusted
decrease in funding for the AELS in FY03. The President’s budget
proposal also calls for reducing the number of job training programs for
youth and adults from 48 to 28. 

What is striking about these three reports spanning almost two decades
is that each time the reports were released with strong crisis rhetoric
such as "at risk," "act of war," "wake-up call," "preeminent national
problems and priorities,"  it as though no one, often even those who
used it, believed the rhetoric about the need for adult education and
literacy development. Each report was followed for up to three years by
either no additional funding or by actual decreases in funding (using
constant 2001 dollars) for the Adult Education and Literacy System of
the United States. 

These findings seem consistent with one conclusion from the report on
mediocrity and inequality in international perspective when it notes
that the United States "
 accepts in fact, if not in rhetoric, a basic
skills underclass." (p.32) 

 
NOTE:The report entitled "The Twin Challenges of Mediocrity and
Inequality: Literacy in the U.S. from an International Perspective" can
be obtained at:http://www.ets.org/research/pic/twinchall.pdf
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