[NLA] Meeting Adult Literacy Needs: Reality vs Rhetoric

[Thomas Sticht]

Research Note        February 22, 2002
Tom Sticht


Meeting Adult Literacy Needs in the United States: 
Reality vs Rhetoric Part II: Some Black and White Issues

The Perception of One’s Reading Skills

The National Adult Literacy Survey (NALS) measured adults performance on
Prose, Document and Quantitative literacy scales, and it asked adults to
rate their own reading skills as they perceived them. In a report on the
Literacy of Older Adults in America, from the National Center for
Education Statistics in Washington, DC, the authors reported that:  

Whites and Blacks aged 16-59 rated their reading proficiency in English
as 
Whites: Very Well-77%, Well-21%, or Not Well/Not At All-3%. 
Blacks: Very Well-67%, Well-27% and Not Well/Not At All-6%. 

But when the average proficiencies of these groups on the NALS Prose
scale was compared, it was found that for Whites who rated themselves as
reading Very Well, their average Prose proficiency was 308, well into
Literacy Level 3 whereas for Blacks rating themselves as reading Very
Well, their Prose average proficiency was 259, in the middle of NALS
Literacy Level 2. On the Quantitative scale, Whites rating themselves as
reading Well scored 278 on the NALS , placing them just inside Level 3,
while Blacks who rated themselves as reading Well scored 221, at the
high end of Level 1, the lowest literacy level on the NALS. 

In both of these literacy assessments (Prose & Quantitative) Blacks
tended to rate themselves as reading Very Well or Well even though their
measured reading skills were almost a full standard deviation below the
scores of Whites who rated themselves as reading at these levels of
perceived skill. If it is adults’ PERCEPTIONS of reading skills that
motivates them to enroll in the Adult Education and Literacy System
(AELS), then it seems likely that neither Blacks or Whites will enroll
in the AELS in large numbers simply because they do not perceive
themselves as reading poorly.  This would seem to be an especially
grievous situation for Blacks. How do we convince people who do not
think they have a literacy problem that they do, indeed, have one. . .
if indeed they do?

The "skills gap" issue that might make the most difference in getting
adults into the AELS may not be the "gap" between people’s measured
skills and the so-called "demands" of the workplaces of America, but
rather the "gap" between what test developers say about what adults’
literacy skills are like and what the adults themselves perceive their
literacy skills to be. 

The Intergenerational Transfer of Literacy

In 1980 the Department of Defense re-normed the Armed Services
Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB) using a nationally representative
sample of young adults 18-27 years old. On the Armed Forces
Qualification Test (AFQT), the basic skills test used to screen
applicants for service it was found that Black mothers who had completed
only 0-8 years of education produced young adults who scored at about
the 10th percentile of the AFQT. White mothers with 0-8 years of
education  had young adult children who scored at the 28th percentile.
Black mothers with High School degrees had adult children who scored at
the 15th percentile on the AFQT while White mothers with High School
degrees had adult children who scored at the 60th percentile. At the
high end of the education continuum, Black mothers with college degrees
produced young adult children who scored at about the 48th percentile on
the AFQT, while Whites with comparable education had adult children who
scored at about the 80th percentile. In this case then, college educated
Black mothers produced children who scored on the AFQT well below the
level of the adult children of White mothers with only a high school
diploma. 

In 1985 the Young Adult Literacy Survey (YALS), the forerunner of the
NALS found that White mothers with LESS than High School education had
young adult children 21-25 years of age who scored 290, Level 3 on the
YALS Prose scale, while those White mothers with more than High School
education had children who scored around 335 on the Prose scale, well
into Literacy Level 4.  On the other hand, Black mothers with LESS than
high school education had adult children who scored 250, Level 2 on the
YALS, while those Black mothers with MORE than High School education had
young adult children who scored 280 on the Prose scale. Thus, better
educated Black mothers produced adult children who performed on the YALS
Prose scales somewhat below the children of poorly educated White
mothers.

These AFQT and YALS data suggest that even if adult programs that hope
to stimulate an intergenerational transfer of literacy from parents to
their children, such as  family literacy programs,  were able to move
Black mothers from less than high school to more than high school levels
of education, the intergenerational transfer of literacy would still not
close the gap between the literacy skills of the adult children of White
and Black mothers with comparable education levels. So far I have not
found adult literacy education programs reporting many successes at
moving very many adults, Black or White,  from less than 8th grade
education literacy skills to college or college graduate levels of
skills.  

Further, as noted above, if adults do not perceive themselves as having
much of a literacy problem, then it seems unlikely that they will enroll
in adult literacy programs and hence the growth of literacy skills
needed to bring about a transfer of literacy from parents to their
children is not likely to occur for many millions of adults with poor
literacy skills. 

The data presented above for the AFQT and the YALS suggest that it will
also be difficult for the pre-school-K-12 system to close these Black
and White skills gaps across generations. Indeed, the data suggest that
to establish that parity in educational outcomes for the education of
children has been achieved by the pre-school-K-12 system will require an
examination of the intergenerational transfer of literacy from children
after they have grown up and had children of their own. 

The data suggest, too,  that higher education institutions should be
examined to find out why some college educated parents score so poorly
on basic skills tests and produce such small intergenerational transfer
of literacy from themselves to their children. On the NALS, White adults
with 4 year college degrees had an average score of 328 (Level 4) on the
Prose scale while Blacks scored 288 (Level 3). Are colleges and
universities doing all they can to close the gaps between the literacy
skills of college educated adults of different ethnic backgrounds? 

Concern with the intergenerational transfer of literacy to reduce
inequality in America  means that the assessment of adult education
levels and literacy skills is a necessary part of the evaluation of the
success of the pre-school, K-12-higher education systems in leaving no
child behind! We won't know how well we have done until we find out how
well the children's children are doing as adults.
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