[NLA] Misinformation From the U.S. Government Part 3

[Thomas Sticht]

This is a reply to Debbie Yoho and Catherine King
Tom Sticht

Debbie Yoho said, "Tom, I would just like some clarification about what
your opinion is regarding "evidence-based" research?  This last post, I
think, could be interpreted as part of a call to standards and "rigor",
especially when making the case for funding quality adult learning
systems.  On the other hand, sometimes I sense, or maybe read in, some
underlying sarcasm or discomfort with the administration's rhetoric along
these lines, and a subtle message that even our field's research leaders
are buying into ideas of "rigor" that George Demetrion sees as really a
statement of political philosophy.  So how do you really see the issue?  "

My response: I see the government’s rhetoric that the field needs to
produce "rigorous, scientific, evidence-based" approaches to adult
education and literacy development to be somewhat hypocritical because
while they insist that the field produce information based on this type of
rigorous research, they themselves are propagating information based on
the NALS that has been soundly criticized, even by the former director of
the NALS,  as lacking validity and as unscientific in its arbitrary use of
response probabilities to establish its scales of literacy, In my recent
posts I cited extensive data from the final technical report of the NALS
by several different measurement and statistical experts that identified
the validity problems of the NALS. These data have not been challenged by
the government, including the federally funded National Center for Adult
Learning and Literacy. Indeed NCSALL and different government agencies
continue to do analyses and produce alarming statistics about the skills
of America’s adults based on these faulty data, while the Bush
administration is taking actions that lead to inflation-adjusted
reductions in the funding in USED/OVAE for adult literacy education.


Catherine King said, Quote: "Hello Tom: In your "research note," Part 3,
you quote from the homepage of the NCSALL: " More than 40 percent of
working-age adults in the United States lack the skills and education
needed to succeed in family, work, and community life today. By
strengthening practice and policy, NCSALL helps these adults gain an
opportunity to achieve their full potential."

You argue that basically the first part of this quote is incoherent, the
last part is "patently false," that the only federally funded AE research
center is staffed by "lay people," and that you would expect to find
"researchers with the scientific training to understand the importance of
construct validity and other aspects of valid research." End Quote


My response: I believe Catherine has misread my post. I did not argue that
the first part is incoherent, Instead I said that the statement was
misinformation because (1) on methodological grounds, there is no known
methodology for determining what the skills and education needed to
succeed in family, work, and community life across the nation are and (2)
there is a lack of methods for measuring what it means to "succeed" in
family, work, and community life. So the statement is not incoherent, it
is just that it coheres into meaninglessness. It was this first part that
I labeled "patently false" not the second part, and I stated that it was
other federal government offices, not NCSALL, that was staffed by lay
persons and not scientists. I expressed dismay that the NCSALL, where I
would expect to find scientists, is also propagating misinformation based
on faulty research.

Regarding Catherine’s discussion of "full potential," it is precisely
because of the unscientific nature of the concept of "full potential" as
illustrated by Catherine’s discussion, and the potential (!) for harm that
such a concept has, recall the history of intelligence testing and the
declarations by some [e.g., Forbes Magazine, October 2, 2000, Dan Seligman
] that certain groups lack the potential to benefit from education because
of their low intelligence,  that I am disappointed to find the only
federally funded,  national research center for adult education using such
language to describe its mission. It could have said, "By strengthening
practice and policy, NCSALL helps these adults gain an opportunity to
improve their skills and education." After all, it was their skills and
education that was claimed to be lacking in the first place, not their
"potential." Even if the NCSALL web page is for a general audience, it is
my opinion that it is supposed to represent the work of scientific
researchers, so the use of imprecise, and essentially meaningless, but
potentially harmful terms should be avoided.




Research Note 			                            7 November 2002

Tom Sticht
International Consultant in Adult Education


Adult Skills Misinformation From the U.S. Government Part 3:
National Center for the Study of Adult Learning and Literacy (NCSALL)

Recently, I have posted messages on misinformation from the U. S.
Department of Education, Office of Vocational and Adult Education
(USED/OVAE) and the National Institute for Literacy ( NIFL). It is
disconcerting enough to have these federal government offices, staffed
with lay people, not research scientists,  provide incorrect information
based on the National Adult Literacy Survey (NALS) of 1992, but it is
especially disturbing to find the only federally  funded, adult education
and literacy research center, where one would expect to find researchers
with the scientific training to understand the importance of construct
validity and other aspects of valid research, to also be spreading
misinformation regarding the skills of our nation’s adults.

But there, on the home web page of the National Center for the Study of
Adult Learning and Literacy (NCSALL) is the misinformation that: Quote"
More than 40 percent of working-age adults in the United States lack the
skills and education needed to succeed in family, work, and community life
today. By strengthening practice and policy, NCSALL helps these adults
gain an opportunity to achieve their full potential." End Quote

Why is this statement misinformation? Because there is no known
methodology for determining what the skills and education needed to
succeed in family, work, and community life across the nation are. It is
even more difficult to identify what it means to "succeed" in family,
work, and community life.

What can it possibly mean to say that 40 percent, that’s two out of five,
adults of working-age in America can’t succeed at family life?

Can a nation with less than 6 percent unemployment be made-up of 40
percent of adults who can’t find a job and succeed at work?

What on earth is "community life?" Does it include going to the grocery
store to buy food thereby supporting the grocery store in the community?
Can 40  percent of working-age adults not go to the store and buy food
because they lack the skills or education to do so?

What is the "working-age" of adults in the United States? The newly
elected Democratic Senator from New Jersey is 78 years old, is he of
working-age?

Clearly, the claim that Quote "More than 40 percent of working-age adults
in the United States lack the skills and education needed to succeed in
family, work, and community life today"  cannot be substantiated and
represents yet another example of federally-funded misinformation about
the skills of America’s adults.

Also bothersome, if not as troublesome as the patently false claims about
the working-age adults in the U. S., is the claim that Quote"
NCSALL helps
these adults gain an opportunity to achieve their full potential." The
problem with this is that it seems to suggest that adults possess
something called their "full potential," and that this "full potential" is
some sort of intrinsic quality of the individual. This begins to smack of
attributions of genetic limits to achievement and from there it is an easy
step to cast off some people from the mainstream of society because they
lack the "potential" to achieve much. But I know of no method of
determining what a person’s "full potential" is and I lean heavily toward
the position that an individual’s "potential," "full" or otherwise, is
determined to a large extent by the person’s environment, culture,
socioeconomic, and other social factors that help shape the person’s
opportunities, education and skills.

Having now experienced the disappointment of finding misinformation in
three major contexts of the federal government, I am left wondering
whether or not the government can fulfill its strategic goal of supporting
educational reforms that are built on "rigorous, scientific,
evidence-based" approaches. So far it does not seem to be living up to its
"full potential" for such reform.




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