Adult Literacy

Why I Write

/ The Old Crank / 2 Comments

There are a couple of reasons why I started this blog. For example, I wanted to demonstrate that it was possible to write about the policy-oriented topics I was interested in (mainly adult literacy, but not just that) with some modest degree of intelligence and depth, but in a non-wonky way—and to put the issue of adult literacy and adult basic skills in context for those who might be more wonkish, but who may not know much about the issue or how it fits (or might better fit) with other more prominent policy concerns.

Another thing I try to do—on occasion—is to be deliberately provocative, with the goal of spurring people to action—or at least to get a response. (It’s also related to goal number one above—trying to make things less boring.) In those instances I try to be fair, but I’ll sacrifice nuance for drama—although, to be honest, I hold back a lot more than I’d like, because professionally I’m just not in a secure enough position to risk completely alienating everyone I need to work with. (I’m starting—finally—to think about how to expand this site and add more voices here—from people who may not be under such constraints—but that’s a discussion for another day.)

One other challenge with this is that I can only write about information that is more-or-less public knowledge. Sometimes, because of my actual paying work, I know about things that are not public knowledge, and I’m occasionally at meetings or having conversations with people that are off the record. Not very often (I am about as non-insidery as you can possibly be and still get away with calling yourself a policy person in D.C. with a straight face), but it does happen. And sometimes things people say in public are the product of a lot of internal advocacy and back-and-forth that you never hear about, and a lot of the nuanced conversation that goes on behind the scenes is lost.

Having said all that, public pronouncements and actual actions are important. In the end it’s all you can really hold public officials accountable for. So when I call attention to the fact that adult literacy doesn’t show up as a priority in public pronouncements made by prominent public officials, I think that’s a valid thing to do, because no matter what I might be hearing behind closed doors, adult literacy advocates are going to have a lot more leverage with the President or Congress or the Department of Education when those officials actually start talking about this issue with regularity.

I’ll close by saying this: with a budget deal now in place (assuming it clears the Senate—not, apparently, a foregone conclusion), and with new data out on the need to address adult skills in the U.S., the next few months are probably as good a time as any in recent years for adult education advocates to be pressing the administration for increasing the U.S. investment in adult skills in the FY 2015 budget. The fact that the President didn’t mention it in his speech on inequality and the economy the other day was disappointing—I think it fits right into that discussion—but it’s not the case that this issue never comes up behind closed doors. If lots and lots of people noted they were disappointed not to hear anything about it in that speech last week—and hope to hear about it in his next major speech—it might get some attention.

Caveat on PISA Applies to PIAAC Too

/ The Old Crank

This caveat about the recently released 2012 PISA scores (aka the Program for International Student Assessment) is really important. The same caveat applies to the PIAAC numbers on adult skills that were released in October:

Do not confuse correlation with causation. This is a point we’ve made repeatedly with national and international test results, but it’s worth reiterating here. Since PISA was released this morning, I’ve gotten dozens of emails from advocacy groups saying the results bolster or repudiate whatever policies they support or eschew (the Common Core State Standards, early childhood ed, high-stakes testing, poverty-reduction efforts, teacher preparation, etc.). But, as several sources point out in my story, the results do not explain why particular countries performed a certain way, only that they did. Even the experts most skilled at talking about PISA test scores can quickly fall into the causation trap, so please take this caveat to heart. (my emphasis)

This point has been rarely made during the many PIAAC presentations that I have endured had the pleasure of viewing. Assessments like PISA and PIAAC tell you the “what” (assuming you find them credible) but not the “why.” Responses to such assessments should be based on reasonable evidence as to the “why,” otherwise they are essentially shots in the dark.

The Problem With Defining Adult Education Outcomes Too Narrowly

/ The Old Crank

Nice article in the Stamford Advocate on an ESL program based at a Stamford, CT elementary school that includes a weekly family literacy night:

“Its wonderful,” said Stark Principal Mark Bonasera who stopped by to attend the event. He said the program has really helped the school, kids and families. It brings the parents into the school and really makes them part of the community, he said, and it also helps parents help their children with work.

Elsa Martinez, 47, said this is the first time she’s really had a chance to learn the language. She and her husband came to America from Peru 18 years ago and started a family. Both had jobs and she didn’t have time to learn to write the language. She said as a house cleaner, she didn’t have to speak the language very well, but did know it well enough to understand people.

Shortly after her daughter Emily Soruluz was born about five years ago, Martinez, who is married but kept her maiden name, said she stopped working. And when Emily entered kindergarten this year, Martinez entered school, too.

Neither spoke English, but on Wednesday they were both doing well. “Absolutely,” Martinez said, when asked if the program was also a help to her daughter. “I’m available to help her.

“She said she wasn’t able to do that for her son, who is 17.

And Emily is doing well, she entered kindergarten unable to read or speak English, but on Wednesday she was reading her part with a strong voice and eagerly answering questions, much like the other students. (my emphasis)

You’ll note that Elsa Martinez appears to no longer the in the workforce. But surely no one would argue that the outcomes here—a parent fully engaged and able to assist in their child’s education, improved reading and classroom engagement on the part of the child—aren’t desirable public policy goals. Yet, in my experience, many policymakers (and funders) continue to insist that the goal of adult education should be exclusively measured in terms of occupational outcomes.

Thankfully, such narrow framing is not embedded in the law that governs most federal adult education spending (Title II of the Workforce Investment Act, or WIA), but if you think siloing off adult education from children’s education is a bad idea, you’ll want to monitor current WIA reauthorization efforts for changes that would force communities to break off the connections they are building between federally funded adult literacy education and (especially) early childhood education, and encourage them to seek ways to better leverage WIA Title II with other federal education investments and goals. Washington’s current infatuation with pre-K education is a good place to start. If the goal for pre-K is to ensure that more kids are ready for K-12, then why wouldn’t you want to look at the primary source of federal support for programs that help low-skilled parents improve their literacy for ways to leverage those efforts? I’ve never understood why you can’t do that kind of cross-generational leveraging while at the same time strengthening the linkages between WIA Title II programs and workforce development for those adult learners in the workforce.*

Granted, I have no idea if the program in the story above received any federal support, but the point is still the same, from a broad public policy perspective—why shouldn’t it?

*An alternative would be to find another place in federal legislation for adult literacy funding that is not directly related to occupational outcomes, but I’m not sure how that would work—either politically or in practice.

Let’s Have More Readers AND More Coders

/ The Old Crank

Readers of this blog know that I’m very sympathetic to the view that policymakers, from the President on down, do not pay nearly enough attention to U.S. adult literacy rates. So I really appreciate the sentiment behind arguments like this one—especially the idea that we’d get a bigger payoff if we focused our efforts (and dollars) on those in poverty and/or those who are struggling the most.

But I don’t understand why encouraging kids to take up computer programming can’t be part of this efforts. I feel pretty confident that Computer Science Education Week is not the reason we have low adult literacy rates in this country. It’s true that literacy skills are important foundational skills for other disciplines, including computer programming. But that doesn’t mean that they have to literally come first, before anything else. For some computer-loving reluctant readers, literacy instruction in the context of learning about computer science and programming is probably going to be a really good way to reach them. I’m as pro-literacy as you can get, but I don’t want to be in a position of debating whether kids should be learning coding or reading. The question is whether we are providing all children with opportunities to learn about whatever it is that grabs them—and yes, preparing them with the foundational skills to take advantage of those opportunities, but also, I think, continuing to embed sound literacy instruction into every discipline as they move along.

It’s also worth noting that the latest estimates we have about adult skills (Iglesias is using the old NAAL data in his post) show that adult math skills are an even bigger problem than adult literacy, and so encouraging interest in computer science or other math-related subjects might be prudent for this reason as well.