adult education

Muted Celebration

/ The Old Crank

This Wonkblog post makes a good point, and it’s the reason that the proposed deal to end the government shutdown and raise the debt ceiling is merely a cause for relief,  not necessarily celebration:

The mistake Republicans made was thinking that what worked from them in 2011 was simply the hostage taking. What worked for them in 2011 was winning in 2010. What made 2013 impossible was that they’d lost in 2012.

But Republicans should feel good about one thing: This process has been a reminder of how powerful that 2011 deal was and remains for them. Democrats are agreeing to fund the government at a level far beneath what they consider acceptable. Over the weekend, it became clear that Democrats are genuinely worried about sequestration’s 2014 cuts, which trigger on January 15th (the Senate deal is designed so the government funding runs out just as the new cuts trigger — which is to say, its timed to make the next fight a fight over sequestration.)

As Grover Norquist told me, with his characteristic understatement, “Sequester is the big win. It defines the decade.” (my emphasis)

Basically, what we are looking at this morning is a deal to avert disaster and put things back on the less disastrous but still basically terrible path we were on. The agreement (if the House goes along) still leads to diminishing funding for adult education and other federal discretionary programs for many years down the road.

The Wrong Message on PIAAC

/ The Old Crank / 3 Comments

(Updated Below)

Americans_are_dumber_than_average_at_math__vocabulary__and_technology_-_Quartz

US_adults_are_dumber_than_the_average_human___New_York_Post

The initial of set of PIAAC (Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies) survey data released yesterday by OECD received a reasonable amount of attention from major U.S. news outlets, including the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the AP. I’ve nitpicked a little about the coverage, but by in large it’s been decent. (My biggest criticism is the lack of voices from the U.S. adult education field. The study is, after all, primarily concerned with adult literacy and numeracy skills, so one would think that one of our national adult literacy organizations would be good for a quote. Or maybe even an actual adult learner or two.)

But today I came across two stories (pictured above) that are accompanied by some pretty distasteful and misleading headlines and graphics, implying that those Americans OECD believes fall below average in literacy skill are, essentially, dunces. So let’s take a moment to explain why this is not only wrong, but also damaging.

Americans with poor literacy skills are not stupid. Many have struggled with reading and writing due to a disability, (including both physical disabilities and learning disabilities), and were never afforded the proper accommodation they needed to compensate for the disability. Some are refugees or immigrants from other countries with poor education systems or where English is not the native language. Others simply were not afforded the same educational opportunities that other Americans have been fortunate enough to have received. I knew an individual enrolled in an adult literacy program in Washington D.C., for example, who grew up black and poor, with an alcoholic father, in a rural area of a southern state in the days before the Civil Rights movement. He dropped out of school at a very young age to take care of his family and never learned to read much beyond a basic level. Worked as a laborer most of his life—but a bright and articulate guy, who just didn’t have the same kind of opportunities that I had growing up. That’s the kind of story that more often than not is behind your typical adult with below average literacy skills. It infuriates me when people label such individuals as “dumb.”

Moreover, employing such labels makes the problem worse. It’s embarrassing to admit that you have difficulty reading and writing. Many people who have struggled with reading all of their lives really do feel like they are stupid, and that makes it challenging for them to come forward and get the help they need.  I used to operate an  adult literacy hotline in Washington, and we used to get dozens of calls every day. I know what I’m talking about. The stories were often heartbreaking. The callers weren’t stupid people, but people who had struggled for one reason or another—usually it had a lot to do with being poor. Not due to some innate lack of intelligence. (Not that all adult learners are blameless—there are plenty of people enrolled in adult education programs who would own up to being serious f*ck-ups when they were younger—making mistakes that led them to failing, dropping out, or getting kicked out of school—but making a mistake, even a serious one, doesn’t mean you are incapable of learning.)

Labeling people as dumb also perpetuates the idea that policies designed to improve adult skills are doomed to failure—if these adults are just “dumb,” after all, then there really is nothing that can be done for them, right? Low literacy in this country exists largely because we let it happen. As the OECD report(s) make clear, there are policies we can put into place to change this. It’s not a question of whether low-skilled adults can learn, but whether we will provide them with the opportunity.

As the Speaker of the House said the other day about the government shutdown, this isn’t a damn game. Thankfully, most of the media isn’t treating it like one.

UPDATE 10/10/13: The Atlantic picked up the Quartz story above. (Apparently Quartz is a “sister site.”) However, for The Atlantic version, the headline was changed from “Americans Are Dumber Than Average in Math, Vocabulary, and Technology” to “Americans Are Way Behind in Math, Vocabulary, and Technology.” It appears from scanning the comments that they might have originally used the Quartz headline, but I’m not certain. Thankfully, The Atlantic version does not include the picture of the boy in the dunce cap either. Instead they opted for a less offensive—but far more inexplicable—screen shot from the movie Legally Blonde, which makes absolutely no sense at all. (If I remember correctly, the main character in that film is perceived as dumb, but is actually quite intelligent, despite appearances. This is pretty much the opposite of what the study is telling us—that a nation, we are not as skilled as people may believe.)

I also want to say one other thing about the media coverage. More disturbing, really, than the thoughtless headlines above (which, as I mentioned, aren’t typical of the coverage), is the fact that from what I’ve seen, none of the major media outlets reporting on this story have mentioned or seem to even be aware of the fact that there is an adult education system in the United States. My hope was that as a field we could use this opportunity to not just point out the the problem, but to highlight the success stories in adult education that demonstrate that the problem is solvable. Maybe I’ve missed something. If you know of any good examples, let me know in the comments.

Anthony Carnevale on PIAAC: Economic Mobility Hindered By Skills Gap

/ The Old Crank / 2 Comments

(Updated Below)

The New York Times relied on just a single source for their article on the PIAAC survey results (other than quoting from Secretary of Education Arne Duncan’s press release), Anthony Carnevale, director of the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce:

In the most highly educated population, people with graduate and professional degrees, Americans lagged slightly behind the international averages in skills. But the gap was widest at the bottom; among those who did not finish high school, Americans had significantly worse skills than their counterparts abroad.

“These kinds of differences in skill sets matter a lot more than they used to, at every level of the economy,” Dr. Carnevale said. “Americans were always willing to accept a much higher level of inequality than other developed countries because there was upward mobility, but we’ve lost a lot of ground to other countries on mobility because people don’t have these skills.” (my emphasis)

UPDATE 10/10/13: The Times followed up their initial report with a more in-depth piece by Eduardo Porter, “Stubborn Skills Gap in America’s Work Force,” that looks at the study in the the context of the ongoing skills gap debate:

The O.E.C.D. study lands in the midst of a contentious debate over whether the United States faces a skills shortage. Over the last couple of years, employers have been saying that they can’t find enough skilled workers. Economists and other commentators have pointed out that employers would probably find them if they offered higher wages.

The report suggests that the sluggish employment growth since the nation emerged from recession probably has little to do with a skills deficit that has been a generation in the making. But it pretty forcefully supports the case that this deficit is an albatross around the economy’s neck.

“The recession did not fundamentally change the structure of the economy in terms of the supply and demand for skills or education,” argues Jonathan Rothwell of the Brookings Institution, who produced a study last year about the education gap afflicting the job markets of America’s largest cities. “Before the recession, inadequate education was a major problem. It continues to be.”  (my emphasis)

Secretary Duncan: Adults With Very Low Basic Skills “Overlooked and Underserved”

/ The Old Crank / 1 Comment

Secretary Duncan’s statement on PIAAC, as quoted in the Washington Post:

“These findings should concern us all,” Education Secretary Arne Duncan said in a written statement. “They show our education system hasn’t done enough to help Americans compete — or position our country to lead — in a global economy that demands increasingly higher skills.”

Duncan said the study highlights a group that has been “overlooked and underserved: the large number of adults with very low basic skills, most of whom are working.”

“Adults who have trouble reading, doing math, solving problems and using technology will find the doors of the 21st century workforce closed to them,” Duncan said. “We need to find ways to challenge and reach more adults to upgrade their skills.”