PIAAC

New OECD and NDD Reports Out Today

/ The Old Crank / 1 Comment

timetoreskillVery light posting recently, which I attribute to an unusual (and troubling) imbalance in the work-to-pondering ratio over the last week or so. I thought I’d break the silence with news of two new reports released today that might be of interest to those who follow adult education policy.

First up: Time for the U.S. to Reskill? What the Survey of Adult Skills Says, an OECD report on the policy implications of the recent PIAAC Survey for the U.S., including “key lessons about the strategic objectives and directions which should form a frame for policy development in the US, including policy on adult learning and schooling.”

NDD-reportIn addition, NDD United‘s report, Faces of Austerity: How Budget Cuts Have Made Us sicker, Poorer, and Less Secure was also released today. This is the first really comprehensive report on how Americans have been affected by federal budget cuts over the last several years. NDD stands for “non-defense discretionary, which is the part of the federal budget that includes the bulk of the funding for things like education, job training, health and science programs and research, and national parks. Adult education funding is an example of an NDD program, while not discussed at great length in the report, it is mentioned several times in the workforce section.

It’s a sad coincidence that an important new report calling attention to the need for greater investment in skills is released the same day as another report detailing the ways in which the country has been dramatically dis-investing in programs that address this very problem.

Those interested in the NDD report might also want to take a look at Sam Stein’s piece on NDD United’s efforts in the Huffington Post.

The Skills Message Washington Will Ignore

/ The Old Crank / 1 Comment

There hasn’t been a formal announcement yet, but multiple sources inform me that Senator Harkin (D-IA) and Rep. George Miller (D-CA) will be unveiling their long-anticipated preschool education bill, based on President Obama’s Preschool for All proposal, on November 13th  or 14th—with, in all likelihood, a really big Capitol Hill event to go along with it.

I mention this because the next big PIAAC report release—the OECD’s in-depth analysis of the U.S. data—is set for release on November 12th (see: www.piaacgateway.com). It’s a near certainty that the hoopla over the preschool bill—a major priority of both the President and Sen. Harkin—will completely preoccupy the administration that week, and dominate the attention span of both lawmakers and pundits.

I also wonder if the introduction of this legislation also makes the prospects for Workforce Investment Act (WIA – the source of most federal adult education funding) reauthorization a little shakier, although there is a going to be a major push this month by advocates to get the Senate bill that was passed late last summer to the Senate floor for a vote this fall. But the preschool bill makes the already overstuffed House and Senate education agenda even more crowded, as almost every major piece of federal education legislation is overdue for reauthorization. Higher education is getting a lot of attention at the moment, for example.

And that’s on top of all the wrangling on the budget, and other high-profile items, like immigration reform. (At a conference I attended yesterday at Georgetown Law School, while it was made pretty clear that the prospects for an immigration reform bill getting through this Congress still aren’t all that great, work continues on immigration bills in the House—and clearly some Republicans want to keep this issue in the spotlight.)

So, if you’re an adult education advocate, be prepared for a frustrating week mid-November. You’ll be hearing a lot from pre-K proponents about the economic benefits of investing in preschool. Meanwhile, the new evidence showing that the basic skills of the current American workforce significantly lag behind much of the rest of the industrialized world will largely be ignored. If you believe that the American economy can’t wait another 15 or 20 years for pre-K to provide us with a more highly skilled workforce, you are going to have to make your voices  louder than ever over the next few weeks and months.

Finally, I mentioned this the other day, but it bears repeating: the countries that get this right don’t make it an either/or proposition: they invest in early education and provide meaningful lifelong learning opportunities for adults too. From OECD’s initial summary analysis of the findings (page 13):

The impressive progress that some countries have made in improving the skills of their population over successive generations shows what can be achieved. These countries have established systems that combine high-quality initial education with opportunities and incentives for the entire population to continue to develop proficiency in reading and numeracy skills, whether outside work or at the workplace, after initial education and training are completed.  (my emphasis)

Income Inequality and Adult Literacy

/ The Old Crank

I wanted to share a really alarming chart from the OECD’s summary analysis of the initial PIAAC results. (PIAAC, for those jumping into this for the first time, is a new international survey of adult skills, released a few weeks ago.)

Source: Skilled for Life - Key findings from the survey of adult skills (OECD), 2013

Source: Skilled for Life – Key findings from the survey of adult skills (OECD), 2013

Look at where the U.S. is on this chart (bottom left): of the countries surveyed, we have the second highest income inequality, and the highest literacy skills inequality.

The bottom left corner is the absolute worst place to be, and that’s where we are.

But this chart also supports the notion that skills are not the only story when it comes to income inequality: Japan, which also has worse than average skills inequality, (though not as bad as the U.S.), manages to have the lowest income inequality of those countries surveyed. This suggests that other factors are at work in Japan that reduce income inequality. If skills were the only factor, you’d see the countries with the greatest skills inequality all clustered in the bottom left corner.

In addition, several countries, like Germany and Sweden, do a much better job at addressing the skills gap, but still have a higher-than-average income inequality.

The point is, while low skills may be an overall drag on economic growth, there appear to be other other things you can do to steer more income growth towards those at the bottom of the wage scale.

A Few More Thoughts About PIAAC

/ The Old Crank / 1 Comment

I’m spending a little more time with PIAAC today in preparation for a webinar I’ve been asked to participate in tomorrow. So I thought I’d post a couple of random, non-exhaustive (but possibly exhausting) thoughts about not only the data but also the media coverage of the survey—which has a large influence, I think on how to view this new data in terms of advocacy.

First, it’s important, I think, to remember that PIAAC is a measure of skills. One of the most prominent issues that emerges from the PIAAC data is that, in the U.S., many adults with a high school or even a postsecondary education still lack strong basic skills, and lag behind their counterparts in many other countries. This serves as a reminder that we have to be careful in adult education not to conflate credential attainment with skills—they’re not the same thing. It’s not unusual, for example, to hear someone talk about how adult education addresses skills by increasing the number of GEDs or diplomas acquired, or the number of students who have gone onto college. That works if you believe credentials are accurate proxies for skills, but the PIAAC data calls into question whether attaining those credentials (and we do a relatively good job compared to other countries in handing out credentials) provides all those receiving them with a good education and strong, marketable skills. We probably need to evaluate more closely the actual skills people acquire at every age and in whatever course of study they’re in, rather than just focus on credential attainment—or at least look more critically at whether our credentials are sufficient proxies for skills.

This might, in turn, spark a renewed interest in skill acquisition and program quality in adult education programs at all levels. It’s never made any sense to me to assess an adult education program primarily in terms of credential attainment anyway—so maybe PIAAC will encourage us to look more closely at what students are actually learning, not just the degrees they are earning.

A second, related point: if you look at the media coverage, U.S. performance on the PIAAC was largely portrayed as an indictment of our entire education system. Despite the fact that the PIAAC was concerned with adult skills, there seems to be little awareness in the media that an adult education system actually exists in this country. (I realize that we are far from taking a true systematic approach to addressing adult literacy in the U.S., but there is a system—for better or worse—that you can point to, even if it is severely underfunded and fragmented.)

The one good thing about the fact that no one in the media seems to be aware that an adult education system exists is that, to my knowledge, U.S. adult education programs were spared any criticism in the wake of these findings. This is important, because, like past literacy surveys, the PIACC tells us nothing about the performance of  U.S. adult literacy programs. It’s a survey of the general population, not adult literacy students. It’s safe to say that there hasn’t been much change in adult skill levels among the general population since the last adult literacy survey, but that doesn’t tell us anything about the job that adult literacy programs have been doing during that period. Sadly, the U.S. adult education system serves so few people, it simply couldn’t be having a discernible impact—good or bad—on overall skill levels, if you’re taking the entire population into account.

But this lack of visibility does present something of a blank slate for advocates in which to make the case that U.S. adult education programs are contributing in a positive way to increasing adult skills.

Third, while there is a lot in the data for those who have jumped aboard the universal pre-K bandwagon, OECD’s summary analysis of the findings actually emphasizes a multi-pronged approach to improving skills that includes both quality early education and lifelong learning opportunities for adults (page 13):

The impressive progress that some countries have made in improving the skills of their population over successive generations shows what can be achieved. These countries have established systems that combine high-quality initial education with opportunities and incentives for the entire population to continue to develop proficiency in reading and numeracy skills, whether outside work or at the workplace, after initial education and training are completed.  (my emphasis)

Fourth, there’s also a lot here about linking skills development strategies with economic development strategies in general. The PIAAC data could open up more opportunities to draw labor market analysts and economic development experts into a discussion about the role of adult education in the economy. Businesses, too.

As far as the data itself goes, something that jumped out at me is the alarming gap in skills in the U.S. that runs along racial lines, and also between native-born Americans and immigrants. I don’t think you can have a serious policy discussion about skills in this country without acknowledging and addressing the racial component in these findings.

Finally, the numbers on math skills in the U.S. across all demographic categories are particularly grim. If this doesn’t inspire the U.S. (and states) to make a big adult numeracy push in the near future, I don’t know what will.