Here's a link that speaks to this issue.   
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/25/AR200705
2501864.html?nav=most_emailed 
The Santa Ana Chamber of Commerce has taken it upon themselves to
encourage the populace to avail themselves of the opportunities to learn
English that will help people improve their employment opportunities.
Most of the populace can get along without learning English because
Spanish is spoken and understood by so many, but their job opportunities
are limited.  An interesting approach by the Chamber of Commerce, and
one that deserves emulation.
Donna

-----Original Message-----
From: povertyracewomen-bounces at nifl.gov
[mailto:povertyracewomen-bounces at nifl.gov] On Behalf Of Katherine G
Sent: Friday, May 25, 2007 9:15 PM
To: The Poverty, Race,Women and Literacy Discussion List
Subject: [PovertyRaceWomen 758] Re: The 2003 NAAL report

"If most of the adults with Below Basic literacy skills themselves do
not think they have much of a literacy problem, why should their
governmental representatives or anyone else think so?"

My knee-jerk reaction to this is, if you have a low literacy level,
perhaps you don't fully understand the kinds of jobs and advancement
available to those with higher literacy levels.  Or perhaps you are
resigned to your current socio-economic position.  Or perhaps you are
content.  What I am trying to say is that there could be dozens of
reasons why adults with lower literacy don't believe they are being held
back because of it, but that doesn't mean governmental representatives
should look at the issue on such a superficial level.  Even if an adult
is low performing in a single area, that deficit is reflected in career
choice and advancement potential.

Much thanks to all who supplied the links to the test questions.  Very
helpful.

Katherine Mercurio Gotthardt




-----Original Message-----
From: povertyracewomen-bounces at nifl.gov
[mailto:povertyracewomen-bounces at nifl.gov]On Behalf Of Daphne Greenberg
Sent: Friday, May 25, 2007 3:21 PM
To: RaceWomen and Literacy Discussion List The Poverty
Subject: [PovertyRaceWomen 757] The 2003 NAAL report


This is posted on behalf of Tom Sticht:

Daphne: The following note raises questions about the validity of the
NAAL performance assessments in relation to the adult's self-perceptions
of their literacy abilities. It also raises questions about the use of
the NAAL in policymaking. It may be of interest to the ongoing
discussion of the NAAL. Tom Sticht


April 9, 2007

Who Believes America Has An Adult Literacy Problem?

Tom Sticht
International Consultant in Adult Education

"The NAAL, the first assessment of adult English reading and writing
ability in the U.S. since 1992, estimated that 30 million people over
age 16 are barely able to read and write."
Robert Wedgeworth, president and CEO of ProLiteracy Worldwide

This statement by the head of the largest organization of adult basic
education and literacy in the world occurs in the midst of a longer
message calling for increased funding for the Adult Education and
Literacy System
(AELS) of the U. S. so it can serve more than the 3 million or so adults
that it presently serves. Yet in the past, when similar pleas have been
made for increases in adult literacy funding, in the wake of surveys
showing 30 to 40 million adults with low literacy skills, the President
and the Congress have responded with either no or very little increases
in adult literacy education resources.

Why is this so? Is it possible that neither government officials or any
one else for that matter, actually believes what the National Assessment
of Adult Literacy (NAAL) or its predecessor, the National Adult Literacy
Survey (NALS) reports about the literacy skills of America's adults?

The latest report on adult literacy in the United States, entitled
Literacy in Everyday Life (LEL)  (Kutner et. al, 2007), once again
reports the litany of social problems that have been shown to be
correlated with low cognitive skills, including low literacy, for almost
a century. Adults with lower literacy skills tend to be in the lower
socioeconomic classes, to be in minority ethnic groups, to not be native
English language speakers, they are more likely to be unemployed or to
hold low wage jobs, are less likely to vote or participate in other
civic and community activities, are less likely to read to their
children a lot, and more likely to be on welfare or other forms of
public assistance (see Sticht & Armstrong, 1994 for an historical review
of adult literacy assessments from 1917 to the present).

The LEL report presents data from the 2003 National Assessment of Adult
Literacy (NAAL) which measured literacy using three literacy scales:
Prose,
Document, and Quantitative and reported results in four major categories
of
skills: Below Basic (the lowest level), Basic, Intermediate and
Proficient.
Another category, those non-proficient in English or Spanish could not
take the test, and made up about 2 percent (4 million) adults. Some 14
percent of adults were in the Below Basic category for Prose literacy
and 12 percent for the Document literacy scale. The Quantitative scale
had about
22 percent in the Below Basic category.

But does being in the lowest level of literacy, the Below Basic level,
indicate that these adults can "barely read and write?" According to the
LEL report, being placed in the Below Basic level "indicates no more
than the most simple and concrete literacy skills. * Adults at the Below
Basic level range from being nonliterate in English to having the
abilities listed below:
olocating easily identifiable information in short, commonplace prose
texts [Prose scale] olocating easily identifiable information and
following written instructions in simple documents (e.g., charts or
forms) [Document scale] olocating numbers and using them to perform
simple quantitative operations (primarily addition) when the
mathematical information is very concrete and familiar." [Quantitative
scale]

The foregoing indicate that adults in the Below Basic l evel of literacy
may, in fact, be able to read and write with some real degree of skill
above the ability to "barely read and write."  One suggestion that
adults in the Below Basic literacy level have some degree of functional
literacy was the finding that only around a third (34-35 percent) of
adults with Below Basic Prose and Document skills thought their reading
skills limited their job opportunities "a lot."  Another third (33-35
percent) thought that their reading skills limited them "some" or "a
little" and a final third
(32-33
percent) of these adults reported that their reading skills limited
their job opportunities "not at all." So two-thirds of adults
categorized as possessing Below Basic literacy skills did not seem to
perceive themselves as very limited in their job opportunities due to
their poor reading skills.

Why don't these adults in the Below Basic category of Prose and Document
literacy, the lowest level, perceive themselves as limited in their job
opportunities? There is no information explicitly given in the LEL
report about this. However, there are some data in the report that may
be relevant to addressing this issue.

The LEL report states that the correlations among Prose, Document, and
Quantitative scales were between +.86 and +.89 out of a perfect
correlation of +1.00. This indicates that all three scales placed people
in roughly the same rank orders. This means that those who scored poorly
on the Prose scale were likely to be low on both the Document and
Quantitative scales, those in the middle range of the Prose scale would
be in the middle of the ranges of the Document and Quantitative scales,
and those with the higher Prose scores would also tend to have the
higher Document and Quantitative scales.

This suggests that in estimating people's literacy skills we should
consider the sum of the Prose, Document, and Quantitative skills for any
given person. Presumably all adults have some of each sort of literacy.
But when the skills are discussed, they are discussed as separate in
terms of a particular scale. But persons at the Below Basic level on
Prose literacy presumably also have Below Basic skills on both Document
and Quantitative scales, too. But without adding up skills across the
three scales it is not certain how to characterize these people in terms
of what they can actually do in the real world of literacy. They would
seem to have some ability in all three domains, but exactly how these
add together to form an overall estimate of what the Below Basic adults
can do with their Prose, Document, and Quantitative literacy combined is
not clear.

It may be that the combined literacy skills across the three NAAL scales
render people more capable at getting, keeping, and progressing in a job
than a discussion of just one scale would suggest. In turn, this might
influence people's judgments about how little or how much their literacy
skills limit their job opportunities.

For policymakers in federal or state governments, low unemployment
rates, below 5 percent, may render the results of the NAAL and the claim
that 30 million or so adults are functionally illiterate less than
critical.
In
this case, the policymakers seem to be of the same mind as the adults in
the Below Basic literacy level themselves. In both groups, adult
literacy may seem to be somewhat of a problem, but not one serious
enough to require a major increase in funds for adult literacy
education.

Who believes America has an adult literacy problem? If most of the
adults with Below Basic literacy skills themselves do not think they
have much of a literacy problem, why should their governmental
representatives or anyone else think so?

References

Kutner,M.,Greenberg,E.,Jin,Y.,Boyle,B.,Hsu,Y.,and
Dunleavy,E.(2007).Literacy
in Everyday Life: Results From the 2003 National Assessment of Adult
Literacy (NCES 2007-480). U.S. Department of Education. Washington,
DC:
National Center for Education Statistics.

Sticht, T. G. (200
1). The International Adult Literacy Survey: How Well Does It Represent
the Literacy of Adults?. The Canadian Journal for the Study of Adult
Education, 15, 19-36.

Sticht, T. & Armstrong, W. (1994, February). Adult Literacy in the
United
States: A Compendium of Quantitative Data and Interpretative Comments.
Washington, DC: National Institute for Literacy.

Wedgeworth, R. (2007, April). ProLiteracy Worldwide's President Reacts
to the NAAL Comprehensive Report. Downloaded April 9, 2007 at
www.proliteracy.org/news/index.asp?aid=235

Thomas G. Sticht
International Consultant in Adult Education
2062 Valley View Blvd.
El Cajon, CA 92019-2059
Tel/fax: (619) 444-9133
Email: tsticht at aznet.net





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