April 8, 2009

Adult Literacy House In the Unites States Divided by Blooming, Buzzing
Confusion

Tom Sticht
International Consultant in Adult Education

In the United States, ProLiteracy Worldwide has recently posted a
side-by-side comparison of the recommendations of the Council for
Advancement of Adult Literacy’s National Commission on Adult Literacy (The
Commission) and the position of the National Coalition for Literacy (NCL),
of which ProLiteracy is a member, regarding those recommendations
(www.proliteracy.org).

NCL Raises Questions About the Scale of Need for Adult Literacy Education

ProLiteracy reports that, “NCL agrees with The Commission’s finding that at
least 30 million, and arguably 93 million, adults would benefit from
additional literacy instruction, and that the system today can only serve
approximately 3 million adults through combined federal, state, and
philanthropic funding.”

Here, it is reported, NCL finds the idea “arguable” that there are some 93
million adults who would benefit from studying in the Adult Education and
Literacy System (AELS). This raises the question of just how large is the
scale of need and whether it should be based on the National Assessment of
Adult Literacy (NAAL) survey of 2003. The National Academy of Science
argued that the methodology used in the earlier National Adult Literacy
Survey (NALS) of 1993 was flawed and raised questions about the validity of
inferences drawn from the NALS. Similar methodology was used in the NAAL and
raises questions about the validity of inferences drawn from that survey,
too.

This conclusion was supported in a special memorandum to The Commission on
July 23, 2008. In this memorandum, Dr. Andrew Sum, Director of the Center
for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University, and an advisor to The
Commission, questioned the recommendations of the National Academy of
Sciences which led to the adoption of the final methodology used by the
NAAL. Though the position that Sum advocates is acknowledged by him in his
memo to introduce greater errors in estimating the literacy skills of
adults, it reinforces the NCL position that the numbers of adults who would
benefit from additional literacy instruction is arguable. All told, these
various confusing and contradictory critiques of the national assessments
of adult literacy in 1993 and 2003 strongly argue for a more satisfactory
method of estimating the scale of need for adult literacy education in the
United States.

Disagreement on Mission of the Adult Education & Literacy System (AELS)

Though the NCL appears to have agreed with many of the recommendations made
by The Commission, according to ProLiteracy, The Commission made the
following recommendation with which NCL disagreed:

“The Commission calls on Congress and state governments to make
postsecondary and workforce readiness the new mission of the adult
education and workforce skills system.”

But according to ProLiteracy, “NCL does not support the recommendation to
make postsecondary and workforce readiness the singular mission of the
system. The system today serves the educational goals of all adults,
regardless of their motivation to acquire or improve their literacy
skills.”

This questioning of the mission of the Adult Education and Literacy System
has also been raised by VALUE, Voice for Adult Literacy United for
Education, the national organization for adult learners. VALUE has argued
that the AELS is broken and needs to be completely restructured from its
mission to the methods it uses in teaching adults. Similar sentiments were
expressed recently on the National Institute for Literacy’s discussion list
labeled Learning Disabilities. There the present AELS was discussed as being
in need of complete change, including changing the mission from one of just
teaching literacy to one of giving adults access to information via
technology such as text to speech instead of or in addition to literacy
instruction as desired by learners.

NCL Cautions on Shifting Funds for ABE to ESL

ProLiteracy also reports that, “The Commission recommends allocating federal
funds for ESL to states by a formula based on need – as measured by
percentage of adults by state who speak English less than very well. “

ProLiteracy goes on to indicate that, “NCL supports this recommendation,
provided that any additional funding arising from such a formula were added
to the existing state allocation and would not cause the state to shift
funding from basic literacy students to ESL students. Although NCL agrees
with The Commission’s findings that a growing demand for ESL instruction
exists and that approximately 46% percent of all adult basic education and
literacy enrollments are for ESL instruction, it is also true that a
majority of programs serving basic literacy programs also report waiting
lists. Demand for instruction in both categories exceeds supply. The
solution to the problem is additional  funding across the board.”

In 2007, the Council for Advancement of Adult Literacy (CAAL) produced a
report engaging this same issue of separating out ESL from ABE/ASE. The
report said “This study recommends that policymakers and adult education
leaders consider carefully whether it is in the best interests of all
aspects of adult education, including its adult ESL strand, to sever the
present policy and funding links. In many respects, these links are
artificial and may be counter-productive to improving both ESL and ABE/ASE
service."

In a paraphrase of William James, this blooming, buzzing confusion about how
to determine how many adults need  the AELS , what the mission of the AELS
should be, and how policymakers should provide fiscal resources for the
AELS cannot serve the field of adult literacy education very well. In the
words of Abraham Lincoln:

“ A house divided against itself cannot stand.”

Tom Sticht
tsticht at aznet.net