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From the Desk of Bill Cirone...
April 14, 2000
Literacy in America
Many readers have heard reports about adult literacy in our nation. This is an issue I’ve been deeply concerned about, especially since reading Jonathan Kozol’s book, Illiterate America, in which he combined hard statistics with heart-rending stories to describe the economic and human costs of illiteracy. At the time, our office convened a community meeting on the topic, which resulted in the creation of the former Santa Barbara Literacy Project. The goal was to sound the alarm and get the public involved.
A report from the Department of Education refocused attention on what Kozol described as a social and economic disaster.
Most reports of the study cite the same facts–that well over 95 percent of our population can read words, but 47 percent of those surveyed demonstrated low levels of functional literacy. It is important to note that definitions for this round of testing have been changed.
As Newsweek reported: "Traditionally illiteracy has referred only to folks who signed their names "X" or hadn’t graduated at least from a low grade. Now the net has been cast wider...This test revealed that many people can read in the technical sense, that they can decode the words...But they lack the strategies and skills needed to use the information."
Clearly, even one illiterate adult is too many. The quality of life is diminished and the quality of contribution is diminished along with it. I believe we should work to defy the normal bell-shaped curve when it comes to this vital area, and we should not be satisfied until every adult in our country is literate.
It is for this very reason that it is so useful to look at the actual findings of the study. In much of the reporting of the literacy study we do not see the one fact from it that sheds some light on a solution: There was a direct correlation between years of education and literacy levels.
Among adults in the lowest level, some 80 percent had zero to eight years of education. Among the highest-scoring adults, fewer than one percent left school before eighth grade. Among the worst performers were immigrants, the elderly, and inmates. The elderly, in particular, constituted a disproportionate percentage of those in the lowest literacy level.
Plus, the figures were grouped to make various points. For example, the 47 percent figure of adults with "low levels" of literacy actually combined two categories in the study. The very lowest level of the study encompassed adults who are technically literate–which means they can read words–but who demonstrated skills in the lowest level of prose, document, and quantitative proficiency.
About 21 to 23 percent of those surveyed fell in this bottom-most category. These adults could only locate a piece of information in a passage if the wording was identical to the question and there were no distracting elements.
Among these lowest-performing adults, one-quarter were immigrants, and two-thirds were high school dropouts. One quarter had physical, mental, or health conditions that kept them from participating fully in work or school. One-fifth reported visual difficulties.
The 47 percent figure also included adults at the next higher level of proficiency, which covered about 1/4 of those surveyed. The respondents could calculate the total cost of a purchase, determine the difference in price between two items, locate an intersection on a street map and enter background information on a form. They could not do tasks that called for low-level inferences or background knowledge if distracting information was present.
The remaining 53 percent of those surveyed fell in the three highest groupings. They could all write brief letters, read an article, provide facts to support an inference made from the text, and match several features of information.
The correlation between literacy and educational level is very important data because it points to a solution to the problem of low levels of adult literacy. It shows that our decreasing dropout rates bode well for the future. But we must redouble our community-wide efforts to acknowledge the problem, strengthen adult education programs, build broad partnerships that address the issue, and strengthen our attempts to keep young people in school. It’s an investment in their future and in ours.
© Santa Barbara County Education Office
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