[Reading-hall-of-fame] Time For Teacher Education

[tsticht at znet.com]

Research Note                          August 8, 2005

America’s Reading Skills: Time For a Big Investment in Teacher Education

Thomas G. Sticht
International Consultant in Adult Education

It is often thought that reading skills of students coming out of the K-12 
public school system have declined in the last two or three decades. Some
have claimed that years ago the schools dropped the teaching of phonics and
adopted instead the whole language approach and that that had a deleterious
effect on the reading skills of students and hence of adults once the
students left school. Others have claimed that with the new emphasis upon
phonics in the recent past the schools will graduate more literate young
adults and hence the adult literacy problem will gradually disappear as the
more literate young adults replace the older adults.

Now the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) has released reading
trend data for the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP)
presenting reading scale scores for students in the schools of age 9, 13
and 17 for the period 1971 through 2004, more than three decades.
Unfortunately, the data indicate that after having spent tens of billions
of dollars over the last three decades to improve reading skills, students
at each grade level were not anymore literate in 2004 than they had been in
earlier years.

For 9 year olds, in 1971 students at the 90th percentile scored 260, then
rose gradually to 266 in 1990 and then fell to 264 in 2004. Students at the
50th percentile scored 209 in 1971, then rose to 215 in 1994, ‘96 and ‘99
and then to 221 in 2004. Students at the 10th percentile scored 152 in
1971, then rose to 165 in 1980 and then rose again to 169 in 2004, though
the latter was not statistically greater than 25 years ago in 1980.

But the aim of education is to move children from illiteracy to fully
literate adults, so it is important to see how well children progressed
toward this goal. At age 13, in 1971 children at the 90th percentile scored
300, then increased to 309 in 1992, and then fell to 305 in 2004. Those at
the 50th percentile in 1971 scored 257, then rose to 262 in 1992, and then
fell to 260 in 2004. The children at the 10th percentile scored 208 in
1971, rose to 213 in 1988, and then fell to 210 in 2004.

For the older teens (or young adults) aged 17 years old, in 1971 those at
the 90th percentile scored 342, then rose to 343 in 1990, "92, and "94, and
then dropped to 338 in 2004. Those at the 50th percentile scored 288 in
1971, rose to 293 in 1992, and then fell to 287 in 2004. The least able
readers, those at the 10th percentile, scored 225 in 1971, rose to 241 in
1988, and then fell to 227 in 2004.

What this shows, then, is that as children go up through primary,
elementary, and secondary school, they get better at reading across the
percentile spectrum. But the bottom ten percent of 17 year olds scored
below the median for 13 year olds, and were just 6 scale score points above
the median for 9 year olds. These poorly scoring students will no doubt be
those who will later discover the real life importance of literacy and will
enter into adult basic education to try to gain skills needed to support
themselves and their families.

The data for some three decades do not show great increases in reading
achievement for 9, 13, or 17 year olds at various percentile ranks. For the
most part, whether at the 90th percentile, the middle 50th percentile, or
the bottom, the 10th percentile, student achievement has fluctuated a bit
from assessment to assessment, but on balance does not seem to have made
much, if any improvement, and certainly not improvement that would have any
significant practical consequences.

Data for Adults

It should be recalled that adults are children who have grown up. The
purpose of reading instruction and other education in the K-12 system is to
produce literate adults. The 1992 National Adult Literacy Survey (NALS)
provides some data bearing  on the issue of whether tens of billions of
dollars in compensatory or remedial education in the K-12 system have
brought about increases in adult literacy. The NALS assessed adult literacy
using three scales: Prose,  Document and Quantitative. A report on the
Literacy of Older Adults in America, from the National Center for Education
Statistics in Washington  DC, November 1996 (p. 35) reported data on the age
and literacy  proficiency for adults with varying amounts of education.
Using just the data for adults with high school diplomas or GEDs, and just
the Prose scale, because all three scales have similar findings, the
average literacy proficiencies for three age groups were:

  Age                Proficiency
  16-24                274
  25-59                273
  60-69                262

  Adults in the 16 to 24 age range got their diplomas or GEDs in 1992 to
1984.
  Adults in the 25 to 59 age range got their diplomas or GEDs in 1983 to
1949.
  Adults in the 60 to 69 age range got their diplomas or GEDs in 1948 to
1939.

Similar findings held across age groups for adults with 0-12 or some 
post-secondary education, though with differences in the proficiency scores
due to less or more education relative to the high school diploma/GED.

>From these NALS data, it appears that for adults graduating from high school
 across this 62 year period, their literacy skills do not vary much  on the
average. This would seem to indicate that regardless of whether the schools
emphasized a code (phonics) or meaning (whole  language) emphasis during
this time, or had the benefits of feedback from  the National Assessment of
Educational Progress (NAEP)  from the 1970s up  to the time of the NALS
assessment,  once adults get out of high school and spend some time in
other activities, excepting post-secondary  education, their literacy
skills don’t differ very much, at least for the high school  graduate
adults sampled in 1992 and assessed using the functional literacy tasks of
the NALS.

Today, as in the past, tens of billions of dollars are being spent in
special programs to raise the literacy skills of children, while at the
same time expenditures for adult literacy education have been and still are
trivial – less than $220 federal dollars per adult enrollee in the federal
adult education and literacy program. This goes on despite the fact that
for the last 30 years the K-12 system has been graduating millions of young
adults below the 20th and 10th percentiles of reading as measured by the
NAEP, and there is little evidence that this can or will be turned around
anytime soon.

It is extraordinary that policies that attempt to take children away from
their families and "fix" them in the institutional settings of the public
schools, and then return them to their debilitating home lives,  still
command such massive amounts of funding, while there is great reluctance to
acknowledge and meet the needs of the children’s parents for continuing
education.

Perhaps this situation will change one day, and it will be discovered that
pounds and pounds of funds that aim at the prevention of adult literacy
problems through the pre-K-12 school system, do not match the significant
changes that can be bought for a few more ounces of adult literacy
education. Extensive research exists to suggest that, through the
intergenerational transfer of language and literacy, it seems highly likely
that serious investments in the education of adults could improve the
educability of their children.

Given the data of the last thirty years indicating mostly failure to improve
children’s learning of language and literacy in the schools and up into
adulthood, even those at the 10th percentile, it seems that some new
strategy for improving adult’s literacy is called for. There is a grossly
under-funded and under-developed Adult Education and Literacy System (AELS)
in the United States with over 3,000 programs and close to 3 million
enrollees per year. It may be time to acknowledge the existence of this
system and to provide the funding and other resources it needs to produce
genuine and extensive improvements in the literacy and lives of the adults
and their families who are in need of continuing education.

Children grow up to be adults. Adults are their children’s first teachers.
Isn’t it time for a really big investment in teacher education?

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