[Reading-hall-of-fame] Response to T. Scott Murray

[tsticht at znet.com]

Perhaps the wolf IS at his door:
A sympathetic response to T. Scott Murray

May 25, 2005 

Tom Sticht, International Consultant in Adult education

While reading T. Scott Murray's article entitled "It's ok to cry wolf if 
the wolf is at the door: A rejoinder to Tom Sticht" I couldn't help feeling 
a great deal of sympathy for Scott. Having just participated in the release 
of the Adult Literacy and Lifeskills (ALL) report using methodologies 
developed in the early 1990s by the U. S. government, he was now learning 
that a newly released report sponsored by this same government was saying 
that the methodologies used in the International Adult Literacy Survey 
(IALS) and ALL surveys, projects he had worked on for over a decade, were 
wrong. Under these circumstances, I can understand why he might feel like 
the wolf was at his door.

It is also understandable to me that, given his long term investment of 
time and professional efforts to the IALS and ALL, Scott would want to 
preserve as much of the value of these surveys as possible. In his 
rejoinder to my article he provides a lot of his beliefs and understandings 
about aspects of adult literacy assessment but in the end he actually 
agrees with the two major points that I reported from the work of the 
National Academy of Sciences:

1.	

As I reported from the National Academy of Sciences report, and as Scott 
acknowledges, performance levels for the ALL were not based on any standard 
setting process. He says, " Tom is right that none of the surveys (NALS, 
IALS, or ALL) ever underwent a standard setting process to identify a 
"suitable minimum needed for coping in today's societies". No such standard 
setting process was ever undertaken."

2.	

Scott also acknowledges, "Tom is correct when he says that an RP 50 is the 
point where one has equal errors about whether a person can or cannot 
perform a task." That means that this is the RP value that provides the 
HIGHEST STANDARD OF VALIDITY for inferences drawn about whether people can 
or cannot perform various tasks. Any other RP standards increase imbalances 
in either false negatives or false positives.



So I sympathize with Scott for being caught between the methodology of the 
NALS of 1992 and the criticism of that methodology by the NAS of 2005. I 
hope that better ways can be developed for discovering the scale of need 
for adult literacy education so that those who are most in need can be 
identified and convinced that they and their families can be helped by 
engaging in adult literacy education. I also hope that by seeing that the 
demand for adult literacy education is not insurmountably large 
policymakers can ensure that adult literacy education is funded at the 
levels needed to make genuine and lasting gains in adult literacy 
proficiencies. To the best of my knowledge this has not yet happened in 
most industrialized nations, including Canada.

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