Adult Literacy: The Next Generation

Abstract

~ n 1993,_the first report from the federa!ly funded .National Adult Literacy Survey (NALS), the most comprehensive study of its kind, was released. The good news was that nearly 95% of adult Americans could read at a fourth-grade level or better, showing that illiteracy in its most basic form was relatively low, but the bad news was that nearly half of all adult Americans scored in the lowest two levels of literacy, levels that the National Educational Goals Panel (1994) has stated are well below what American workers need to be competitive in an increasingly global economy. 1 Although these findings shocked public opinion, research showed that it was possible, even likely, that America would continue to fail to achieve a fully literate society. For example, the NALS indicated that nearly 25% of America's adults with an average of 10 years of formal schooling had only fourth-grade literacy skills or lower (Kirsch, Jungeblut, Jenkins, & Kolstad, 1993). In many ethnic minority groups, fewer than 50% of the children complete 10 of the compulsory 12 grades of schooling (National Center on Educational Statistics, 1993a). Low achievement in schools, early dropout from schools, along with the continued flow of poorly educated immigrants, increase the population of adults in need of further skills at least as fast as adult education programs attempt to reduce the size of this group through remediation and retraining. In other words, low-literate 2 Americans may now be seen as a chronic feature of the American educational landscape, with all the well-known statistical relationships with increased children's school failure, lower worker productivity, crime, and welfare. 3 Fortunately, we know considerably more now than we did a decade or even a half decade ago about how to improve literacy in America. 4 This article focuses principally on the 1990s, which have seen a number of new and important studies that can provide guidance for policymakers, practitioners, and researchers in the field of adult literacy. Seven areas, corresponding to key topics in the improvement of adult literacy services, are delineated; in each, we provide a brief analysis of major research findings, followed by a series of recommendations. The article concludes with a synthesis of the recent past and a prognosis for what we believe will be the next generation of adult literacy work in America.

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