Both the US and UK governments have declared that millions of their adults have a serious deficiency in basic literacy skills. Tom Sticht, an international consultant in adult education, examines the statistics, policies and learners' attitudes from both sides of the Atlantic.

Strange things go on in adult literacy education. For instance, in 1993, the US federal government declared 47 per cent (90 million) of adults deficient in literacy skills, then lowered funding for literacy education for each of the next three years. Now, in 2004, federal funds are less than US$220 per enroller; fewer than four per cent of literacy deficient adults enrol in programmes in a given year and most do not stay for more than 50 to 100 hours of instruction (US Department of Education, 2003).

Similarly, in the UK, the 1999 Moser study reported that some seven million adults assessed by the International Adult Literacy Survey were seriously deficient in literacy. Unlike the US, the UK reacted to the Moser report by instituting a new government office with a mandate to deliver a new Skills for Life strategy and invested billions of pounds into adult basic skills programmes. But a Guardian newspaper article earlier this year indicated that only about 18 per cent (135,000) of the 750,000 adults taking courses under the government's Skills for Life strategy were from the lowest level of literacy identified as "at risk" by the Moser report.

So, what's going on here? How come millions of adults are being declared "at risk" of deficient basic skills in the US and UK, yet programmes are not being overrun with adults trying to get into them. While I know of no certain answer, one thing is common in both countries: most of the adults declared functionally incompetent in literacy, based on their test scores, do not think they have a literacy problem. In the US, two-thirds to three-quarters of the adults in the lowest level of literacy on the 1992 National Adult Literacy Survey thought they read well or very well. Overall, more than 93 per cent of adults thought their literacy skills were just fine and met their everyday needs at work and daily life.

In the UK, the 2003 Skills for Life Survey reported that some 96 per cent of adults estimated that they were fairly good or very good at reading for everyday life; only around five per cent estimated their reading skills to be below average. Adults were somewhat less optimistic about their writing skills, but were still overwhelmingly (93 per cent) apt to rate themselves as fairly or very good at writing to meet everyday needs. Surprisingly, 4.3 million (83 per cent) of the 5.2 million adults classified in the three Entry levels of the Skills for Life standardised test, and hence considered to be the most poorly literate, estimated their skills to be fairly or very good.

So, in both the US and the UK, the great majority of adults that the governments say are deficient in literacy, based on government tests, do not think they have a basic skills problem. Maybe this is one reason that millions more adults in these nations do not enrol in provision.

This raises questions about how well the government tests reflect adults' use of their literacy skills in their everyday lives. Are these tests ecologically valid? For instance, should the same tests be used for 16 to 24-year-olds as for 50 to 60-year-olds? It is well established that adult cognitive abilities such as short term memory and information processing efficiency change with age. Should the same tests be used with young adults as with older adults?

Another problem with these tests comes when they are used to measure progress in learning basic skills. In the UK, a government-sponsored study of learning in adult basic skills programmes found that while most adults made improvements in their skills from the beginning to the final testing, 30 per cent lost over 12.5 points from what they scored at the beginning of the course (Brooks et al, 2001). This is like unlearning literacy for almost a third of the adult students. Can this be true? If not, then why are tests being used that permit this sort of negative-gain score change?

Surprisingly, in both the US and the UK, literacy programmes aren't allowed to teach what is on the tests used to evaluate learning. Teaching to the test is considered cheating. But no rationale is given for why tests that measure something that isn't being taught should be used in preference to tests that measure what is being taught.

Is it appropriate to assess adult literacy skills in national surveys and evaluate learning in literacy programmes with these sorts of tests and procedures? It tests one's wits to think so.

References

US Department of Education (2003) Adult Education and Family Literacy Program Year 2001-2002, Report to Congress on State Performance.
Brooks et al (2001) Progress in Adult Literacy: Do Learners Learn?, London: Basic Skills Agency.
Peter Kingston (2004) Guardian Education, 29 June 2004, www.guardian.co.uk
Department for Education and Skills (2003) Skills for Life Survey: A national needs and impact survey of literacy, numeracy and ICT skills, www.dfes.gov.uk/readwriteplus

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