Study: U.S. Losing Ground in Education

Updated 9:51 AM ET September 13, 2005

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By BEN FELLER

WASHINGTON (AP) - The United States is losing ground in education, as peers across the globe zoom by with bigger gains in student achievement and school graduations, a study shows.

Among adults age 25 to 34, the U.S. is ninth among industrialized nations in the share of its population that has at least a high school degree. In the same age group, the United States ranks seventh, with Belgium, in the share of people who hold a college degree.

By both measures, the United States was first in the world as recently as 20 years ago, said Barry McGaw, director of education for the Paris-based Organization for Cooperation and Development. The 30-nation organization develops the yearly rankings as a way for countries to evaluate their education systems and determine whether to change their policies.

McGaw said that the United States remains atop the "knowledge economy," one that uses information to produce economic benefits. But, he said, "education's contribution to that economy is weakening, and you ought to be worrying."



The report bases its conclusions about achievement mainly on international test scores released last December. They show that compared with their peers in Europe, Asia and elsewhere, 15-year-olds in the United States are below average in applying math skills to real-life tasks.

Top performers included Finland, Korea, the Netherlands, Japan, Canada and Belgium.

A separate international review last year showed U.S. eighth-graders gaining on their peers across the globe in science and math. At the same time, though, fourth-graders here are falling behind others passed as their test scores remain stagnant, that study found.

McGaw said other measures of achievement _ including how U.S. students do on this country's federal math and reading test _ are fair to consider in rating performance.

Given what the United States spends on education, its relatively low student achievement through high school shows its school system is "clearly inefficient," McGaw said.

In all levels of education, the United States spends $11,152 per student. That's the second highest amount, behind the $11,334 spent by Switzerland.

"The very best schools in the U.S. are extraordinary," McGaw said. "But the big concern in the U.S. is the diversity of quality of institutions _ and the fact that expectations haven't been set high enough."

The Bush administration says the 2002 federal law known as the No Child Left Behind Act is fueling higher achievement among all students _ particularly poor and minority kids _ by holding schools accountable for progress. But the international data, mostly gathered in 2003, are not recent enough to confirm that the law is producing results, McGaw said.

Higher education in the United States remains strong, and the nation continues to hold an advantage in innovation based on research conducted at universities, he said.

The report also underscores that women continue to get paid less than men.

Women in the United States who are 30 to 44 and who hold a university degree _ meaning a bachelor's degree, master's degree, doctorate or medical degree _ make only 62 percent of what similarly qualified men do.

That's a lower rate than in all but three of the 19 countries for which numbers are available. The nations with greater inequity in pay are Germany, New Zealand and Switzerland.

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On The Net:

Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development: http://www.oecd.org

Copyright 2004 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Study: 11M U.S. Adults Can't Read English

Updated 7:16 PM ET December 15, 2005
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By BEN FELLER

WASHINGTON (AP) - About one in 20 adults in the U.S. is not literate in English, meaning 11 million people lack the skills to handle many everyday tasks, a federal study shows.

From 1992 to 2003, adults made no progress in their ability to read sentences and paragraphs or understand other printed material such as bus schedules or prescription labels.

The adult population did make gains in handling tasks that involve math, such as calculating numbers on tax forms or bank statements. But even in that area, the typical adult showed only enough skills to perform simple, daily activities.

Perhaps most sobering was that adult literacy dropped or was flat across every level of education, from people with graduate degrees to those who dropped out of high school.

So even as more people get a formal education, the literacy rate is not rising. Federal officials say this trend is puzzling and worthy of research.

Adults with ability to perform challenging and complex reading tasks made an average yearly salary of $50,700 in 2003. That is $28,000 more than those who lacked basic skills.

The adults deemed illiterate in English include people who may be fluent in Spanish or another language but cannot comprehend English text at its most simple level.

"Eleven million people is an awful large number of folks who are not literate in English, and therefore are prevented access to what America offers," said Russ Whitehurst, director of the Institute of Education Sciences at the Education Department.

Some 30 million adults have "below basic" skills in prose. Their ability is so limited that they may not be able to make sense of a simple pamphlet, for example.

By comparison, 95 million adults, or 44 percent of the population, have intermediate prose skills, meaning they can do moderately challenging activities. An example would be consulting a reference book to determine which foods contain a certain vitamin.

The National Assessment of Adult Literacy is considered the best measure of how adults handle everything from completing job applications to computing tips.

Black adults made gains on each type of task tested. White adults made no significant changes except when it came to computing numbers, where they got better.

Hispanics showed sharp declines in their ability to handle prose and documents. The background of U.S. adults has changed since 1992, when the test was last given; fewer people have spoken English before they started school.

"We can no longer afford to ignore the unique needs this population has demonstrated for years," said Jose Velazquez, director of the Hispanic Family Learning Institute at the National Center for Family Literacy.

Overall, the study represents a population of 222 million adults. The results are based on a sample of more than 19,000 adults, age 16 or older, living in homes, college housing or prisons.

Education Secretary Margaret Spellings pledged to coordinate adult education programs across the government. She also promoted the Bush administration's campaign to increase testing and specialized reading help in high school.

"One adult unable to read is one too many in America," Spellings said.

Millions of adults with limited reading skills have enrolled in literacy programs at high schools, libraries, workplaces and community colleges. Advocates of those programs said the new scores prove that a greater investment in adult literacy and research is essential.

"It's really hard to have a well educated and highly intellectual population of children if they go home to parents who do not have adequate reading skills," said Dale Lipschultz, president of the National Coalition for Literacy, a broad range of education groups.

___

On The Net:

National Assessment of Adult Literacy: http://nces.ed.gov/naal

Copyright 2004 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Turning a page on literacy gap Rocky Mountain News
The recent proposal floated by House Speaker Andrew Romanoff to require a student to have English proficiency to earn a high school diploma is, without doubt, an important way to start closing language gaps among immigrants - legal and illegal - in Colorado. But it also has another benefit: It addresses a massive literacy gap that a recent national study shows is blunting Colorado's, and the nation's, economic competitiveness. The speaker's solid proposal should become one part of an overall bipartisan focus on boosting literacy rates as a catalyst toward job creation and stronger economic growth. Buried amid the distractions and Christmas wrappings was news of a major new study, by the federal government's National Center for Education Statistics, that showed 30 million Americans have woefully inadequate literacy skills - with 7 million of them ranked as nonliterate in English. Another 60 million Americans have only basic literacy skills. Consider the practical facts behind these numbers.

• The 30 million Americans in the "below basic" category read so poorly that, according to national group ProLiteracy, they couldn't calculate a 5 cent per gallon discount on a home heating bill or fill out a simple medical form - much less a job application.
  
• The 60 million Americans who scored in the "basic" category lack the ability to adequately evaluate information in legal documents and possess only third- or fourth-grade math skills.

Above all, this literacy gap is a human tragedy because it robs millions of Americans of the chance to lead fuller, more successful and fulfilling lives. But beyond the loss to each individual, this gap is a serious and continuing loss to Colorado's - and the nation's - competitive edge. It is a deep wound to our ability to compete in the world economy since studies show that these literacy rates lag behind those of our key international economic competitors. In fact, there is significant anecdotal evidence that the need for widespread basic skills training was a key reason that Toyota recently decided to locate a manufacturing plant in Canada rather than in the United States. The automaker wanted to avoid the significant training costs its competitors Nissan and Honda were saddled with at their U.S. facilities because of inadequate literacy skills. Equally disturbing is that there has been no improvement in literacy rates since the last study was conducted in the 1990s. This means America's competitiveness has continued to erode. As author and globalization guru Thomas Friedman and others have chronicled in detail, the pace of technological change is so great, and the workplace demands of the high-tech economy have deepened so rapidly, that when we stand still, we're actually falling backward. And while there is, and should be, robust competition among the states - and Colorado is an aggressive and effective competitor - the real challenge comes from other nations. One of our major competitors is India, where companies can find, regrettably, a more literate work force that requires less training - and which they can pay a fraction of what they pay American workers. Recent news reports showed that Indians, who once flocked to the United States for our standard of living and better salaries, are creating American-like suburban communities back home - and taking their skills with them. In fact, recent news reports showed that while Silicon Valley and other American technology hubs, including Colorado, retain a hold on high-end tech jobs, a wide range of lower-level positions, including key research and development work, are shifting to Bangalore, India. This gap also has implications for governments - such as Colorado's - that are trying to survive the one-two punch of declining revenues and rising expenses. Federal statistics show that workers at the lower literacy rates earn, on average, $28,000 less per year than those who score at the "proficient" levels. This, of course, translates into reduced tax receipts. But, at the same time, those with lower literacy rates also are more likely to have higher health care costs, often borne by the government, and higher welfare costs. In fact, in health care alone, those with the lowest literacy rates have health care costs that are quadruple the national average. While some may search for scapegoats, such as the K-12 education system, gaps there don't address the gaps of adults in the work force or adult immigrants with meager or no English skills. That's why the proposal to require English proficiency before graduation is such a positive step forward. The national literacy study showed that, for example, 39 percent of Hispanic adults scored below basic - a rate three times the national average. Ensuring English proficiency upon graduation would reduce that number and expand the fortunes of Hispanic men and women when they enter the work force. The legislature also should review the waterfront of Colorado literacy programs, public and private, to determine their effectiveness and the adequacy of their funding levels and to promote the best practices. An even stronger, incentive-based work force training solution would be the creation of a warranty program where companies that discover their new hires lack basic literacy skills - despite having a high school diploma - could send that worker for the necessary education at the expense of the school that issued the diploma. By taking a serious look at the state of literacy education in Colorado - what's good and what needs some help - policymakers would bolster the ongoing and aggressive efforts of chambers of commerce and economic development leaders to make our state a magnet for family sustaining jobs. Even better, boosting unacceptably low literacy levels shouldn't contain an ounce of partisanship. Republican and Democratic policymakers understand that literacy is the cornerstone of economic development and job creation. Unless we take this competitiveness challenge seriously, we run the risk that while companies want to grow here in America by focusing on R&D, lagging literacy rates will force them to focus first on teaching workers their ABCs.
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