In an over-informationed world we are under-literate.

Literacy is like a tomato. Do you say “tomaeto” or “tomahto”? Just as either says tomato, the concept of literacy has different definitions for the same word. Some of these definitions technically apply yet are not adequate measures of what it means to be literate in today’s parlance. So, what is the big deal about literacy? Is being literate critical to adult life? Given how much information adults are exposed to every day, can we expect adults with varying levels of literacy skills to effectively consider and understand the constant barrage of information? The answer is “no,” yet our world ultimately spins on the voices and decisions of under-literate adults.

Literacy is a status.

Literacy historically is a status based upon measures of reading and writing. As a statistic, “High literacy rates have been found to correlate to everything from access to economic opportunity, to better nutrition, to environmental sustainability.” We generalize that citizens of economically advantaged nations have high literacy rates and citizens of underdeveloped nations have low literacy rates. A nation boasted its high literacy rate as a cause-and-effect proposition. “Our people enjoy a better standard of living because they are literate.”

https://ncte.org/blog/2020/03/literacy-just-reading-writing

What should we know about this status?

Using the percentage of the population 15 years and older who can read and write as a measure of literacy, Andorra, Finland, Greenland, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Norway, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, and North Korea tie for #1 with 100% of their citizens being literate. North Korea? If a dictator says everyone can read, everyone is literate. The United States is in a large group of nations ranking #2 with 99% of the population rated as literate. Sounds good, but is it?

https://www.uscareerinstitute.edu/blog/which-countries-have-the-highest-and-lowest-literacy-rates

These data raise questions as to how we decide an adult is literate at the international level. This is how the data are gathered.

“The breakdown of strategies for deciding literacy covers four categories:

  • self-reported literacy declared directly by individuals,
  • self-reported literacy declared by the head of the household,
  • tested literacy from proficiency examinations, and
  • indirect estimation or extrapolation.

In most cases, the categories covering ‘self-reports’ correspond to estimates of literacy that rely on answers provided to a simple yes/no question asking people if they can read and write. The category ‘indirect estimation’ corresponds mainly to estimates that rely on indirect evidence from educational attainment, usually based on the highest degree of completed education.”

https://ourworldindata.org/how-is-literacy-measured

Based on self-reported data collection, many adults in the world consider themselves to be literate. But are they? Literacy is more than a statistical number.

Literacy is a functional tool.

Literacy is a tool. “… literacy is the way that we interact with the world around us, how we shape it and are shaped by it. It is how we communicate with others via reading and writing, but also by speaking, listening, and creating. It is how we articulate our experience in the world and declare, ‘We Are Here!’”

https://ncte.org/blog/2020/03/literacy-just-reading-writing

This consideration of literacy, that is how we communicate and receive communication from others and how we create communicative information, opens new concepts of what it means to be literate. “According to a study by the University of California – San Diego, the average American consumes about 34 gigabytes of data and information every day. This volume is equivalent of around 100,000 words heard or read daily.”

In our age of digital and virtual information, adults are bombarded by and likewise spew volumes of information daily. A literate adult must be skillful and competent on both sides of receiving and sending literacy.

Interestingly the Cambridge Dictionary points to both definitions – status and tool. Cambridge defines literacy as “the ability to read and write.” And literacy is the “knowledge of a particular subject, or a particular type of knowledge. Computer literacy is becoming as essential as the ability to drive a car.”

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/literacy

UNESCO reinforces literacy as an essential tool. “Literacy is a means of identification, understanding, interpretation, creation, and communication in an increasingly digital, text-mediated, information-rich, and fast-changing world. On the historical international scene, literacy is a statistic of the population who can read and write. Literacy also is a broad array of functional skills that are applied in a successful adult life. For others, literacy is the ability to access and understand information in multiple contexts.”

https://ncte.org/blog/2020/03/literacy-just-reading-writing

This other “tomato” version of literacy opens the realm of higher order skills that are necessary for understanding, interpreting, analyzing, and evaluating information that is read and heard. And then doing something with or because of what one has read and heard. Literacy is making meaning of and considering what to do with information.

Able to read. At what level of reading?

Self-reporting is not an adequate measure of how we use literacy as a tool. “The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) defines literacy across six levels. People with Level 1 or below literacy skills are considered to have very poor literacy skills, while Level 3 is considered the minimum literacy skills required for coping with everyday life.

  • Below Level 1: Adults can read brief texts on familiar topics and locate a single piece of specific information. Only basic vocabulary knowledge is required, and adults are not required to understand the structure of sentences of paragraphs.
  • Level 1: Adults can read relatively short digital or print texts to locate a single piece of information that is identical to or synonymous with the information given in the question. Knowledge and skill in recognizing basic vocabulary, determining the meaning of sentence, and reading short paragraphs of text is expected.
  • Level 2: Adults can make matches between the text, either digital or printed, and information. Adults can paraphrase or make low-level inferences.
  • Level 3: Adults are required to read and navigate dense, lengthy or complex texts.
  • Level 4: Adults can integrate, interpret or synthesize information from complex or lengthy texts. Adults can identify and understand one or more specific, non-central idea(s) in the text in order to interpret or evaluate subtle evidence-claim or persuasive discourse relationships.
  • Level 5: Adults can search for and integrate information across multiple, dense texts; construct syntheses of similar and contrasting ideas or points of view; or evaluate evidence-based arguments. Adults understand subtle, rhetorical cues and can make high-level inferences or use specialized background knowledge.”

As a literacy tool, how well do we read?

We get a different portrait of literacy in the United States when we use the OECD’s evidence-based data. Remember that the U.S. claims a 99% literacy status using self-reporting and other non-scientific methods.

“The most recent national survey on adult literacy is from 2012-2017, conducted by the National Center for Education Statistics as part of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC). The U.S. ranks 16th among the 33 OECD nations included in this study.

Nationally, over 1 in 5 adults (in the United States) have a literacy proficiency at or below Level 1. Adults in this range have difficulty using or understanding print materials. Those on the higher end of this category can perform simple tasks based on the information they read, but adults below Level 1 may only understand very basic vocabulary or be functionally illiterate.

On the upside, “46% of adults in the U.S. have a literacy proficiency at or above level 3. Adults at Levels 3, 4, and 5 have varying degrees of proficiency in understanding, interpreting and synthesizing information from multiple, complex texts to infer meaning and draw conclusions.”

https://www.apmresearchlab.org/10x-adult-literacy

Huh!

Approximately half of the adults in the U.S. have functional literacy tools that are “considered the minimum literacy skills required for coping with everyday life.” The other half of that statistic have less that minimal literacy skills.

The application of literacy as a functional tool is not just eye-opening for the United States. Using the OECD study, 14.9% (or 1 in 7) adults in England have literacy levels below Level 3, which is the equivalent to the literacy skills expected of a nine to 11-year-old.”

https://literacytrust.org.uk/parents-and-families/adult-literacy/what-do-adult-literacy-levels-mean/#:~:text=People%20with%20Level%201%20or,for%20coping%20with%20everyday%20life.

These conclusions are supported by other studies. A Gallup analysis of literacy information gathered by the US Department of Education reports that “About 130 million adults in the U.S., roughly half of Americans between 16 and 74 – have low literacy skills. In this study, literacy is broadly defined as the ability to read and write, but more accurately encompasses the comprehension, evaluation and utilization of information, which is why people describe different types of literacy – such as health, financial, and legal. Low literacy skills can profoundly affect the day-to-day success of adults in the real world, and these impacts extent to their families, too.”

https://www.apmresearchlab.org/10x-adult-literacy

Literacy and public education.

Reading achievement has become the annual dip stick for measuring educational effectiveness in the U.S. since No Child Left Behind became national policy in 2002. State, school district, and school report cards annually publicize the percentage of students who meet the state’s performance expectations in reading. In a nation that self-reports its adults to be literate, children in school struggle with reading.

The Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction reported, “For 2023-24, assessment results show public school student proficiency rates in ELA were at 48%. Students participating in the state’s Private School Choice Programs had a proficiency rate of 30.9 percent. Assessment results show proficiency gaps among different student subgroups continue to exist.”

https://dpi.wi.gov/news/releases/2024/student-assessment-results-forward

It is worthwhile to note that “meeting expectations” on a statewide reading or ELA assessment is not a high standard. State “expectations” are minimal levels of reading ability, very much like Level 2 on the OECD literacy assessment. The number of children meeting “expectations” is nothing to really cheer about. They met a low bar.

In truth, every graduation class fits into the OECD and Gallup estimation of adult literacy in the U.S. – about half of the graduates and young adults in our country meet minimal literacy standards.

When we apply literacy as a status to high school graduates, our society annually receives semi-literate young adults into our communities and general employment. As a result of education, more than half of our adult citizenry can only minimally read and write.

When we apply the second definition, we realize that the hierarchy of our layered economic society does not require every adult to be highly literate. Many high school graduates lack the ability to fully read and listen to complex and technical information and then translate it into their daily lives and jobs fulfill society’s economic needs. They are employed and pay taxes. Their earnings circulate in our consumer-based economy. They are law abiding and live socially in our cities, towns, and countryside. The majority do not need more than a high school diploma plus technical or on-the-job training to live in the United States.

“In 2021, the highest level of education of the population age 25 and older in the United States was distributed as follows: 

  • 8.9% had less than a high school diploma or equivalent.
  • 27.9% had high school graduate as their highest level of school completed. 
  • 14.9% had completed some college but not a degree.
  • 10.5% had an associate degree as their highest level of school completed.
  • 23.5% had a bachelor’s degree as their highest degree.
  • 14.4% had completed an advanced degree such as a master’s degree, professional degree or doctoral degree. 

https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2022/educational-attainment.html

Incomplete literacy can lead to incomplete understanding.

The ability to read, understand, and evaluate information has become more essential as the volume of daily information has increased. When a person hears or reads almost 100,000 words daily, a person must either try to process all that information or begin to categorize and ignore selected types and sources of information. My best bet is the latter. People become increasingly selective in the media they listen to and the text they read, ignoring sources that do not agree with their personal points of view. As they scan text and skim media, they disregard sources they do not agree with and pay attention only to sources agreeable to their perspectives. The loss of a 360-degree listening and reading narrows their understanding to the range of information they choose to hear and read.

Let’s do the arithmetic. In Wisconsin, less than half of our students meet minimal expectations on statewide reading assessments. With their high school and associate degrees, they elect to hear and read only words that express their points of view about our state and world. If this is true, then we need to add a third tomato – incomplete literacy. Given that literacy is a tool, when the tool or reading and listening is applied only to what we want to read and hear, then we have achieved incomplete literacy.

We always do get what we settle for.

Our national and state Founding Fathers valued education. Because they believed a literate populace would be better able to take part in our democratic form of government, they supported public education. The ability to read was essential for voters to make informed choices of leadership and the policies their leaders would execute. As a nation of immigrants, literacy in the English language has always been a pathway to citizenship.

With all that purpose and history, today we have achieved a nation that is minimally and incompletely literate and this is considered good enough for our economic and political welfare.

In a world that is over-informationed, we are under-literate. As educators, we have work to do!

Righting the Second R

Take a breath, pause, and then jump back into the restructuring of our 3 Rs.  Our modern Thirty Years War over how best to teach Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic is not yet over.  While our national and state-based educational generals have cast their critical eyes on reading and math, the second R, writing, has slipped into the backwaters of school subjects.  We need to correct this.  Said simply, reading is the development of understanding and writing is the demonstration of understanding and more.  As we teach children to be skilled readers, we must teach them to be skilled writers.  We must do what is right by writing.

What Do We Know?

No Child Left Behind and the Common Core focused national educational systems on student achievement in reading and math.  These two initiatives provided a warlike educational scenario.  NCLB was the mandate that made improvement our only option and the Common Core was our dictum.  The reading, ELA, and math Core standards became the subjects that mattered.  If you want proof, check your school’s official state report card.  What gets tested gets taught.  Although writing is appropriately and very well addressed in the Common Core, the two expressive sides of reading, writing, and speaking, get short shrift. 

We finally are back on track in our instruction of reading.  Elementary teachers have slogged through more than thirty years of reading wars.  A resurgence of explicit instruction of reading in the larger, well documented Science of Reading is moving the needle of student achievement in reading.  The two-pronged attack of language comprehension and word recognition are moving all children into the realm of skilled readers.

The Missing Link Between Information and Knowledge

Today we face a “now what” question.  As children become skilled readers, what do we want them to do with the information they read?  How do we use input reading skills and meaningful reading material to generate useful student knowledge?  We teach all children to expose their learning through writing.

All children need a complete education.  NASA does not send astronauts to the moon without having planned for their return to earth.  When we ask a child to read a book, we don’t say “Good.  Job well done.  You can read.  End of story”.  We ask them “to do” something with what they read.  Our something modalities are speaking, performing, or writing.  The first two modalities are predicated on the third – plan what you want to say or how you want to demonstrate it by writing it.  The reading trip is not complete without a child writing about what they read.

 Input skills Become Output Skills

The Science of Reading teaches us five elements that create language comprehension.

  • Background knowledge
  • Vocabulary
  • Language Structures
  • Verbal Reasoning
  • Literacy Knowledge

With learned word recognitions skills, these five building blocks help a reader understand the printed letters.  They interpret letters into sounds, sounds into words, and words into the writing of Shakespeare.  These same five building blocks help students tell us what they think about Romeo and Juliet.  They use verbal reasoning to craft summaries, interpretations, comparisons and contrasts with other works, evaluate what they read, and create their own original written “masterpieces”.  They use their vocabulary and background knowledge to form what they want to write and language structures and literacy knowledge to tell their story.   One does not write well without language comprehension faculties.  Reading skills are writing skills. 

Some educators are attempting to construct a Science of Writing to mirror the Science of Reading.  Unnecessary.  The skills sets are known.  All we need to do is turn inputs into outputs.

When we provide children with exciting things to learn, we also provide them with exciting things to write about.  At all grades and in all subjects, writing is essential for students to tell us and others about what they are learning, the music they are playing, the art they are creating, the experiments that go “bang”, and the difference between “bull” and “bear” markets.  Stephen King tells us “The scariest moment is always just before you start”.  The teacher’s job is to get the writer started.  They will write.

Our To Do

Stephen King, again.  “If you want to be a writer you must do two things above all others:  read a lot and write a lot”.  We have launched our students as readers.  Now we need to land them as writers to make the reading-writing connection complete.  If I can be appreciative of anything we received from the pandemic, it is school technologies.  Almost all children have a laptop or IPad for their writing instrument.  They can write anywhere anytime.  They can save, delete, and send.  They can share and edit.  I watch actors in role of Shakespeare use a quill and rough paper to simulate his writing.  Ink-stained fingers and balled up discards abound.  Today’s writers have the ease of technology.  They know how to get information as readers, and we can teach them how to tell us what they know as writers.

Our Not To Do

Teachers: Don’t should thyself with reading everything a student writes.  Writing for learning assessment purposes is only one of many reasons for student writing.  Student writers need to read their own writing many times in the writing process.  They need to reciprocally read and comment on other student’s writing.  Parents need to read their child’s writing.  Other teachers need to read student writing.  Your principal’s need to read student writing.

Once you stop shoulding thyself to read everything, do right by writing.  Write away!

Promotional Proficiency – An Educational Promise Unkept

“I promise…” are words added, often unconsciously, to statements we make to others. Other add-ons include, “… believe me”, “…to be honest with you”, and “… you have my word.” We speak these words and we hear others speak them, but what do they really mean? Do we really make a promise when we say “…I promise” with an expectation of being held to that promise? Does saying “believe me” make a person more believable? If one says “honestly”, does that word make what follows more honest than all else the person usually says?

I am told that these are just colloquialisms, figures of speech, and attention-getters when I respond with “I shall hold you to that promise.” Call me old-fashioned, but grandmother taught us that “a promise is a debt unpaid” and grandfather told us “a man’s word is his bond.” These words matter, because promises that are unfulfilled and statements of honesty that turn out to be lies are and should be held against the speaker. If you say it, you should be committed to living up to your word with hard and clear evidence of effort. People can understand that time and unseen occurrences may prevent complete fulfillment, but they should not forgive meaningless statements of a promise, or a request to be believed, or proclamations of honesty when there is no intention of living up to these words.

That said, I apply this truth-telling to the work of a school board. The American Dream is founded largely on the success of a child’s education. Over-simply stated, learning to read becomes reading to learn and reading complex and complicated information grows knowledge, and skills and problem-solving abilities and these lead to a high school graduate’s readiness for success in college and career. Apply the same scenario to arithmetic and mathematics and you have the backbone of a school curriculum – reading and mathematics. Success in school, children are told, promises preparation and readiness for success in adulthood. This is a traditional school promises and school boards are the keepers of that promise.

What then are we willing to do to pay the debt of this universal promise we make to students and parents, to paraphrase grandmother?

When a child is promoted to first grade and each subsequent grade level, the child is prepared and ready for instruction at that next grade level and when a student graduates from high school the graduate is prepared and ready for post-secondary education.

This is our fundamental promise. It is the premise and foundation for the ladder of PK-12 education. We march cohorts of children through their school years in an enactment of this promise. Take this promise away – tell children and parents that there is no assurance that first grade is necessary for entrance into second grade and middle school is not a preparation for high school – and school becomes the K-Mart of education with blue light specials in every school corridor. The cashier will check you out.

Are we fulfilling our promise? Are all children prepared and ready for their promotion? Not so much. The Wisconsin DPI released its 2018 School Report Cards in late November and a perusal of state data and randomly selected school districts indicates these two facts –

A percentage of children but far from all are proficient, achievement at the advanced of proficient levels, in reading and mathematics. That percentage is higher or lower depending upon school district, and too often, the socio-economic characteristics of the district are a determinant in that percentage.

The percentage of children statewide who are proficient in reading and math is static if not trending slightly downward – approximately 40% of all children are proficient in reading and less than 40% are proficient in math.

In our local schools,

68.9% of elementary children were proficient in reading; 68.2% in math.

48.9% of middle school children were proficient in reading; 39.4% in math.

48.8% of high school children were proficient in reading; 29.2% in math.

We acknowledge that a quality education is comprised of many more variables than proficiency in reading and mathematics. Our local school touts the breadth of its programming in academics, activities, arts and athletics and the high percentage of student participation in the latter three. However, we made no promises other than “access to opportunity” in activities, arts and athletics. We did make promises regarding academics. Promotion means preparation and readiness for what comes next.

Interestingly, the State of Wisconsin proclaims that our local middle school and high school meet our state’s educational expectations and the elementary school significantly exceeds state expectations. Perhaps the State of Wisconsin is no longer a party to the promise of readiness and preparation or takes the promise as lightly given.

Locally, we have our work before us. What are we willing to do fulfill our promise and keep our word? Time will tell, but for secondary students, time is running out.

Readingless Children

Parents, this is on you!

“What book are you reading?”, I asked a middle-school aged child. He said, “I don’t read.” And, returned his attention to his tablet where he was engaged in virtual gaming with friends at a distance. I persisted. “Summer is almost over. Surely you read one book this summer.” Without looking up, he said, “Nope.”

I wasn’t overly surprised. When I visit people in their homes, one of the first things I look for, after the amenities have been observed, are books. I look for the presence of books on shelves or end tables or coffee tables or stacked beside a chair or in a wall basket in the bathroom or sticking out from under a bed. In homes with children, books are a vanishing breed. Hardcover or softcover, they are hard to find.

“Ah”, I said, seeing no books laying around. “How many books do you have downloaded on your tablet?” He is, after all, a post-millennial.

“None”, he said. “I just have games and social media sites.” He did not miss a thing on his screen as his friend’s avatars advanced against his fortification.

“The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who can’t read them,” Mark Twain said. I believe this to be true.

Call me a bibliophile and I won’t argue. I send my grandchildren books for Christmas and birthdays. They are never for want of toys or tee shirts or jeans with holes or running shoes. Little did I know that the books I presented had legs. They walked off to distant places never to be seen again. Now, I am advised not send books. “They won’t read them,” I am told by their parents.

I repeat myself. Parents, this is on you. Parents born of Generation X and Gen X or iGen, tell me “I am so busy with work and family and other things that I need to pick my fights. Getting my kids to read is not a fight I need in my life.” Truth be told, reading is not about a parent’s life, it is all about a child’s life and their life to come.

Still, I persisted with my young gamer. As I watched the activity on his tablet screen from over his shoulder, I could not help myself. “Nice flanking movement. That’s the kind of thing Stonewall Jackson would have done in the Civil War or George Patton would have done in World War Two.”

“Unh huh,” he said moving to counter the flanking.

“What if I give you an iBook gift card? Would you be interested in reading about Stonewall Jackson or General George Patton on your tablet?”

“Nope. I don’t read.”

That got me. I could not help what I said next. “Your tablet is a piece of junk, you know. I read in PC Magazine that the graphics are too slow to make the action life-like. Too bad for you, I guess.”

He paused. “I read that, but they were wrong. Wired said that PC Mag used information from last year’s model to talk about this year’s model that is so much improved. I have this year’s model.”

“So, you do read,” I said. “Do you ever talk with your parents about what you read?”

“No. They aren’t interested in what interests me. And, they never talk to me about what they read.”

And, there it is, Mr. Twain. I amend your timeless quotation.

“The parent who does not encourage a child to read is raising a child who has no advantage over a child who cannot read.”