Is Literacy Lagging?

Abstract

SEVERAL reports lately have implied that students are not ready for college and that colleges are going downhill in part because they are more interested in money and prestige than in the quality and preparation of their students. The tribulations of colleges have been the subject of a PBS special by John Merrow, Declining by Degrees, and one of his podcasts, Slipping Behind. But few days go by without a report on the tremendous debt that students incur in trying to get a college diploma and the negative impact that this burden has on their university careers--less focus on academics, more hours devoted to working at a job, and so more years to get to the diploma and an increased probability of never getting one at all. In the November column, I discussed research indicating that the bachelor's degree was in danger of becoming a rich-kidsonly birthright. Another report claiming that high schools don't prepare students well comes from the ACT. Reading Between the Lines: What the ACT Reveals About College Readiness in Reading is written in the language of fear and gives its findings a negative spin. Although the overall report is titled neutrally, its first chapter is headed Our Students Are not Ready for College and Workplace Reading. As an example of the negative emphasis, consider that the ACT report presents a pie chart with the legend More than Two-Thirds of New Jobs Require Some Postsecondary Education. The figure is 67%. The chart could just as well have been labeled More than Two-Thirds of New Jobs Do Not Require a College Degree. Sixty-nine percent fit that statement. The report claims, It is recognized today that the knowledge and skills needed for college are equivalent to those needed in the workplace. The only citations for this contention are a publication of the American Diploma Project, whose integrity I question (alas, many citations in the report are also from individuals and organizations that fall into this category), and an essay by Patte Barth (then with the Education Trust, now with the National School Boards Association) in which she contends, with no real data, that the two are converging. However, in an article last October, New York Times reporter Louis Uchitelle found that a substantial proportion of people holding certain jobs that do not require college e.g., office clerks, derrick operators, and theater ushers) nevertheless have bachelor's degrees. Conversely, Uchitelle quotes MIT economist David Autor: There has been enormous demand for low-skilled workers. Uchitelle also reports that since 2000 the weekly pay of workers with a high school education has risen at four times the rate of those with college degrees. Uchitelle concluded, Clearly there are more college graduates than unfilled jobs requiring their credentials. As a consequence of the surplus, some employers have upgraded their job requirements. Actually, reading in the workplace is apt to be harder than assigned reading in college. The memos and directives one gets to read on the job are often unreadable, while the materials one encounters in literature classes are not. (Ninth-graders slogging through Silas Marner might not agree.) The principal datum in the ACT report is a trend line for ACT's reading showing that readiness for college-level reading is at its lowest point in more than a decade. Only 51% score high enough to meet the Benchmark, which is the equivalent of a score of 21 on the ACT reading test. A comparison of students' college grades and their scores on the ACT test finds that reaching the Benchmark gives a student a 50% chance of making a B or better and a 75% chance of making a C or better in a credit-bearing college course such as U.S. history or psychology. ACT's own data, though, showed that 68% of those who failed to make the Benchmark still received a C or better in psychology, while 64% attained a C or better in U. …