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More than 1/5 of Lubbock County residents illiterate

Of Lubbock County’s 254,862 residents, 54,000 adults in Lubbock County are illiterate, according to the Report on the State of Adult Literacy in Texas.

“We have a huge literacy problem,” said Carol Keeney, executive director of the Lubbock Area Coalition for Literacy. “A lot of people are dropping out of school, a lot of people are migrant workers. A lot of people have learning differences where they can’t learn in a normal school setting.”

LITERACY’S IMPACT

• American businesses are estimated to lose over $60 billion in productivity each year due to employees’ lack of basic skills. (National Institute for Literacy. Fact Sheet: Workforce Literacy)
• 75% of unemployed adults have reading or writing difficulties. (National Institute for Literacy)
• Over 60 % of front-line workers in the goods-producing industry have difficulty applying information from a text to a required task. (National Institute for Literacy)
• Workers who lack a high school diploma earn less than 25% of those with Bachelor’s degrees. (National Institute for Literacy)

How Many Adults Struggle with Literacy in Texas?
Contrary to popular media myths, very few adults in the US are truly illiterate. Rather, there are many adults with low literacy skills who lack the foundation they need to find and keep decent jobs, support their children’s education and participate actively in civic life.

• Between 21 and 23 percent of the adult population or approximately 44 million people can read a little but not well enough to fill out an application, read a food label, or read a simple story to a child.
• Another 25-28 percent of the adult population, or between 45 and 50 million people can perform more complex tasks such as comparing, contrasting, or integrating pieces of information but usually not higher level reading and problem-solving skills.

According to a 1993 Texas Adult Literacy Survey conducted by the Educational Testing Service, between 27 and 28 percent of Texas adults-about 3.5 million-fall into the Adult Literacy Level 1 category.

Just under 50 percent of the poor or near-poor adults in Texas rank in the Adult Literacy Level 1 category.

Between 50 and 60 percent of Texans living on the border are reading at the Adult Literacy Level 1 category. (National Institute for Literacy: The State of Literacy in America 1998)

Literacy experts believe that adults performing at these low levels lack a sufficient foundation of basic skills to function successfully in our society. (National Institute for Literacy)

Where does Texas rank among the 50 states?

Texas State & County QuickFacts from the 2000 Census: Texas ranks 5% below the national average for High School graduates, according to FedStats.
The 2007 Institute of Education Sciences national Reading report card - Math report card.

Votes cast by people that have poor or no reading skills are vulnerable to unsavory influences. Texas and the nation’s non-reading population get their decision making information from television, radio, their buddies, their preachers or the guy on the street offering them $10 to vote for a candidate. Don’t assume non readers or poor readers are stupid. Life does not always hand educational opportunity equally. The American Educational system as enacted by each state is flawed and uneven. Federal and State structures micro manage teachers into forcing their students into little statistical boxes of who can and cannot be educated and who is worth the trouble. For all the political hooplah Texas politicians make over education, we still have an embarrassing number of poor literacy. Bloggers can write their hearts out and none of their hard fought ideas will reach the ones who need the information most!

Texas Workforce Commission has a whole page of data to peruse. The impact on employment and crime is huge. NeoCons can point fingers all they want, immigrants are not the only ones with literacy problems. NeoCons are NeoCons often because they must rely on the same sources of information that non-readers use …

Posted by bosskitty October 9th, 2007 | Category: Accountability, Adult Literacy, Children, Education, Hypocracy, Lubbock, Tax Dollars, Texas, Vote, disinformation, economics, illiterate, literate, read, taxpayers, write | Subscribe to comments | Leave a comment | Trackback URL