Family Literacy Programs Targeting Hispanics Prove Successful.

Hispanic adults in the U.S. are not moving toward a positive educational or economic future for themselves, their families or the communities they live in according to a U.S. Department of Education study.

The National Assessment of Adult Literacy, “A First Look at the Literacy of America’s Adults in the 21st Century,” determined that 11 million adults in the U.S. are nonliterate in English and that the overall literacy rates for
Hispanics have declined since 1992. The average score of whites was largely unchanged from 1992 to 2003 with blacks and Asian/Pacific Islanders making gains.

“As a nation, we should be concerned that millions of adults in this country lack the literacy skills to complete a job application, vote, use the Internet, or read a bedtime story to a child,” said Sharon Darling, president
and founder of the National Center for Family Literacy (NCFL). Literacy is defined as using printed and written information to function in society, to achieve one’s goals, and to develop one’s knowledge and potential. Assessment questions focused on everyday tasks such as reading newspaper and magazine articles, calculating utility bills and using bus schedules.

NCFL has a long history of providing successful family literacy programming to Hispanic families. The Toyota Family Literacy Program (TFLP) is
addressing the growing educational needs of Hispanic and other English language learner (ELL) families in 10 urban areas across the U.S.

Preliminary TFLP findings are encouraging:

– Children of ELL parents participating in TFLP demonstrate higher academic progress: 84.2% of TFLP parents reported their children’s grades improved

– As measured by a standardized adult reading assessment, TFLP parents showed a significant improvement in reading of 10 points which represented a move from low intermediate English as a Second Language (ESL) literacy to high intermediate ESL literacy.

– Several studies have documented the significant impact of parent/family involvement on student performance. Recent TFLP data shows that children of ELL parents participating in family literacy programs demonstrate higher school attendance and fewer disciplinary referrals than demographically similar children in those same classrooms.

About a million students drop out of high school annually, with the Hispanic dropout rate being nearly four times higher than whites. However, a recent Pew Hispanic Center survey revealed that only 16 percent of Hispanic students who speak English well drop out of school, compared to 59 percent of those who do not.

Many Hispanic immigrants speak little or no English and may have low literacy skills in their native language, which are often major barriers to supporting their children’s education and navigating the school system For purposes of the assessment, literacy levels ranged from proficient (able to perform complex and challenging literacy activities) to below basic (no more than the most simple and concrete literacy skills).

Number of adults in each prose literacy level:
– 28 million proficient
– 95 million intermediate
– 63 million basic
– 30 million below basic

The race/ethnicity breakdown between 1992-2003 found:
– Whites up nine points in quantitative
– Blacks up six, eight and 16 points respectively in prose, document and quantitative literacy
– Hispanic adults were down 18 points in prose and 14 points in document literacy
– Asian/Pacific Islander up 16 points in prose

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http://www.nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2006470