The report Rising to the Literacy Challenge, released yesterday by the Nellie Mae Foundation and Jobs for the Future, warns of a "major skills crisis" in New England due to millions of workers' low literacy.
The report's key findings:
More than 4.2 million adults -- 41 percent of New England's adult population -- can't read or do math well enough to perform the duties expected of them in today's workplaces.
Adequate literacy and numeracy are defined as Level 3 on the National Assessment of Adult Literacy, or the ability to get information from complex tables or charts, answer moderately complex questions about a text, or solve problems in math, among other things. Level 2 denotes only basic skills; Level 1 denotes minimal or no literacy.
In Rhode Island, about 19 percent of adults are at Level 1, and another 28 percent are at Level 2.
Rhode Island has the lowest adult literacy level in New England; about 368,000 adults, or 47 percent, lack adequate literacy skills.
Only 1 in 50 adults who needs literacy instruction in New England is getting it -- for a total of about 83,000 a year. In Rhode Island, it's 1 in 66, or fewer than 5,600 people a year.
Even assuming that only one-fifth of low-literacy adults seek instruction, that leaves about 68,000 Rhode Islanders who want services but can't get them. To give each 150 hours of classes -- six weeks' worth in the Dorcas Place day programs, where students often stay for a year or two -- would require more than tripling public support for adult education here, from $3.9 million to $15 million.
Despite having the biggest literacy gap, Rhode Island makes the smallest investment in adult education among the New England states, $450,000 in 2001, or only 11.5 percent of total public support (the bulk comes from federal grants). Compare that to Massachusetts' $30.2 million, or 61 percent of public support. Connecticut also provides substantially higher support, $15.6 million directly from the state and $14.3 million from the local school districts, which are required to pay for adult education.
