PROVIDENCE -- The basic facts are not in dispute: Rhode Island has a lot of people who can't read well enough to do more than menial jobs, who can't fill out bureaucratic forms or understand the directions on their medicine bottles, who can't help their children with their grade-school homework.
Far too many can't read at all.
Some disagree on the extent of the problem, and on how to solve it. But few would contest the bottom line -- it's bad for the state to have so many people with poor literacy skills.
Despite years of talking about Rhode Island's adult-literacy problem, gathering data, creating commissions, and listening to countless adult learners' stories, the state spent $450,000 on adult education in 2001, and the General Assembly rejected a bid this year to raise it to $3 million.
Secretary of State Edward S. Inman III invited several dozen people with an interest in adult literacy to a "summit" yesterday morning at the State House to begin a discussion on how to tackle the problem.
But while his guests indulged him, answered his staff's questions, and talked about the challenges involved in their work, at the end of the three-hour event, most got back to what they called the obvious question: When is Rhode Island going to invest seriously in adult literacy?
"What we need is money in the budget," said Linda Katz, a researcher at the Poverty Institute, at Rhode Island College. "It should be a done deal."
But none of the political leaders present -- not Inman or his staff, nor gubernatorial candidates Myrth York and state Rep. Antonio J. Pires -- came close to promising a budget increase, or even advocating one.
In his closing remarks, in fact, Ray Rickman, Inman's deputy, noted that the state has a finite amount of money, so at best it can only reallocate the cash that it has available.
INMAN CONVENED the summit as part of what he called "a multifaceted effort" to improve adult literacy in response to a "startling" report released recently by the Nellie Mae Education Foundation.
That report, produced by Jobs for the Future, a Boston work-force development agency, estimated that 47 percent of Rhode Island adults lack the literacy skills needed in jobs that pay enough to support a family.
The figure was based on data from the 1992 National Adult Literacy Survey, which rated 19 percent of Rhode Islanders as having minimal or no literacy skills, and another 28 percent as having only basic skills, insufficient to handle complex forms or technical instructions.
The survey is only administered every 10 years, so more recent data isn't available yet, but 2000 U.S. Census figures suggest that adult literacy is getting better; 28 percent of Rhode Islanders over 25 had less than a high school diploma or GED in 1990, compared to 22 percent in 2000.
Still, Rhode Island compares unfavorably with its neighbors both in terms of the percentage of illiterate and semiliterate adults and in terms of spending -- we have the smallest state investment in adult education in New England.
And with an estimated 368,000 adults in need of some degree of literacy instruction -- nearly 150,000 at the most basic level -- only 5,592 people were served in Rhode Island last year, the Nellie Mae study found.
Adult-education providers from across the state told Inman and his staff that many of the people who could use their services never show up at their doors, and some who do come don't sign up for classes or drop out after a while, discouraged by the huge challenge.
But when Inman's press secretary, Chris Wall, asked if Rhode Island should work harder to reach out to the people who aren't getting help, Dorcas Place director Brenda Dann-Messier said it would be pointless -- the agencies are already stretched to their limits serving the five percent of those who do seek help.
With no extra money to provide extra classrooms and hire more teachers, Dann-Messier and others said, all that outreach would accomplish would be to lengthen agencies' waiting lists.
ALONG WITH their pleas for more money, adult-education providers and their supporters did suggest other measures that would help them do their jobs.
Several advocated more collaboration among the agencies, maybe with some kind of central state entity to help them work on policy issues and pursue federal and private grants. The constant chase for grants is particularly grueling for small nonprofit agencies, they said, and if they could submit more of their applications jointly, they also wouldn't be competing with each other all the time for small sums of money.
There was talk of boosting the state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education's efforts on the adult-literacy front; coordinator Bob Mason has limited resources and while Commissioner Peter McWalters is very vocal about K-12 education, he rarely speaks out about adults.
"We need to beef up the Department of Education's ability to do the job it's already charged with," Katz, of the Poverty Institute, said.
Many stressed that K-12 education and adult literacy are closely related -- many of Rhode Island's adult learners are people whose needs weren't met in the K-12 system, and conversely, children whose parents are illiterate have been shown to have a harder time in school.
And just as K-12 schools' failures result in a less competent work force, they said, adults whose literacy gaps aren't closed are also stuck at the bottom of the job ladder, and they often can't even qualify for training to get out of poverty.
"It seems easy to get programs started for the kids -- they're cute, they're adorable," said Tom Brillat, of the Washington County Adult Learning Center. "But if you're just doing stuff for the kids, we're not going to get where we want to be."
