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“READ AND SUCCEED--MEETING THE CHALLENGE OF ILLITERACY IN AMERICA” mentioning the U.S. Dept of Labor was published in the Senate section on pages S3204-S3205 on March 29, 1996.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
READ AND SUCCEED--MEETING THE CHALLENGE OF ILLITERACY IN AMERICA
Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I rise today to share some thoughts on a subject of growing concern to many Americans, particularly to parents who seek a better and brighter future for their children through education.
It is that we are failing to teach our children to read effectively. In 1940, the literacy rate in the United States was 97 percent. It has now plunged to 76 percent--a rate which is lower than that of over 100 other nations.
To me, this is intolerable. America's future depends on restoring the reading skills of its people.
If we value our responsibility for leadership; if we seek to stay competitive in the world economy, we must address the problem of illiteracy in America.
We cannot stand by and watch our children sentenced to a life of mediocrity and illiteracy.
This problem exists in spite of the good intentions of Government and the expenditure of billions of taxpayer dollars over many years.
Reading is the most basic skill every child needs to achieve individual success and happiness--both in work and in life. Yet in failing to impart this skill effectively, we are directly undermining the success our children seek and deserve.
The evidence of our failure is all around us. Teachers and administrators see it in our schools, where 60 percent of entering college freshmen find themselves in need of remedial courses in reading or math.
Employers and businesspeople see it in the workplace, where industry spends exorbitant amounts on employee remedial training in basic verbal skills. Researchers and scholars detect it in their studies.
Hardly a week goes by that we do not see stories in the media about declining test scores or startling accounts of the growing problem of lagging reading skills in America. For example:
According to the U.S. Department of Education report known as the National Assessment of Education Progress [NEAP], ``the average reading proficiency of 12th grade students declined significantly from 1992 to 1994.''
This important study is widely considered to be one of the best barometers of overall student achievement. It reported that ``70 percent of 4th graders, 30 percent of 8th graders, and 64 percent of 12th graders did not attain a proficient level of reading.'' In other words, these students did not reach a minimum skill level in reading which is considered necessary to do the work at that grade level.
According to a recent 5-year study, entitled ``Adult Literacy in America,'' conducted by the National Center for Education Statistics, similar startling results were found. It stated that: 42 million Americans, 22 percent of the population cannot read; 50 million, 27 percent, can recognize so few printed words they are limited to a fourth or fifth grade reading level; 55 to 60 million, 30 percent, are limited to sixth, seventh, or eighth grade reading levels; only 30 million, 16 percent, have ninth and tenth grade reading levels; only 6 to 7 million, 3.5 percent, demonstrated skills necessary to do college level work.
SAT scores have declined steadily for most of the last 35 years. Verbal achievement has declined by nearly 90 points since 1960.
A U.S. Department of Labor study found that 20 percent of U.S. high school graduates could not even read their diplomas.
Mr. President, this is serious. All of this has consequences--in our economy, in our standard of living, in our competitive position in the world, and in our national security. For example:
The lower the literacy rate: the less productive our economy becomes, the less hours are worked and the less money they make in the form of wages and income, the higher the incidence of crime and welfare and their costs to society, the less effectively we are able to compete in world markets, the less capability we will have in our Armed Forces which are increasingly dependent on advanced technology and highly trained personnel as opposed to just sheer numbers.
Clearly, our level of literacy is closely linked to our success in the world. If we fix this problem, the benefits will spread through our entire society. I firmly believe that if we know how to read, we will know how to succeed.
Secretary of Education Richard Riley recently confirmed the problem when he said:
Our Nation's reading scores are flat and have been flat for far too long . . . Too many of our young people are groping through school without having mastered the most essential and basic skill.
Riley said that ``the most urgent task'' facing American schools is to improve reading instruction. So we know the problem exists. We can rejoice there is a solution.
Right now, we can take a giant step forward simply by doing what we can to demonstrate and celebrate what works when it comes to basic reading instruction.
Mr. President, we know what works in teaching children and adults to read. We can point to evidence backed by more than 60 years of educational research and experience.
What works is when our teachers and administrators return their emphasis to the use of phonics as the basis of reading skills instruction. Phonics refers to that body of knowledge which allows us to break down the letters of the alphabet into sounds so that words can be deciphered and sounded out according to simple rules.
With phonics-based programs, students learn not by memorizing huge numbers of whole words, but rather by mastering the very limited number of sounds and corresponding letter combinations which are the building blocks of all words. With this essential grounding, they are better equipped to move ahead to learn more advanced reading skills and techniques.
I do not argue that phonics is the only answer to the many problems faced by today's teachers in improving reading skills. The breakdown of the family, the impact of television, the force of popular culture--all of these and more pose challenges which were unheard of a generation ago. But clearly it is time for the pendulum in emphasis to swing back toward phonics--and not away as we have been moving more and more in recent years.
Phonics-based programs work. History and statistics have proven it. Now, similar grassroots evidence is sprouting up in more and more parts of the country.
For example, in one of the poorest districts in Houston, TX, there is a success story from which all of us can learn. There at the Wesley Elementary School, its principal, Dr. Thaddeus Lott, has encouraged teachers to use proven methods such as phonics in a concentrated effort to improve reading skills. The program is working.
Students are leaving this school reading at two or three levels above their grade. Many go on to private academies because their achievement levels are so far beyond the public schools they would otherwise attend.
Now, Dr. Lott has been appointed to a blue ribbon committee in the Houston Independent School District to expand his quality education techniques to other schools in this, the seventh largest school district in the Nation. It worked in Houston and it is working elsewhere.
Near one of Chicago's low-income housing projects, Mrs. Marva Collins of the Westside Preparatory School is making a real difference. Her phonics-based methods are helping all her students learn to read by the end of first grade. By the time her students reach third grade, they are memorizing poetry, discussing Shakespeare, and talking about early American history.
In Inglewood, CA, similar targeted programs have also proven highly successful.
Now, as the Washington Post reported last week, the State of California is urging all of its 7,700 school district ``to place more emphasis on phonics'' in order to reverse the dismal results they have been seeing on their statewide reading exams.
These are just a few recent examples--out of many--which show that the trend back to a renewed emphasis on phonics is growing. But much more needs to be done.
To help foster similar successful programs and to help focus public attention on what can and should be done, I propose to take the initiative in my home State of Oklahoma.
In the near future, I plan to help establish a limited in scope, privately funded, reading foundation in Oklahoma City.
Its purpose, broadly stated, will be to identify children, as well as adults, in need of enhanced reading instruction and to help them take advantage of a good phonics-based reading program that works.
If this limited demonstration project is successful, I would hope to expand it to Tulsa and perhaps to other cities throughout Oklahoma.
The goal is to show through private voluntary efforts that we as concerned citizens can address this one serious problem constructively, without resorting to Government mandates or vast infusions of Federal tax dollars which obviously have not worked.
Indeed, I want to make it very clear that I do not seek to establish a new Federal program, nor do I seek any new expenditure of taxpayer dollars. I propose no new legislation or Government mandate.
At the same time, I seek no direct intrusion into the day-to-day business of the public schools. I have long been opposed to Federal control of local education and I am not about to change my position now.
Rather, what I am talking about is fostering voluntary and cooperative efforts through the use of private funds, through persuasion, through example, and through a genuine concern for helping our young people and others achieve success in life.
This is a good cause. I intend to demonstrate that what works in Dr. Lott's school in Houston and Mrs. Collins' school in Chicago can and will work in Oklahoma City. When it does, we will offer it throughout the State.
Mr. President, there is absolutely no excuse for us in the United States of America to lag behind other industrialized nations in our reading skills--we are going to take the initiative and correct it.
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