L.A. United Way Survey Reveals Adult Literacy Crisis
by Jim Brown
September 13, 2004
(AgapePress) - A new study shows that more than half the working-age residents in Los Angeles County, California, have low literacy levels, as well as poor numeracy and comprehensions skills. The recent survey found that four million adults in L.A. County cannot understand a bus schedule or find an intersection on a street map.According to the survey by the Greater Los Angeles United Way, some 53 percent of the working-age population in the region cannot read simple forms or maps or comprehend basic issues of government. The study also revealed that a staggering 84 percent of South Los Angeles residents age 16 and over have limited reading, writing, and computation skills.
Joe Haggerty, president of the United Way of Greater Los Angeles, believes a large high school dropout rate is partly to blame for the current adult literacy crisis, which plays into a cycle of poverty. "On the maps here in the [San Fernando] Valley and certain places in Los Angeles, where you see very low literacy, it's where children have just not graduated from high school," he explains.
Many of these dropouts tend to reside in the same places where they grew up, Haggerty adds, areas which generally "tend to be in low-income neighborhoods." And generally, he notes, as adults "those individuals have jobs that pay very low wages."
The findings of the United Way survey also suggest that the hundreds of millions of dollars poured into public schools over the past decade have done nothing to lower illiteracy levels, perhaps because of the steady influx of non-English-speaking immigrants. Haggerty believes better access to English literacy programs is essential.
The president of Greater L.A.'s United Way points out that the chapter has considered a number of ways to address this need. "One of the things we're suggesting is to make it convenient for these individuals to attend classes and to learn more in terms of reading, math skills, and technology," he says, "and that has to be done either in their neighborhood or maybe even at their work site, so that they have a really convenient way to do it. They can't drive a long way or go a long way for class."
Haggerty admits that even with such programs, improving adult literacy in Greater Los Angeles will be a difficult goal to achieve considering the 50 percent dropout rate for literacy classes in the county. However, he notes that the problem must be addressed since, at present, the majority of the adults in this largest U.S. county do not have the literacy skills to meet the demands of today's job market.
