By Carole Ann Borges, Knoxville Voice

Eugene Branch, a wiry man with close-cut blonde hair, leans against the stonewall across from the Adult Basic Education center at the Historical Knoxville High School, taking a cigarette break between classes. Along the wall, groups of students, some young, some old, gather in clusters, but Eugene stands by himself. “I tried to get my GED twice before,” he says, “but I had to work. I kept quitting the classes. I’m 43 years old. My body is giving out. I need the GED to get a better job.”

When asked if he thinks the schools he attended gave him the tools he needed to succeed, his face hardens. “Absolutely not,” he says firmly. “I had a lot of learning problems. I never failed a grade. I went all the way to the 10th, but I couldn’t do anything — couldn’t read, write or spell very well, so I ended up having to do manual labor. Right now, I feel like I’m not good enough to do anything, even something as simple as teaching Bible school. I used to sing in the choir, but I had to quit because I couldn’t read well enough ...”

Literacy as defined by the National Literacy Act of 1991 is “an individual's ability to read, write and speak in English, and to compute and solve problems at levels of proficiency necessary to function on the job and in society, to achieve one's goals, and develop one's knowledge and potential."

Forty-five percent of the entire U.S. population is at-risk because of low literacy skills, according to the National Center for Educational Statistics. In 2004, the State Comptroller’s Office of Research reported half the adults in Tennessee could barely read a street map, find information in an article or calculate postage for their mail.

Tennessee’s efforts to combat this problem have been recognized nationally — this year, the state received an incentive award from the Office of Vocational and Adult Education for its adult literacy initiatives, despite the fact that the state receives the fewest federal dollars in the region for these programs. As Knoxville Voice went to press, a bill to address the funding shortage was being considered in the House Ways and Means Committee. Co-sponsored by state Sen. Jamie Woodson (R-Knoxville), the proposal asks for changes that would increase salaries for adult education teachers and improve technology in their programs.

People with low literacy skills are everywhere, and they’re exceptionally good at hiding, explains Bob C. Cleckler, author and founder of Literacy Research Associates, Inc. “The number of U.S. adults who cannot read at all is very small. But if they only know 1,200 to 1,600 simple words they learned by sight in the first four grades in school, they are functionally illiterate. They can't read and write well enough to hold an above-poverty-level-wage job.”

The country spends an estimated $17 billion annually on those left behind in lost industrial productivity, unrealized tax revenues, welfare support and crime, according to the Ohio Literacy Resource Center. 

“Most adults with low literacy skills come from families where one or both parents didn’t read, couldn’t help them with homework and never provided books in the home,” says Jean Stephens, director of the nationally recognized University of Tennessee Center for Literacy Studies that conducts research, shares best practices and develops new technologies to improve literacy.

The inability to read or write well and low comprehension levels cause many children to drop out of school as Branch did. In 2006, the statewide report card found that 20.5 percent of students did not complete their high school education.

The dropout statistics would probably be a lot higher if it weren’t for people like Doug McDaniel who, while working with at-risk youth at Tribe One, mentored three young men from Austin East High School.

“Despite some tough personal circumstances, they made it into the computer lab more often than not,” McDaniel says. “Sometimes I had to go into the neighborhood and find them, give them a ride, but we both stuck with it and they graduated. Each one of them was a nice kid under varying degrees of outward 'toughness.' We read Ray Bradbury, worked on Microsoft Excel, got stuck on Algebra problems together but made it through.” 

McDaniel’s son attended Dogwood Elementary, A Project GRAD school, which he says focuses on the highest performing students in the lowest performing schools, but that’s not enough to address the state’s literacy problem, he adds.

"They also have a different curriculum," he says. "So when the students are phased into a non-Project GRAD school [as they advance], they’ve often learned completely differently from non-Project GRAD students, and I don’t think we really want to create “two societies” in our schools where economically advantaged students get a preferred curriculum while economically disadvantaged students get a ‘special’ curriculum … ”

Curricula variations and disparities in school programs aren’t the only disadvantages for students living in poverty.

“Poverty causes many difficulties,” says Stephens. “Economically disadvantaged families move often, so there’s a lack of continuity in the child’s education — different teachers and different school systems. It can be very hard for a child to adapt. Having proper medical care, early hearing and eye tests and proper nutrition are important. [Also], parents who have low literacy skills can’t read prescription information. They sometimes lack knowledge about nutrition requirements.”

Children who are mentally or physically challenged also run a high risk of becoming functionally illiterate. Though there has been an increased drive to provide a better quality education for children with special needs, funding has not been sufficient. Autism, for instance, is a growing epidemic with one in every 160 children now being diagnosed, according to the U.S. Department of Health. Too often, a parent of a child with special needs has to spend years fighting the system to ensure their children will attain literacy levels sufficient to help them live up to their highest potential.

Lisa Pate, the mother of a child with autism, is unhappy about the education her daughter is receiving through the Knox County school system. Pate says her daughter needs Applied Behavioral Therapy to succeed academically, but the school refused to provide it, leaving the Pates to pay $400 out of pocket to ensure their daughter receives the necessary resources.

“I hope someday Ginger will be able to read and write, but that will only happen if she has a good Individualized Education Plan in place,” Pate says. “It’s been traumatic dealing with the school department. A few months ago, when I found out the school wasn’t following Ginger’s IEP plan, I thought I was going to go crazy. I kept calling the superintendent’s office. The secretary took my number, but the superintendent never called me back. My husband and I were actually planning to camp out in the superintendent’s office until he agreed to talk to us. I want to see my daughter read someday, but if she doesn’t get what she needs, how will I know if she can? I want to give her every chance. I think she deserves that.”

 Children whose low literacy skills are never addressed grow up to experience joblessness, daily frustration, poverty and social isolation because of their abilities. Adult Basic Education programs exist to fill the gaps left by inefficient early education and lack of family support. By 1986, Tennessee had funded full-time, year-round ABE programs across the state, and individual attention from teachers trained in Adult Basic Education helped thousands gain better reading, writing and comprehension scores. Knox County’s program serves approximately 500 adults each year whose reading level is below the sixth grade level, according to Friends of Literacy, a non-profit agency that supports local literacy programs by providing funds, volunteers and other resources.

Tennessee is fortunate to have a successful Adult Basic Education system.

This year, the state was one of 19 qualified to receive a share of the $16.6 million available as an incentive award from the Office of Vocational and Adult Education, indicating that the program “exceeds performance levels for Title I and Title II of the Workforce Investment Act as well as for the Carl D. Perkins Vocational and Technical Education Act,” according to the Knox County Schools Web site.

Despite the 2007 federal appropriation of $571 million to ABE programs that is combined with local and state funding, only 3 percent of the 90 million adults in the country who are at risk because of low literacy skills (45 percent of the entire U.S. population) will be able to access these programs, according to the National Center for Educational Statistics. And Tennessee receives the lowest amount of federal funding in the Southeast, says Nancy Seely, Supervisor of Adult Basic Education in the Knox County Schools system, 

The Workforce Investment Act transferred authority for adult education programs like Seely’s from the Department of Education to the Department of Labor in 1999, leaving gaps in funding that could help programs meet the performance requirements. The state currently provides 65 percent of the salaries for teachers employed by the Department of Education, and local governments then supplement those funds, but Seely says the local money is not available to ABE teachers, leaving them with salaries that are up to 38 percent lower than their counterparts.

“If [we] could provide the going pay scale for anyone who wants to apply, [we]’d get the best [teachers] because it’s different teaching adults — they’re so appreciative of your help,” Seely says. “We would like to have equal parity with teachers in the Department of Education although we’ve made up the salary difference in the past four years with help from the Friends of Literacy — they’ve done an excellent job and they have the interest of low literacy adults at their heart. We are so thankful for them.”

The bill HB 1737/SB 1329, co-sponsored by Sen. Jamie Woodson (R-Knoxville), could provide the needed funds to adequately compensate ABE teachers, in addition to making possible technology upgrades and other improvements for the programs. The bill was heard in the House Ways and Means Committee May 16 and will take effect July 1 if passed.

Knox County is home to several other professional groups and grassroots organizations working to help solve the literacy problem, along with the ABE, the Adult Education Program at Pellissippi State Technical Community College and the Friends of Literacy.

The Center for Literacy Studies at UT, founded in 1988, is nationally recognized for its work. “We do so many things, it is hard to list them all. Basically, we teach the teachers. We do all the training for all the ABE programs in Tennessee and work with some early childhood and parenting programs focused on literacy. It’s important that teachers are trained in instructional practices based on national standards,” Stephens says. “We also provide services to the National Institute for Literacy. Because we’ve received a number of grants, we’ve been able to implement projects in workplace curriculum training.”

Photos by W. Ryan Collins / Knoxville Voice.

Another of the nation’s most innovative literacy programs is also located here. The Literacy Imperative is a faith-based program that promotes literacy in economically disadvantaged communities. Founded in 2001 by Mount Zion Church, it is currently developing a unique pilot project that could become a national model. Using the concept of a mall, the TLI will soon open its Center for Literacy and Enterprise in a vast space that will rent space to social service agencies to hold meetings or offer services to the community. The revenue collected from the rentals will help pay for the Center’s expenses, and there is also a coffee shop in the plans to provide a place where members of the community can enjoy each others’ company, sip a cappuccino and chat.

“Why not?” John Sibley, the TLI director, asks. “Why not have a place like that here? We’re all about building community.”

The TLI began with a donation of books to Mount Zion by a local businessman. The pastor of the church wasn’t initially sure what to do with them, but when he began thinking about literacy, a new outreach ministry was born, Sibley says. Thus far, TLI has distributed close to 40,000 books, comic books and movies to children, adults and seniors in the United States, Nicaragua and Tijuana.

“Churches have always known there was a problem in our community,” Sibley says. “The journey is full of champions who are fighting for the cause of literacy. We want to see [that] every child, every home and every community have books.”

Efforts to address literacy at its start through initiatives in education could be boosted by recent developments statewide. The single largest item in Knox County Mayor Mike Ragsdale’s 2007 proposed budget is the school system, with a proposed $344.2 million allocated for FY 2007. The proposed amount represents an increase of  $7 million more than last year. An additional $4 million will be allocated to the Great Schools Partnership, “a charitable trust formed to augment the work of the school system and to serve as a catalyst for educational innovation and research”, according to its Web site.  

Ragsdale also wants more money for education from the state, supporting Gov. Bredesen’s recently announced changes to the BEP formula. “We are doing great things in education,” Ragsdale says, “despite the fact that our children are being shortchanged in funding from the state. Our school children are being penalized by $42 million annually.  We need more of our own dollars returned from the state for education.”

In 2005-2006, Tennessee was ranked 41st in the Smartest States Award, but this year it moved up to 31st. Also, as a result of dramatic improvements in performance, the National Institute for Early Education Research this year ranked Tennessee among the top eight states in the nation for pre-K education. At a time when many states are cutting back on education, Tennessee is increasing spending.

On May 5, Gov. Phil Bredesen announced his $475 million proposal to overhaul education funding in Tennessee. BEP 2.0 by continuing to focus on and increase funding for school systems with a large number of at-risk students and those with expanding student populations. If approved, the proposal would fully fund the state’s portion of the costs associated with at-risk students, fully fund the state’s portion of student growth costs in the year they occur and increase the average teacher salary from $36,700 to $40,000. It would also shift some of the monies from the proposed cigarette tax revenue into educational funding and include expanded funding for English Language Learners.  The state’s funding for instructional salaries would increase from 65 percent to 75 percent.

Some Tennessee residents have complained about the disbursement of the state educational funds in Bredesen’s proposal. They say tying the allocation to property and sales taxes will leave many rural communities at a disadvantage.

But others are more optimistic and hope the changes will prevent students from falling through the cracks as Branch feels he did. After he’s finished his cigarette, Branch fiddles with the case he keeps his smokes in. He looks at his watch and frowns. “I feel like I was cheated,” he says. “All through school I was completely separated, separated from the other kids in every way. I still feel separated.”