ETS Study: Nation's Teachers Make the Grade in Literacy Survey
Princeton, N.J. (March 24, 1999) - A study on the literacy levels of America's teachers shows that they perform significantly higher than most adults and comparable to other college graduates and professionals.
How Teachers Compare: The Prose, Document, and Quantitative Skills of America's Teachers uses data from the National Adult Literacy Survey (NALS) and was co-authored by Barbara Bruschi, ETS senior research associate, and Richard Coley, education policy analyst, of the Policy Information Center at ETS.
"On the NALS five-level literacy scale, we found that, as a group, teachers score relatively high in prose, document and quantitative literacy," Coley says. "About half of teachers scored at Levels four and five (the two highest levels), compared to about 20 percent of adults nationwide. On average, teachers performed as well as other college-educated adults across all three literacy scales."
Other results from How Teachers Compare include:
* In prose literacy, teachers score higher, on average, than managers and administrators, real estate and food service managers, and designers. They perform at a similar level with lawyers, physicians, electrical engineers, and accountants and auditors. Only computer systems analysts score higher.
* In document literacy, teachers perform about the same as in prose literacy except that they also score lower than electrical engineers.
* In quantitative literacy, teachers are outperformed by electrical engineers, lawyers, accountants and auditors, and computer system analysts - all people who represent quantitative and analytical occupations. However, they perform comparably to other managers and professionals and outscore real estate and food service managers and designers.
* Teachers with graduate education had average scores across all three literacy scales that were basically the same as those of other adults with graduate education. Almost two-thirds of the NALS sample of teachers reported having either graduate studies or a graduate degree.
"The data present teachers as a labor market bargain, comparing favorably with other professionals in their literacy skills, yet earning less," Coley explains. "For example, teachers scoring at Level five on the prose scale earned considerably less than others at that level."
"According to a 1998 report by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a typical U.S. teacher spends more time in front of a classroom than teachers in other countries, but is paid less," Bruschi said.
"What we can take away from this analysis is the assurance that our teachers' literacy skills measure up well with those in other professions and those with similar levels of education," Coley concluded. "We need to abandon stereotypes that teachers are less able than others who go into professions commonly regarded as more prestigious. And we need to recognize that we pay teachers considerably less than other professionals with comparable literacy skills."
The NALS study was funded by the U.S. Department of Education and defined prose, document, and quantitative literacy as follows:
Prose - the knowledge and skills needed to understand and use information from texts that include editorials, news stories, poems, and fiction.
Document - the knowledge and skills required to locate and use information contained in everyday materials such as job applications, payroll forms, transportation schedules, tables, and graphs.
Quantitative - the knowledge and skills required to apply arithmetic operations, either alone or sequentially, using numbers embedded in printed materials; for example, balancing a checkbook, figuring out a tip, or completing an order form.
A news release on How Teachers Compare: The Prose, Document, and Quantitative Skills of America's Teachers, can be obtained at http://www.ets.org/aboutets/zine1a.html.
Copies of How Teachers Compare: The Prose, Document, and Quantitative Skills of America's Teachers can be downloaded from http://www.ets.org/research/pic, or ordered for $10.50 (prepaid) from the Policy Information Center, Mailstop 04-R, Educational Testing Service, Rosedale Road, Princeton, N.J. 08541-0001. The Center may also be reached by E-mail at [email protected].
ETS is the world's premier educational measurement institution and a leader in computer-based testing and educational research. The nonprofit organization develops and administers achievement, occupational, and admissions tests - such as the SAT for the College Board - for clients in education, government and business. ETS annually administers almost 11 million tests in the United States and 180 other countries. The address for ETS's Web site is www.ets.org.
RSS