Earning literacy
Andrea Pidliskey dropped out in the 12th grade. Her father’s drinking had reached a crisis point, and she felt totally on her own.
Martin Southern left school in junior high, entangled in gangs, crime and drugs to such a degree that he spent five years locked up before he reached adulthood.
Will Ake quit school in Oklahoma at 16, disinterested and unmotivated. “I went fishing and hunting for a while,” he says, “and then I helped my dad haying.”
They’re part of a population that may seem invisible to many in Spokane – people whose education levels fall below what most consider the minimum to work and live independently. But they’re also part of a subset of that population – those who are going back to school to earn high school credentials and maybe more.
“It actually feels good,” said Pidliskey, a 34-year-old mother of three elementary-age children. “It gives my kids a good example when I come home and tell them, ‘I’ve got homework just like you.’ “
About 15 percent of Spokane County residents lack a high school diploma or its equivalent, which is below the national figure of 23 percent, according to the 2000 Census. In Kootenai County, that rate is less than 10 percent.
In the last major national survey of adult literacy more than a decade ago, a quarter of Americans were classified at the lowest level of literacy – which means they struggle to total an entry on a deposit slip, find the time and place of a meeting on a form, or select a specific piece of information from a news story.
Those people exist at a greater and greater economic disadvantage. Dropouts face higher joblessness, earn about a third less than high school graduates and are more likely to wind up in prison. They’re looking for jobs in an economy where about 60 percent of employers say a high school diploma alone is not enough.
“There’s zero opportunity out there for people that don’t have an education,” said Southern, a 23-year-old Spokane man who dropped out of junior high in Yakima.
Goal in mind
Pidliskey would like to be a baker – working on wedding cakes, breads and “those fancy little pastries.”
But she needs to get her GED before she can enter a community college program that would give her the training she needs. If she makes it, she hopes she can find a job that will help her get off state assistance and set an example for her three children.
“I’ve told them to stay in high school and go to college, because I don’t want them to be like me,” she said.
She dropped out of school in New Jersey and held jobs in retail and warehouses before moving to Spokane seven years ago to be near her mother and other family. She’s worked sporadically since then and said she spent two years unsuccessfully looking for work before deciding to return to school.
Pidliskey started classes at Spokane’s Adult Education Center in September. The center is part of the Institute for Extended Learning, which operates adult education programs throughout Eastern Washington in conjunction with the Community Colleges of Spokane.
It has been 14 years since Pidliskey first attempted to earn her GED, and she’s getting close. She fell eight points below a passing grade on her last attempt. She reads at a junior high level and said she struggles with anxiety when she takes tests.
But she’s hopeful that the work she’s doing at the center will help her pass it this winter, and she can move on to training to become a baker.
For Pidliskey, like most high school dropouts or people with low literacy levels, the consequences of that decision have had long-term effects. She’s living on $642 a month, taking the bus, unable to pass the test for a driver’s license.
“That’s why I’m trying to get my GED,” she said. “So I can get off welfare. Have my own money. Have more money.”
Smarter than mommy
The problem of adult literacy in America has more to do with people like Pidliskey, with limited skills, than it does people who can’t read at all. The number of people with no prose skills at all, according to the National Adult Literacy Survey, is 4 to 6 percent.
But the number of Americans believed to have skills below those considered minimal by employers and academics is much greater. In 1992, the literacy survey ranked people on a five-level scale. A more recent survey was done in 2003, but results aren’t available.
The survey said half of Americans are in the bottom two levels – and that most experts consider Level III the minimum needed to fully function in society. While most people at the lowest levels are literate in the most simplistic sense, their skills are often basic and limited in a world of growing complexity.
Pat Lamb, the director of adult education for the Community Colleges of Spokane, has worked in adult literacy for 35 years. She said many of the students who come to the Adult Education Center for help have cobbled together strategies for getting along.
“Many of them learn to cope so well that we didn’t recognize it,” she said.
The IEL serves thousands of students a year, though it finds itself constrained in some years by funding levels. In 1999-2000, for example, the IEL had 4,455 students enrolled – figures that declined by about 1,000 over the next four years while state funding levels declined.
“It’s not that there were fewer people to be served,” said Anne Tucker, CCS spokeswoman.
Funding has risen in the last couple of years, and the IEL is on pace to exceed 4,000 students again this year, statistics compiled by the school show.
Alisha Rutz, 21, is one of the students at the Adult Education Center. She reads at a fifth-grade level and said she’s found herself struggling to fill out an application for a job at Wal-Mart and having difficulty understanding sermons at church that have a “high vocabulary.”
She has a daughter about to turn 2.
“She’s not going to school yet,” Rutz said, “but I don’t want her to say … ‘My mom doesn’t know nothing. I’m smarter than my mommy.’ “