Adult Basic Skills and the Kansas Workforce

Abstract

The wide array of challenges facing business go beyond competitive and economic changes. Two-thirds of U.S. employers stated that they had difficulty in finding entry-level applicants with sufficient academic skills.12 This further compli­cates businesses' ability to remain competitive by instituting new processes or meeting customer product demands. While the impact of low basic skills is felt by society and business, it is difficult to assess the basic skills abilities of the Kansas population because there are no definitive skill measures. The evolution of the concept of adult basic skills has gone through several stages:

Traditional Definition of Literacy. Early approaches of measuring literacy seemed straight­forward; the early U.S. Census simply asked adults whether they could read or write. 13 Literacy has traditionally been treated as a fixed inventory of skills-reading and writing-that can be defined and measured by a single test. The fact that it bas been difficult to establish accurate, universal, and lasting literacy measures has been based on the reality that there is no specific point on a scale which separates the "literate" from the "illit­erate.

Functional Literacy. Functional literacy be­came widely used after WWII and referred to individuals who were unable to understand written instructions necessary to accomplish specific tasks; in other words, they did not have the reading skills to "function" in society. Because definitions of functional literacy depend on the requirements which are thought to be necessary to comprehend a task, the definition has become more complex along with societal demands.

Basic Workplace Skills. Traditional definitions of literacy do not have the scope to cover the skill requirements of the workplace. Therefore, seven distinct skill groups have been identified as those which are necessary to function effectively in the workplace: 1) the ability to understand new infor­mation and skills; 2) reading, writing, and compu­tation competence; 3) listening and oral communi­cation; 4) creative thinking and problem solving; 5) self-esteem, goal setting/motivation, and per­sonal development; 6) interpersonal skills and teamwork; and 7) organizational effectiveness and leadership.