Millions of adults need help reading. Why the US needs to change course.

Shawntell Fitzgerald is convinced that with the right kind of help in school, she could have learned to read. Instead, she says, teachers in Milwaukee’s public schools moved her on from grade to grade, even filling in her answers on tests at times.

Now 49 years old, Ms. Fitzgerald is struggling to reclaim a lost education. Through sporadic tutoring sessions at Literacy Services of Wisconsin, a program for adults, she has made steady progress in learning how to sound out words. Ms. Fitzgerald has many goals to motivate her: helping her children and grandchildren with their homework, passing her driver’s license exam, reading the Bible on her own.

Limited reading skills are “stopping me from going where I want in church,” she told me, “and in life.”

Lower on her list of goals: finding a job. Ms. Fitzgerald works occasional gigs cleaning and in home health care when she needs the income.

Yet for the 1 in 5 adults in the United States who struggle with reading, help is not only scarce but also all too often rigidly focused on those who are seeking new jobs. Federal spending on adult education programs declined over the first two decades of the 2000s, according to ProLiteracy, which advocates for the programs.

At the same time, what funding exists is more narrowly limited than ever before to adult learners seeking employment. Black, Latino, and Indigenous adults are disproportionately affected by this mass disinvestment. They are more likely to receive an inadequate K-12 education, and therefore are more likely to need continued education to thrive in adulthood. Wisconsin, the state where I focused my reporting on adult learners, has the largest Black-white gap in student reading performance.

This paltry support for adults persists amidst a national reckoning in terms of how we teach reading. The vast majority of states, including Wisconsin, have passed legislation aimed at reemphasizing phonics, or the sound structure of language. School districts across the U.S. are investing in training teachers in what the science says about how children learn to read.

With nearly 50 million struggling adult readers, many of them victims of subpar schooling, it’s clear that we need reading reparations for grown-ups as much as we need reading reform in our elementary schools.

“It feels like I’m on my own”

Since President Lyndon Johnson authorized the nation’s first significant investment in adult education in 1964, the money has been tied to workforce development goals. That linkage has only become stronger over time. The Obama-era Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act of 2014, for instance, reinforced the idea of increasing participants’ income in the short term. That effectively prioritized advanced readers whose job and career goals can be addressed with comparative ease: those who need help preparing a résumé for a job application, for instance, or learning a new computer program.

A decade ago, nearly 20 adult literacy programs across Wisconsin received at least some funds through the federal Adult Education and Family Literacy Act. That number has dwindled to six, according to Wisconsin Literacy, a statewide adult and family literacy coalition.

Last year, lawmakers rejected a proposal that would have provided nearly $750,000 in state funding for adult literacy programs, leaving many of them operating on small, five-figure budgets and the generosity of volunteers.

Even for people who can afford to pay for tutoring, help can be hard to find. Milwaukee native Kermaine Petty, an accomplished software developer, realized a few years ago that he had gone through school, including the Milwaukee School of Engineering, with an undiagnosed learning disability. He only received minimal help learning to read.  

His prodigious memory and work ethic allowed him to advance despite his limited ability to sound out new words. “When I’m faced with a lot of text,” he explains, “my head still goes ‘huh?’”

Mr. Petty, 34, who is engaged, dreams of reading to his future children. So he decided in 2021 to seek out tutoring. For six months, he advanced with the help of two $60 sessions each week at the Dyslexia Achievement Center in a Milwaukee suburb.

But when his teacher retired, Mr. Petty struggled for over a year to find a tutor. “It feels like I’m on my own,” he told me in late 2022. “I’m disappointed over the lack of resources. When you reach out, no one responds.”

Needed: more funding, and a different goal

Adult literacy programs undoubtedly need more money: Enrollment in “basic education” programs for adults dropped by more than 50%, or more than a half-million students, between 2000 and 2020, partly because of funding challenges. But their role and purpose should also be reimagined.

We need to upend the long-standing narrative that adults mostly need reading skills for one overriding purpose: to work. “Even if we got 15 or 20 million more [dollars] in funding, I don’t see what difference that is going to make if it is solely devoted to getting higher-level learners into jobs,” says Erik Jacobson, a professor at Montclair State University whose research focuses on adult education.

Mr. Petty eventually connected last spring with a new tutor at the Dyslexia Achievement Center, and he continued working on his reading speed and skills. He had to step back in the summer because of job demands. But he hopes to resume tutoring soon. He will consider the labor successful when he doesn’t have to agonize over drafting emails, can enjoy a book for pleasure, and doesn’t live in dread of someday reading to his children. “My friends all fear becoming parents because of the cost of child care,” Mr. Petty says. “For me, it’s about reading to my kid.”

Ms. Fitzgerald, like Mr. Petty, has found that job and family demands often get in the way of focusing on her reading. That, and discouragement at the slow pace of progress. She takes some comfort, however, from serving as an ally at her church to parents of struggling readers.

Ms. Fitzgerald knows, after all, that with help for adults in short supply, this might be their only chance.  

Sarah Carr is an independent journalist and author of “Hope Against Hope” about New Orleans schools. Her reporting on literacy issues in Wisconsin has been supported by the Lubar Center for Public Policy Research and Civic Education at Marquette University Law School.