Education Week - September 27, 2017 - 11

continued to improve their literacy skills, by about 3 points
on average, over the 2003-2011 study period.
By contrast, the greatest skill loss seemed to be among
young professionals who had earned associate or bachelor's degrees, Murray said.
Murray's studies do not follow a single cohort over time,
but Stephen Reder, a professor of adult and digital literacy
at Portland State University in Oregon, said the results are
similar to his own previous longitudinal studies of adults.
"As I look cross-nationally in education systems, one
of the things that strikes me about the U.S. is how little
public lifelong-learning policy we have. It's very piecemeal, left up to the private sector," Reder said. "K-12 is
very, very important, but once people leave K-12 or K-16,
they are in the workplace for 40 or 50 years, and we don't
have systematic policies and programs to support lifelong
learning."

PRIOR RESEARCH HAS SHOWN TECHNOLOGY BOOSTS THE
average skill level of a worker doing a job, because it automates any task that is repeatable, leaving people responsible for the tasks that require higher skills, according to
Anthony Carnevale, a research professor and the director
of the Georgetown University Center on Education and the
Workforce, who was not associated with the studies.
"Maybe what you've got here is ... there's a section of
the labor force that has been relegated to lower-skilled
jobs," Carnevale said. "The machinist who lost the machinist job is now probably not working in the same place
and may be in a job where the skill level is not growing."
For example, Murray pointed to manufacturing workers
in West Virginia. In the past 15 years, the average worker
has seen his wages increase only $394 during that time, in
part because of rising automation of lower- and mediumskilled jobs. But those at the highest skill level have had
their wages increase by $8,825. "Those people at the top,
because of automation, are supposed to be way more productive, because they have higher skills-but they are also
in very short supply," Murray said.
Murray is working with schools in the city of Ontario,
Canada, to encourage teaching students more critical

thinking and problem-solving skills in reading, while
Reder has been helping a coalition of 63 communities in
California, Louisiana, Minnesota, New York, and Texas that
are building a database of free, self-paced, online courses
to improve digital and higher literacy skills for homeless,
immigrant, and other vulnerable adults.
"The change on the job is much faster than it was before,
much more fluid," Carnevale said. "The learning requirements increase and don't ever stop. If they do stop, you are
in the wrong occupation and are going to be in trouble."
The gap between the number of highly skilled workers
and the numbers of jobs requiring them has kept wages
high, he said, but it also makes it more likely that employers will continue pushing to automate or simplify any
part of a job that can be, creating even less opportunity for
workers to build skills over time.
Murray and his colleagues found that workers' skill loss
or gain was associated with how often they planned their
own activities, influenced people, engaged in complex,
nonroutine problem-solving, and performed other mentally demanding tasks. Mentally demanding jobs generally required literacy skills at the highest or second highest
levels measured by PIAAC, including the ability to apply
reading skills, think critically, and solve complex problems.
"Some firms are [adding training], mostly out of desperation because they are afraid they will go out of business due to competition," Murray said. "But most are still
chugging along merrily; they didn't have to think about
training much before, and now that the game has changed,
most of them don't even have a way of thinking about it."
In the United States alone, Carnevale estimates that
adult workers and their employers now spend $300 billion on informal training, but K-12 education, even career
education, is generally not aligned to it.
"We talk about career pathways a lot in K-12, but they
are generally thought of as single paths, single careers, and
that doesn't meet the needs of a lot of workers now," said
Reder, who was not part of Murray's study. "When people
go to college, they don't necessarily know where they are
going to be working five years after college, much less 25
years after they get out." n

EDUCATION AS OF 2011

Less than high school

High school

Bachelor's

-3

3
Post graduate

HOW TO
MAINTAIN YOUR
SKILLS AFTER
ENTERING THE
WORKFORCE
Researchers linked
some on-the-job tasks
to better maintenance
of literacy skills:
n   Learning

at work

new skills

n   Sharing

work-related
information

n   Teaching

people

n   Planning

one's
own activities

n   Influencing

people

n   Solving

complex
problems

LITERACY SCORE
DIFFERENCES
BY EDUCATION
Change in average
literacy score between
the 2003 ALL and the
2011 PIAAC for adults with
differing levels of education

-9
-14

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Education Week - September 27, 2017

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