A federal report on the skills of adults in American prisons led the InformED Report for November 18, 2016. It found that more than half of incarcerated adults lacked basic math skills, and it arrived as advocates were pressing for education to play a larger part in prison reform. The edition then went to Dallas, Pennsylvania, where teachers had gone on strike, and closed with two stories about science and math: a record number of international students at American colleges, and new research tracing the gender gap in math back to kindergarten.
In this edition
- More than half of incarcerated adults lacked basic numeracy skills, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.
- Advocates linked prison reform to education, noting the U.S. holds about 25 percent of the world’s prisoners.
- Teachers in Dallas, Pennsylvania, went on strike, and the state said the strike could last until December 15.
- U.S. colleges and employers hosted more than one million international students in a single year for the first time.
- A study in AERA Open found the math gap between girls and boys opening during kindergarten.
What prison inmates know, and what education could change
Politico’s Michael Stratford reported on a study released in mid-November by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), which looked at the education and work histories of prison inmates. It used the Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies, an international survey of adult literacy and numeracy. Larger shares of incarcerated adults scored at the lowest levels in both skills than adults in the general population, and on numeracy the average inmate scored below even unemployed adults. “More than half of incarcerated adults lack the basic numeracy skills necessary for pursuing higher education, securing a job, or participating fully in society,” said Peggy Carr, the center’s acting commissioner. About two-thirds of inmates said they had held a paid job in the year before prison, and about a quarter said their income had come from illegal sources.
Marketplace explained what “basic” meant. Adults below the survey’s Level 2 could not reliably complete tasks such as finding a phone number on a website or working out a truck driver’s pay for a given day from a list of trips. The share of inmates lacking basic literacy was also well above the national figure.
Writing in International Policy Digest, Katie McBeth set the numbers in a wider argument. Drawing on Ava DuVernay’s documentary 13th, she noted that the United States has about 5 percent of the world’s population and about 25 percent of its prisoners, and argued for a “prison-to-school pipeline.” She also warned that reform could leave barriers in place, from the loss of voting rights to restricted access to student financial aid. The NCES report described skills; it did not test any program. But for leaders in adult and alternative education, it was a clear measure of how much ground an education program inside a prison has to cover.
A teachers’ strike in Dallas, Pennsylvania
In The Citizens’ Voice, Michael P. Buffer reported that the Pennsylvania Department of Education had made a preliminary determination that the strike by Dallas School District teachers could run until December 15. All district schools were closed until further notice. If the strike went that long, make-up days would very likely begin the week of December 26, and the school year would run to about June 15, 2017. The Dallas Education Association could end the strike sooner, which would reduce the make-up days.
The Times Leader’s Eileen Godin covered a school board meeting on the day the strike began. More than 150 residents attended, and all 179 of the district’s teachers walked in together. Health care was a flashpoint. One resident asked whether teachers could contribute even one cent toward their premiums, and union president Mike Cherinka answered no. For superintendents and boards in states that allow teacher strikes, the story showed how the costs spread beyond the bargaining table: closed buildings, a school calendar pushed into the holidays and summer, and a community meeting where the dispute played out in public.
A million international students, many drawn by STEM
U.S. News’ Kelly Mae Ross reported on the 2016 Open Doors Report on International Educational Exchange, published by the Institute of International Education with the State Department’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs. For the first time, U.S. colleges, universities and employers hosted more than one million international students in a single academic year, 2015-16. That was a 7.1 percent increase over the year before, and nearly 85 percent growth over the past decade. The report counted students in degree programs, nondegree study such as intensive English, and practical training. U.S. News credited much of the growth to interest in science, technology, engineering and math.
The STEM gender gap starts in kindergarten
Fortune’s Valentina Zarya reported on a study published in AERA Open, the peer-reviewed journal of the American Educational Research Association. Joseph Robinson Cimpian of New York University and his colleagues compared two national kindergarten groups 12 years apart: the class of 1998-99, followed through third grade, and the class of 2010-11, followed through second. The analysis covered more than 5,000 students in the first group and more than 7,500 in the second. Girls and boys started school with similar math skills, but girls began to fall behind within the first year.
The finding cut against the common belief that the gap appears in middle school. Fortune’s headline pointed at kindergarten teachers, but the central finding reported was about timing: when the gap opens, measured across two large national groups of children. For elementary principals, it still pointed to the early grades: how math is taught and talked about in kindergarten, and whether girls and boys get the same encouragement from the start.
Sources
- Michael Stratford, “Sobering reality of prison inmate education,” Politico, November 2016.
- Marketplace Staff, “Chart of the day: Education in prison,” Marketplace, November 2016.
- Katie McBeth, “Education, Recidivism, and Prison Reform: Creating the Prison-to-School Pipeline,” International Policy Digest, October 25, 2016.
- Michael P. Buffer, “Dallas teachers’ strike could last a month,” The Citizens’ Voice, November 2016.
- Eileen Godin, “Dallas School Board meeting gets heated,” Times Leader, November 14, 2016.
- Kelly Mae Ross, “Interest in STEM Fuels Growth in Number of International Students in U.S.,” U.S. News & World Report, November 2016.
- Valentina Zarya, “Who’s to Blame for the Gender Gap in STEM? Start With Kindergarten Teachers,” Fortune, October 27, 2016.
About the InformED Report
The InformED Report is edCircuit’s short news program on education. This edition first ran on November 18, 2016. In 2026, edCircuit re-presented it with a new anchor and this full written account. Both report the stories as they stood on that date and link the original reporting, so readers can see exactly where each claim came from.
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