Literacy Failure in College Athletic Programs

Reading Development and Early Literacy Formation

According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, the word "illiterate" is defined as "not knowing how to read or write." As much as 23 percent of the adult American population is functionally illiterate, lacking basic skills beyond a fourth-grade level. This widespread issue affects all communities and is not limited to race, region, or socioeconomic background. Adult illiteracy costs society an estimated $240 billion each year in lost industrial productivity, unrealized tax revenues, welfare, crime, poverty, and related social ills. American businesses alone lose more than $60 billion in lost productivity due to employees' lack of basic skills. Due to illiteracy, the affected population has also been found to be less healthy due to the inability to read medical documentation or health literature. The current literacy rate is no better than it was 10 years ago. According to the National Assessment of Adult Literacy, 14 percent of adult Americans demonstrated a "below basic" literacy level in 2003, and 29 percent exhibited a "basic" reading level. In addition, 11 million adults are non-literate in English; 7 million who could not answer simple test questions, and 4 million who face language barriers.

In order to understand illiteracy, it is important to examine how children are educated in the United States and identify where the breakdown occurs in the learning structure. To understand how these children progress through each level of school and finally into the college level with such an inability to read and comprehend is critical. The next question that must be asked is why colleges are allowing students who are unable to read into their collegiate programs and how they are able to assist them in their academic careers. Finally, what is the future impact that these uneducated student-athletes are having on society?

A child first hears words and sounds while in the mother's womb, listening to sounds and patterns, but children must be explicitly taught how to read. The process of learning to read is an ongoing one that starts at a very young age, building each year as a child ages. Because a baby's brain develops so rapidly, the first year of life is critical. Research shows that babies who are read to in the first nine months of their lives are better prepared for school than babies who had little interaction with books. The ability to read is not something that is learned by itself; it must be taught by exposing a child to print material as well as being read to aloud. Children learn to use symbols, combining their oral language, pictures, print, and play into a coherent mixed medium. From their initial experiences and interactions with adults, children begin to read words, processing letter-sound relations and acquiring substantial knowledge of the alphabetic system.

At approximately 4 to 5 years of age, children begin to learn their letters. This is when a child becomes aware that speech is made up of individual sounds and that writing and reading are tied together. This is a critical part of the learning process; however, since writing is not actual speech, this information alone is not enough for a child to actually read. A child must understand that the marks or letters on a page correlate with the sounds being made. They must also identify which sounds in the language go with which letters. Memorizing letters and sounds is more difficult than memorizing the names of concrete objects such as fruits, which can be seen and pictured. For example, by pointing to an apple and saying "apple," it helps the child connect the word to the fruit. But sounds cannot be pictured, so memorizing which sounds go with each letter is a more abstract process. The best that can be done is to use a picture of an apple to illustrate the sound of "A." This is also why children can recognize many words in their surroundings—for instance, when a child sees the famous arches and applies that knowledge to saying "McDonald's."

While practice makes perfect, some children only need to view a word one time before being able to recognize it the next time they see it, while other children may need as many as 20 or more exposures, with the average child needing to be exposed to the word between four and 14 times. This exposure allows children to learn to read more quickly and easily, becoming more interested in what they are reading, maintaining focus, and developing desire to move on to the next level in the reading process.

The next step is for a child to start developing independent reading skills, usually around second grade. This can continue through fifth grade, though some children can complete this reading stage as early as third grade. According to the Institute of Reading Development, the central focus during this stage is to engage in extensive reading in books at the appropriate level of difficulty, progressing from Easy Readers to chapter books, which are considerably longer and lack the controlled vocabulary and simple sentences of Easy Readers. Reading practice and skill development at this stage focus primarily on fluency development. Students learn to decode long words—words of three syllables or more—as the percentage of these words jumps from 1–3 percent in Easy Readers to around 5–8 percent in children's novels. Students also practice oral reading to develop oral reading fluency. The phrasing, automaticity, and focus on meaning in oral reading then transfer to the silent reading process.

Even though a child may be fluent at this stage, it does not mean that they are fluent at all levels of reading; they are mostly limited to what they have practiced and their comprehension of the subject matter. In order to move forward, a child must be able to absorb what they are reading. When given increasingly difficult material, children learn to process different levels of fluency and comprehension required to support identification and absorption. This achievement is the core of the reading process and is the capstone of all early stages and sub-stages of reading development. It is also the foundation of all subsequent reading development.

Once entering middle school and continuing through high school, college, and into adulthood, children go through physical, emotional, and cognitive changes, showing critical consciousness—the ability to take a look at one's own experience and reflect on it, as well as the ability to think abstractly and analytically. What allows a student to develop their reading to the point where they can apply critical dimensions and their own experiences that are already present as a result of developing their reading ability. By the time a child enters the high school and college levels, a student with a strong reading background who reads with solid levels of fluency and comprehension will experience a relatively automatic and accurate flow of understanding while reading, whether reading a novel or a textbook.

Social Promotion and Educational Advancement

The next step in understanding illiteracy is to look at why children are promoted from one grade to the next without having the skills needed to read at their current grade level. One reason for this is "social promotion," which is the practice of promoting students to the next grade level even when they have not learned the required material needed to move forward. Considerations about the socialization of students—how they will learn to interact productively with peers and navigate social situations and expectations—also influence promotion decisions, particularly during the elementary grades. For example, educators may not want to damage a student's self-esteem or put him or her at greater risk of suffering from the social, emotional, behavioral, and psychological problems often associated with grade retention. In these cases, promoting students even though they did not meet academic expectations is perceived to be in the best interests of the student. In a word, social promotion may result from a wide variety of educational, cultural, and socioeconomic causes.

However, in the long term, these children are subjected to social isolation. Because they have a low level of literacy, as adults these individuals tend to bypass elections, are unwilling to assert themselves as consumers if their rights are violated, or even question procedures regarding their own children's education, thus continuing the cycle. Breaking this pattern requires addressing the root causes of social promotion at the systemic level.

College Athletics and Literacy Standards

After examining the steps in the educational literacy process and understanding how children progress from one grade to the next—and why children are promoted without being able to read—we must look at the college level, the importance of sports to a university's status, and how a student being passed through the system affects society.

Sportswriter and novelist Frank Deford states: "But the worst scandal is almost never mentioned; the academic fraud wherein the student-athletes, so-called, are admitted without even remotely adequate credentials and then aren't educated so much as they are just kept eligible. The reason this shameful practice seldom surfaces is because all the major conference schools are guilty and everybody—presidents, trustees, coaches, media, fans—everybody accepts the corruption."

In recent news, illiteracy in the college sector has been brought to light primarily due to a study completed by graduate student and learning specialist Mary Willingham from a major research university. As a graduate student, Willingham researched the reading levels of 183 university athletes who played football or basketball from 2004 to 2012. She found that 60 percent read between fourth- and eighth-grade levels. Between 8 percent and 10 percent read below a third-grade level. Universities have also been accused of scandals in recent years involving academic fraud. Several other big-name colleges have been implicated in learning scandals in the past as well.

NCAA sports are a big business for winning programs, with millions of dollars at stake each year. For example, in 2012, the University of Louisville earned a profit of $26.9 million from its men's basketball program, according to figures that schools have to file with the Department of Education. It is no wonder that colleges want to recruit the best that they can, any way that they can, and do what they can to retain their top talent. College sports are such a big business that the larger universities are overlooking the educational aspect that these young adults are being denied. Lower test-score standards, combined with high-school grade inflation, have led to greater numbers of athletes who qualify with very low test scores. Students possess inadequate skills to manage college academics.

In order to garner a better idea of the reading levels of students and student-athletes at public universities, CNN requested SAT and ACT entrance scores from schools where open records laws apply. Where scores were not available, results from adult reading placement tests used after student admission were utilized if available. Out of 40 universities where data was requested, only 21 complied with the request, with each school providing varying data. According to several academic experts, the threshold for being college literate is a score of 400 on the SAT critical reading or writing test. On the ACT, that threshold is 16.

Based on the average compiled data from the CNN survey, the average SAT reading score for incoming freshmen at all schools combined was 666.69 versus a score of 547.35 for student-athletes. The average ACT reading score for incoming freshmen at all schools combined was 25.18 versus a score of 18.72 for student-athletes. For both tests, 13 percent of all student-athletes scored below average versus only 8 percent for incoming freshmen. While the data for the incoming student-athletes are above the recommended threshold, it is still significantly below the average for the incoming freshman class. A total of 593 student-athletes were allowed to enter these universities under a "special admission" clause.

Robert Stacey, College of Arts and Sciences Dean at the University of Washington, explained the challenge: "We know how to close the achievement gap. It's just very expensive. I believe we're investing in that. A student who scored a 380 on his or her critical reading is going to face tremendous challenges, won't be able to compete the first year with a student who has a 650 or 700, but with intensive tutoring—and I'm not talking about cheating, I'm talking about tutoring—by the time they get to be juniors they're competing, but it's a very expensive process. It takes intensive work."

Support Systems and Academic Eligibility

In order to remain academically eligible in Division I schools, student-athletes must achieve 90 percent of the institution's minimum overall grade-point average necessary to graduate (for example, 1.8) by the beginning of year two, 95 percent of the minimum GPA (1.9) by year three, and 100 percent (2.0) by year four. Several universities polled in the recent CNN survey revealed that they provide extensive support for their student-athletes, including tutoring, advisement, remediation, and summer sessions aimed at helping students get up to speed before a full schedule during the fall semester. The aim is to get an athlete who is disinterested in learning focused and excited about the process as well as the sport that they are playing. According to the NCAA and their Eligibility Center, "For every cautionary tale of a kid who flunked out, there are probably 10 tales of an athlete who converted his chance into a college degree and a better life."

For some people, the definition of success is having a healthy family, others fame and fortune, and still others a college education. What happens to the student-athletes who are uneducated, passed through school, and do not make it as a professional either due to not being drafted or injury? What happens when their career is over due to age? Children are being sent into college unprepared for not only their current lives but also their future. However, not every athlete is uneducated, nor do they want to be. For example, Myron Rolle from Florida State University, a Rhodes Scholar, is quoted as saying, "I wanted to look for a school that I enjoyed watching play football first. But I wanted the school to accept all my AP credits. Also, do they have a medical school on campus?" Another Florida State University graduate, Minnesota Vikings quarterback Christian Ponder, finished college armed with both baccalaureate and master's degrees.

As most young athletes will not make it onto a college sports team, even fewer will have the opportunity to play for a professional team, with only the very top performers advancing to that level. Even if an athlete does make it to the next level, the average career span for a professional football player is 3.5 years. While many professional athletes attended college, many did not graduate. Having a degree means that if an athlete does not turn pro or if their career results in injury, there is still a valuable skill set for them to fall back on.

According to NCAA reports, the graduation rate (given six years to complete the degree) for football players is 16 percent below the college average, and the rate for men's basketball players is 25 percent below. What are colleges doing to change this problem? Many students, when questioned, identified themselves as an athlete-student more than a student-athlete. This standpoint comes from the fans as well as the schools that these athletes attend. While there are no across-the-board solutions to this problem, suggestions have been made for having student-athletes enter their chosen school and focus on an Associate's rather than a Bachelor's degree, allow student-athletes to enter a professional draft only if they graduate successfully from college, or even paying student-athletes for their playing time. There are many options to be discussed; however, whatever is decided should be an across-the-board, no exceptions decision, focusing mainly on the student-athlete and their success as a student first and foremost.