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Policy Framework
Today’s labor market puts a high premium on literacy skills, even in jobs that once required little education or training. Not being able to read or write can stand in the way of finding and keeping a job or earning a living wage. Literacy can also affect one’s ability to be an educated consumer, an informed voter, and a helpful parent or grandparent. As leading providers of literacy programs, public libraries strive to help adult students — many of whom are also juggling full-time jobs and responsibilities for children — participate in programs long enough to make a large and lasting difference in their skills.
Launched in 1996 by the Wallace Foundation, the Literacy in Libraries Across America (LILAA) initiative helped libraries improve their adult literacy programs, with a focus on finding ways to increase learner persistence. In the LILAA persistence study, MDRC and the National Center for the Study of Adult Learning and Literacy (NCSALL) at Harvard University teamed up to examine the implementation and effectiveness of strategies used in five libraries around the country to increase persistence.
Agenda, Scope, and Goals
A major component of library literacy programs is usually one-on-one tutoring with volunteer mentors, but many programs also have computer labs or offer classroom instruction. The LILAA initiative provided programs with resources for the following activities, designed to raise persistence among adult learners: more information exchange between staff and adult learners about program offerings and learners’ needs and goals, better tracking of participation and engagement, more varied and more extensive support services (such as child care and transportation assistance), improved instruction, technology upgrades, and better training of staff and tutors.
Begun as part of the LILAA initiative in 1999, the persistence study aims to:
- Define persistence more clearly and develop better tools for measuring it
- Deepen knowledge about what supports and what undermines persistence
- Describe and assess programmatic approaches to increasing persistence
- Examine how literacy achievement is linked to persistence in programs
Design, Sites, and Data Sources
The persistence study followed nine library literacy programs in five libraries over a four-year period, collecting extensive data on services, participation, and learner engagement. Implementation research described the local context and specific innovations introduced to increase persistence. By tracking changes in persistence over time, while controlling for variation in learner characteristics, the study sought to understand the effects of the programmatic strategies on persistence. The data sources include demographic and program data and ethnographic case studies of students.
The persistence study focused on library literacy programs in five library systems:
- Greensboro Public Library in North Carolina
- New York Public Library in Manhattan
- Oakland Public Library in California
- Queens Borough Library in New York City
- Redwood City Public Library in California
The overall project and its quantitative aspects were managed by MDRC, while NCSALL had responsibility for the qualitative aspects.
Findings
The findings on the LILAA persistence study are available in the 2005 report, One Day I Will Make It by Kristen E. Porter, Sondra Cuban, and John P. Cummings.
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