Literacy and Numeracy among Job Corps Students: Opportunities for Targeted Academic Infusion in CTE

High literacy and numeracy demands in career and technical education (CTE) compared to low skill levels among many students prompted calls for academic infusion into training curricula. Research on CTE academic curriculum integration implicitly assumes that students' reading and math skills are like those described by models of typical academic skill development. However, studies of adolescents and adults with low literacy suggest that such an assumption overlooks the specific, perhaps intensive, remedial learning needs of many students with low basic skills. As a step toward developing targeted academic instruction in CTE, the present study describes 202 Job Corps students’ word reading, vocabulary, comprehension, fluency, functional literacy, and functional numeracy skills. The sample demonstrated word reading skills that were more than a full standard deviation below norm, reading fluency that equated to about 5th grade level, 8th grade equivalent functional reading skills, and 6th grade equivalent functional numeracy skills. Such deficits pose significant challenges to instructors whose primary goals focus on learners’ acquisition of declarative and procedural curricular trade knowledge. Although many organizational elements (e.g., professional development, administrative support) will be important in addressing these challenges, we highlight diagnostic assessments and curricular interventions as two opportunities for doing so.