ORONO – Back when he was a school superintendent in rural Pennsylvania, before he became a U.S. congressman, William F. Goodling was talking to an early childhood specialist one day.

Goodling, who served 13 terms in the U.S. House of Representatives before retiring last year, was trying to figure out how to improve the reading skills of his primary school pupils.

The early childhood specialist told him that if the district could teach parents their crucial role in laying the foundations for reading success, both parent and child literacy would improve, Goodling recalled.

That’s when he saw that adult literacy was “the missing link” in the chain of events needed to raise children’s reading skills. He realized that too often the children whose parents and grandparents didn’t graduate from high school were the ones with reading problems, Goodling told a group of educators and administrators from Maine’s adult education network at the University of Maine on Wednesday.

The persistent occurrence of illiteracy cannot be cured “unless you deal with the entire family,” Goodling said as keynote speaker at the fifth annual Maine Adult Education Summer Institute. “There is no substitute for parents being children’s first and most important teachers.”

A solid foundation for reading must be laid even before children arrive in school, he said. If by the end of first grade children are not reading at grade level, it is likely that by the end of the third grade they won’t be either, especially if they come from inner city or isolated rural schools.

“By the end of first grade is when we really lose them,” he said. And if by the end of third grade they are not reading at grade level “you can test them till the cows come home” but they won’t get any better.

Goodling, former chairman of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, has been a longtime advocate of adult and family literacy programs. He is author of the 1988 act that created Even Start.

Today, nationwide, more than 900 Even Start programs serve between 800,000 and 1 million parents and children younger than age 7. One of the program’s central goals is “to break the cycle of limited literacy, underemployment, and high mobility of participating families by building literacy skills in both parents and children.”

Citing figures that are 10 years old, the latest available, Goodling said between 40 million and 44 million American adults read only at the most basic level.

“There’s no way they can get a piece of the American dream,” he said.

Higher levels of literacy are especially needed “so the country can succeed in a very competitive 21st century,” he said.

In the Maine adult education system, there are 126 programs covering almost every community. Last year, these programs enrolled more than 100,000 adults, plus 440 families participated in family literacy programs. Spending on adult education in Maine totaled roughly $11.5 million last year, with 25 percent coming from the state and 38 percent from local taxpayers.

Approximately 140 of the 250 participants at the summer institute, which was hosted by the Center for Adult Learning and Literacy, part of UM’s College of Education, attended Goodling’s keynote address.

He urged the participants to lobby the state’s congressional delegation for more money for their Even Start and other family literacy programs. The federal government provides $250 million for Even Start nationwide, and President Bush has proposed raising that to $400 million, he said.

“I would call on you to get out there and do your lobbying and get them in to see your programs,” Goodling said. The most effective lobbyists are those who have successfully completed an adult education program, who have been able to get a job because of it, and who can show members of Congress that they are able to read to their own children.