Opinion ID: 577732
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Marginal Education

Text: 15 The social security regulations define marginal education as ability in reasoning, arithmetic, and language skills which are needed to do simple, unskilled types of jobs, and generally consider formal education of six grades or less to be marginal. 20 C.F.R. § 404.1564(b)(2) (1991). The ALJ concluded that because Walston attended eight grades of formal schooling, his education was limited rather than marginal. See id., § 404.1564(b)(3) (noting that seven to eleven grades of formal schooling generally constitutes limited education). 16 The regulations recognize, however, that the grade level completed in school may not represent a claimant's actual educational abilities. See id., § 404.1564(b). A claimant's formal education is conclusive proof of his educational abilities under the regulations only if no other evidence is presented to contradict it. See id. 17 The record contains substantial evidence which contradicts the ALJ's finding that Walston's education was limited rather than marginal. While Walston attended a total of eight grades of school, only five of them were completed at a traditional elementary school. When Walston's hearing loss was discovered at the age of eleven, he transferred to the ungraded Davenport Oral Deaf School. At age sixteen, he dropped out of the eighth grade because he was older than the other students and believed he should be working. 18 Intelligence tests administered to Walston in February 1988 by Jo Ann C. Milani, a psychologist, indicated that although Walston's math skills were at the eighth-grade level, his reading and spelling skills were at or below the third-grade level. Similarly, although Walston achieved a full-scale IQ score of 92, his score on the vocabulary subtest, which Milani described as the only true test of real intelligence, placed him in the mentally retarded range. Milani concluded that Walston had a developmental disorder involving his reading, writing, and expressive language skills, possibly related to his fifty-percent hearing loss. 19 Walston testified that he had trouble recognizing, spelling, and pronouncing words. He stated that he frequently had to call his wife from his job at the warehouse to ask how to spell words required for recording the quantities of paper he worked with each day. He stated that his wife managed their checking account and that he could not write a check by himself, but that he could add, subtract, and divide. 20 The foregoing evidence indicates that the grade level Walston attained in school does not accurately represent his skill level. While his math skills are commensurate with an eighth-grade education, he reads at or below the third-grade level and needs help filling in a check and spelling simple words. Substantial evidence therefore does not support the ALJ's conclusion that Walston has more than a marginal education.