Literacy in the U.S. A. One in Seven Can't Read
A new federal study has reported that an estimated 32 million adults in the USA — about one in seven — are saddled with very low literacy skills. Operationally, that means they find it challenging to read anything more than a children's picture book.
Some communities are making strides in handling the problem. For example, In Mississippi, the percentage of adults with low skills dropped 9 percentage points, from 25% to 16%. However, in several large states — California, New York, Florida and Nevada, for instance — the number of adults with low skills rose. And overall, the nation has not made a dent in its adult-literacy problem: From 1992 to 2003, it shows, the USA added about 23 million adults to its population; in that period, an estimated 3.6 million more joined the ranks of adults with low literacy skills.
The findings come from the National Assessment of Adult Literacy in a survey of more than 19,000 Americans ages 16 and older. The 2003 survey is a follow-up to a similar one in 1992.
The findings are published online at http://nces.ed.gov/naal/estimates/index.aspx
