Statistics: Literacy Performances in the United States

Literacy can be seen as the foundation for people to function in everyday life as we receive and give out information constantly. Depending on one’s literacy skills, it has a direct impact on his or her life. Within the National Adult Literacy Survey (NALS) there are multiple levels of literacy, one being the lowest and five being the highest. There are also three categories that people are tested on through the NALS: prose, document, and quantitative. Prose literacy is “the knowledge and skills to understand and use information from texts” (Kircsh 1993;pg.3). Examples of this include editorials, news articles, poems, and fiction. Document literacy is defined as “the knowledge and skills required locating and using information contained in materials” (3) such as job applications, payroll forms, transportation schedules, maps, and graphs. Quantitative literacy is the knowledge and skills required to apply arithmetic operations using numbers embedded in printed materials” (3). According to a nationwide study conducted by the NALS, Twenty one to twenty percent (or 40 to 44 million out of 191 million Americans approximately) demonstrated “the lowest levels of prose, document, and quantitative proficiencies” (pg.xiv). Following that statistic, the adults who scored in levels one and two were less likely to perform more complex tasks such as “higher level reading and problem solving skills”. A third of the group (61 million) scored a level three across all three categories The percentages of adults who scored on higher levels of literacy (levels four and five) were only eighteen to twenty one percent (34-40 million), which is considerably small.

Education and literacy are not one and the same. In this study conducted by the NALS, however, there seems to be a direct relationship with years of education and levels of literacy. Adults who had few years of education tended to score lower on the literacy scale than those who pursued some type of post secondary education.

There is a discrepancy of performance rates of people based on their ethnic group. With White adults, the average score when it comes to prose literacy was “higher than that of any of the other nine racial/ethnic groups” (Kirsch 1993;pg.32). Also, according to the data, all the other non-white ethnic groups seemed to outperform Black/African Americans. When it comes to African Americans, there is always a disproportional amount of illiteracy rates compared to that of other groups.

Kirsch, Irwin S., et al. Adult Literacy in America: a First Look at the Results of the National Adult Literacy Survey. Office of Educational Research and Improvement, U.S. Dept. of Education, 1993.