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Study: 11m US adults can't read English
(AP)
Updated: 2005-12-16 09:03
About one in 20 adults in the US is not literate in English, meaning 11
million people lack the skills to handle many everyday tasks, a federal study
shows.
From 1992 to 2003, adults made no progress in their ability to read sentences
and paragraphs or understand other printed material such as bus schedules or
prescription labels.
The adult population did make gains in handling tasks that involve math, such
as calculating numbers on tax forms or bank statements. But even in that area,
the typical adult showed only enough skills to perform simple, daily activities.
Perhaps most sobering was that adult literacy dropped or was flat across
every level of education, from people with graduate degrees to those who dropped
out of high school.
So even as more people get a formal education, the literacy rate is not
rising. Federal officials say this trend is puzzling and worthy of research.
Adults with ability to perform challenging and complex reading tasks made an
average yearly salary of $50,700 in 2003. That is $28,000 more than those who
lacked basic skills.
The adults deemed illiterate in English include people who may be fluent in
Spanish or another language but cannot comprehend English text at its most
simple level.
"Eleven million people is an awful large number of folks who are not literate
in English, and therefore are prevented access to what America offers," said
Russ Whitehurst, director of the Institute of Education Sciences at the
Education Department.
Some 30 million adults have "below basic" skills in prose. Their ability is
so limited that they may not be able to make sense of a simple pamphlet, for
example.
By comparison, 95 million adults, or 44 percent of the population, have
intermediate prose skills, meaning they can do moderately challenging
activities. An example would be consulting a reference book to determine which
foods contain a certain vitamin.
The National Assessment of Adult Literacy is considered the best measure of
how adults handle everything from completing job applications to computing tips.
Black adults made gains on each type of task tested. White adults made no
significant changes except when it came to computing numbers, where they got
better.
Hispanics showed sharp declines in their ability to handle prose and
documents. The background of U.S. adults has changed since 1992, when the test
was last given; fewer people have spoken English before they started school.
"We can no longer afford to ignore the unique needs this population has
demonstrated for years," said Jose Velazquez, director of the Hispanic Family
Learning Institute at the National Center for Family Literacy.
Overall, the study represents a population of 222 million adults. The results
are based on a sample of more than 19,000 adults, age 16 or older, living in
homes, college housing or prisons.
Education Secretary Margaret Spellings pledged to coordinate adult education
programs across the government. She also promoted the Bush administration's
campaign to increase testing and specialized reading help in high school.
"One adult unable to read is one too many in America," Spellings said.
Millions of adults with limited reading skills have enrolled in literacy
programs at high schools, libraries, workplaces and community colleges.
Advocates of those programs said the new scores prove that a greater investment
in adult literacy and research is essential.
"It's really hard to have a well educated and highly intellectual population
of children if they go home to parents who do not have adequate reading skills,"
said Dale Lipschultz, president of the National Coalition for Literacy, a broad
range of education groups.
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