Study: 11M U.S. Adults Can't Read English

By BEN FELLER, AP Education Writer
Thu Dec 15, 6:10 PM ET



WASHINGTON - About one in 20 adults in the U.S. 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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