Literacy in the United States

In early U.S. colonial history, teaching children to read was the responsibility of the parents for the purpose of reading the Bible but in the mid 1600s, Massachusetts law of 1642 and Connecticut law of 1650 required that not only children but also servants and apprentices were required to learn how to read.[7] During the industrial revolution, many nursery schools, preschools and kindergartens were established to formally teach children.[7] Throughout the 20th century, there was an increase in federal acts and models to ensure that children were developing their literacy skills and receiving education.[7] Starting in the 2000s, there has been an increase of immigrants in cities, the majority of whose children speak languages other than English and who thus fall behind their peers in reading.[8] Elementary school literacy has been the focus of educational reform since that time.

The National Bureau of Economic Research published a data set with an overview of the history of education in the United States until the 20th and 21st centuries. According to the bureau, "Formal education, especially basic literacy, is essential for a well-functioning democracy, and enhances citizenship and community."[5]

Nineteenth-century literacy rates in the United States were relatively high, despite the country's decentralized educational system.[5] There has been a notable increase in American citizens' educational attainment since then, but studies have also indicated a decline in reading performance which began during the 1970s.[9] Although the U.S. Adult Education and Literacy System (AELS) and legislation such as the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964 had highlighted education as an issue of national importance,[10] the push for high levels of mass literacy has been a recent development; expectations of literacy have sharply increased over past decades.[11] Contemporary standards for literacy have become more difficult to meet compared with historical criteria, which were applied only to the elite. Due to the proliferation (and increased accessibility) of public education, the expectation of mass literacy has been applied to the entire U.S. population.

Literacy has particular importance in adulthood, since the changing dynamics of the American job market demand greater skills and knowledge of entry-level workers. In the 2003 National Assessment of Adult Literacy, young adults without a post-secondary education experienced difficulty obtaining career positions. A multi-variable analysis indicated that low and below-basic literacy rates were characteristic of individuals without higher education,[12] and improving and sustaining mass literacy at earlier stages of education has become a focus of American leaders and policymakers.

Since A Nation at Risk was published in 1983, interest in the performance of American students relative to other youth populations worldwide has been great. It has been observed that adolescents undergo a critical transition during their grade-school years which prepares them to learn and apply knowledge to their actions and behavior in the outside world.[13] As the job market has become more demanding, the rigor of educational institutions has increased to prepare students for the more-complex tasks which will be expected of them.[14] Addressing sub-par reading performance and low youth literacy rates is important to achieve high levels of mass literacy because the issue of sub-par academic performance is compounded. Students who struggle at an early age continue to struggle throughout their school years because they do not have the same foundation of understanding and breadth of knowledge to build upon as their peers; this often translates to below-average, poor literacy levels in later grades and into adulthood.[15]

Adult and adolescent literacy levels are under greater scrutiny in the U.S., with a number of reports and studies published annually to monitor the nation's status. Initiatives to improve literacy rates have taken the form of government provisions and external funding, which have been driving forces behind national education reform from primary school to higher education.[5]

The simplest definition of literacy in a nation is the percent of people age 15 or older who can read and write, which is used to rank nations. More-complex definitions, involving the kind of reading needed for occupations or tasks in daily life, are termed functional literacy, prose literacy, document literacy and quantitative literacy. These more-complex definitions of literacy are useful to educators, and are used by the Department of Education.

In a 2003 study of adults, the National Center for Education Statistics (part of the Education Department) measured functional literacy.[3] The center measured three types of functional literacy: prose literacy, document literacy, and quantitative literacy. Prose literacy consists of the "knowledge and skills needed to perform prose tasks", and includes the ability to read news articles and brochures.[3] Document literacy consists of the "knowledge and skills needed to perform document tasks", which include job applications, payroll forms and maps.[3] Similarly, quantitative literacy is the "knowledge and skills required to perform quantitative tasks"; those tasks include balancing a checkbook and filling out an order form.[3]

The governments of other countries may label individuals who can read a few thousand simple words which they learned by sight in the first four grades in school as literate. UNESCO has collected the definitions used by nations in their tables of literacy in its General Metadata on National Literacy Data table; variations depend on whether childhood literacy (age six) or adult literacy was measured. The list distinguishes between a respondent's self-reported literacy and demonstrated ability to read.[16]

Other sources may term individuals functionally illiterate if they are unable to read basic sources of written information, such as warning labels and driving directions. According to The World Factbook from the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), "There are no universal definitions and standards of literacy" and its statistics are based on the most common definition: "the ability to read and write at a specified age." "Detailing the standards that individual countries use to assess the ability to read and write is beyond the scope of the Factbook. Information on literacy, while not a perfect measure of educational results, is probably the most easily available and valid for international comparisons."[17]

The World Factbook reports that the U.S. has a literacy rate of 99 percent, and is number 28 of the 214 nations included. Using its definition, literacy refers to the percentage of people age 15 or older who can read and write.[18][17]

NCES statistics reported that 19 percent of adults in the U.S. cannot read a newspaper or complete a job application, and "the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development found that 50 percent of U.S. adults cannot read a book written at an eighth-grade level."[6] Failure to complete secondary school is blamed for some problems with literacy, and programs directly addressing literacy have increased.[6] According to worldatlas.com, the U.S. has a literacy rate of 86 percent and is number 125 on a list of 197 countries.[19] Although the website describes the education systems of nations which have reached near-100-percent literacy, it does not define literacy or provide sources for its ranking.[19]

Functional literacy can be divided into useful literacy, informational literacy and pleasurable literacy. Useful literacy reflects the most-common practice of using an understanding of written text to navigate daily life. Informational literacy can be defined as text comprehension and the ability to connect new information presented in the text to previous knowledge. Pleasurable literacy is the ability of an individual to read, understand, and engage with texts that he or she enjoys.[20] In a more-abstract sense, multiple literacy can be classified into school, community, and personal concepts. These categories refer to an individual's ability to learn about academic subjects, understand social and cultural contexts, and learn about themselves from an examination of their own backgrounds.[20]

In 1988, the Department of Education was asked by Congress to undertake a national literacy survey of American adults.[21]^:xi The study identifies a class of adults who, although not meeting the criteria for functional illiteracy, face reduced job opportunities and life prospects due to inadequate literacy levels relative to requirements which were released in April 2002 and reapplied in 2003 as trend data. The 2002 study involved lengthy interviews with adults who were statistically balanced for age, gender, ethnicity, education level, and location (urban, suburban, or rural) in 12 states across the country, and was designed to represent the U.S. population as a whole. The National Adult Literacy Survey, conducted in 1992, was the first literacy survey which provided "accurate and detailed information on the skills of the adult population as a whole." The U.S. has participated in cyclical, large-scale assessment programs undertaken by the National Assessment of Adult Literacy (NAAL) and sponsored by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) since 1992. The survey revealed that the literacy of about 40 million adults was limited to Level 1 (the lowest level, an understanding of basic written instructions).[4]

The Institute of Education Sciences conducted large-scale assessments of adult proficiency in 1992 and 2003 with a common methodology from which trends could be measured. The study measures prose, document and quantitative skills, and 19,000 subjects participated in the 2003 survey. There was no significant change in prose or document skills, and a slight increase in quantitative skills. As in 2008, roughly 15 percent of the sample could function at the highest levels of all three categories; about 50 percent were at basic or below-basic levels of proficiency in all three categories.[21] The government study indicated that 21 to 23 percent of adult Americans were "not able to locate information in text", could "not make low-level inferences using printed materials", and were "unable to integrate easily identifiable pieces of information." About one-fourth of the individuals who performed at this level reported that they were born in another country, and some were recent immigrants with a limited command of English. Sixty-two percent of the individuals on that level of the prose scale said they had not completed high school, and 35 percent had no more than eight years of education. A relatively-high percentage of the respondents at this level were African American, Hispanic, or Asian/Pacific Islander, and about 33 percent were age 65 or older. Twenty-six percent of the adults who performed at Level 1 said that they had a physical, mental or health condition which kept them from participating fully in work and other activities, and 19 percent reported vision problems which made reading print difficult. The individuals at this level of literacy had a diverse set of characteristics which influenced their performance; according to this study, 41 to 44 percent of U.S. adults at the lowest level of the literacy scale were living in poverty.[21] A NAAL follow-up study by the same group of researchers, using a smaller database (19,714 interviewees), was released in 2006 which indicated some upward movement of low-end (basic and below to intermediate) in U.S. adult literacy levels and a decline in the full-proficiency group.[22]

The United States was one of seven countries which participated in the 2003 Adult Literacy and Life Skills Survey (ALL), whose results were published in 2005. The U.S. and dozens of other countries began participating in the Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC), a large-scale assessment of adult skills – including literacy – under the auspices of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), in 2011. The NCES describes the PIACC as the "most current indicator of the nation's progress in adult skills in literacy, numeracy, and problem-solving in technology-rich environments."[23]

School curriculum and literacy standards are defined grade-wise, for all students.

Studies show that socioeconomically disadvantaged students, including those with free/reduced lunch, score low reading levels.[38] In addition, English language learners (ELL) and children of immigrants are found to have high dropout rates and low scores on standardized tests.[39] Assuming every student has the same capabilities, school districts provide the same materials for every student in the same grade level, but each student is at a different reading level and often is not able to engage with the text.[40][41][8] Without distinguishing curriculum and standards, English language learners and children from low-income families fall behind their peers.[40][8] Teachers spend a majority of their class time reading and supporting struggling readers, but teachers are not able to do this all the time.[40]

Starting in the 1960s, there were federal responses to address the problems of struggling English language learners and overstretched teachers. Head Start was created in 1964 for children and families living under the poverty line to prepare children under 5 for elementary school and provide their family support for their health, nutrition, and social services.[7] In 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson passed the Elementary and Secondary Education Act as a federal response to ensure that each child gets equal education regardless of their class or race.[39] In response to English language learners, in 1968 Congress passed the Bilingual Education Act.[39] The act allowed ELL students to learn in their first language and provided resources to assist schools with ELL students.[39] In 1997, President Bill Clinton proposed that tutors work with children reading below their grade level.[8] Tutoring programs include partnerships with university organizations in which college students tutor and develop the literacy skills of elementary school students.[42] In 2003, President George Bush repealed the Bilingual Education Act and replaced it with the No Child Left Behind act.[39] This act mandated that instruction should be English only and that all students should be tested yearly in English.[39]

• Books in the United States

• "How Serious Is America's Literacy Problem? Library Journal, April 29, 2020".
• "News, Michigan reaches settlement in landmark right-to-literacy case, APM Reports, 2020-05-15".

• National Assessment of Adult Literacy
• ProLiteracy