How Educated Are We - Functional Literacy And Educational Attainment

According to Mike Rose in his book, Lives on the Boundary, functional literacy in the 1930s meant having three or more years of schooling. During World War II it meant completion of the fourth grade, in 1960, completion of the eighth grade. In the late 1970s, some defined functional literacy as completion of high school. In later years, this definition proved too simplistic. Statisticians now define functional literacy on many skill levels.

Literacy Proficiency Levels as Defined in Digest of Education Statistics, 1992

Level 1: Able to follow brief written directions and select phrases to describe pictures.
Example: Locate time or place of a meeting on a form

Level 2: Able to understand combined ideas and make references based on short uncomplicated passages about specific or sequentially related information.
Example: Enter background information on an employment form

Level 3: Able to search for specific information, interrelate ideas, and make generalizations about literature, science and social studies materials.
Example: Integrate information from long, dense texts or documents

Level 4: Able to find, understand, summarize, and explain relatively complicated literary and informational material.
Example: Research and write a college-level term paper with footnote references.

Level 5: Able to understand the links between ideas even when those links are not explicitly stated and to make appropriate generalizations even when the texts lack clear instructions or explanations.
Example: Read and comprehend the themes in a classical play or novel such as Hamlet or War and Peace.

The chart on the previous page shows the proficiency level of the adult population by educational attainment level. The chart also shows the percent of literacy tasks performed correctly by the various groups that took the National Adult Literacy Survey⁶ in 1992. As expected, functional literacy goes up when educational attainment goes up. Those with less than a high school diploma performed 35% of the literacy tasks correctly; those with a college degree performed 65% of the tasks correctly. Ninety-five percent of those with less than a high school diploma functioned at the two lowest levels. This group had less than 1% functioning at the highest levels. Those with a college degree had the highest percentage functioning at the highest two levels (53%). However, 14% of those with a college degree function at the two lowest levels of proficiency. Surprising! Adults who are proficient at levels one and two are considered, by some, to be functionally illiterate. In 1992, this included 90 million adults (48% of the adult population).

According to a 1993 Education Week article on the National Adult Literacy Survey, this meant that "nearly half of all adult Americans cannot read, write, and calculate well enough to function fully in today's society…." Is this an accurate picture of nearly half of all the adults in America? Not necessarily. In the Literacy Survey, these adults were asked to rate their own literacy skills. Sixty-six percent to seventy-five percent of those functioning at Level 1⁷ described themselves as being able to read and write English "well" or "very well". At Level 2, 93% to 97% described themselves this way. Some of those in these groups do get help from family and friends to perform everyday tasks, but the number is low: 14-25% of those at Level 1 and 4-12% at Level 2. This suggests that although 48% of the adult population is classified as "functionally illiterate," this doesn't prevent most of them from functioning in their personal and professional lives.

The next panel looks at functional literacy from an employment perspective.

Sources: Carl F. Kaestle et. al,. "Adult Literacy and Education in America." Education Statistics Quarterly (Winter 2001). Online. Available: http://nces.ed.gov. March 21, 2002. Irwin Kirsch et. al., "Executive Summary of Adult Literacy in America: A First Look at the Results of the National Adult Literacy Survey." Online. Available: http://nces.ed.gov. March 21, 2002. U.S. Department of Education. National Center for Education Statistics. Digest of Education Statistics, 1992. U.S. Department of Education. National Center for Education Statistics. How Much Literacy is Enough? March 2000. Quote from Mike Rose's book Lives on the Boundary, from "Literacy and Computers." Online. Available: http://www.mansfield.ohio-state.edu/writing/E993/literacy.htm. (March 22, 2002). 1979 simple literacy data: U.S. Department of Education. National Center for Education Statistics. "Literacy from 1870 to 1979: Illiteracy." National Assessment of Adult Literacy. Online. Available: http://nces.ed.gov/naal/historicaldata/illiteracy.asp. March 22, 2002. 1980 population data: U.S. Bureau of the Census. Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1994.