The National Literacy Institute: Literacy Statistics 2022-2023

[Dennis Donovan]

Literacy Statistics 2022-2023



Literacy Data and its impact on the Nation

Illiteracy has become such a serious problem in our country that 130 million adults are now unable to read a simple story to their children

21% of adults in the US are illiterate in 2022

54% of adults have a literacy below 6th grade level

45 million are functionally illiterate and read below a 5th grade level

44% of the American adults do not read a book in a year

The Top 3 states for highest child literacy rates were Massachusetts, Maryland, and New Hampshire, in that order (highest to lowest).

The Bottom 3 states for child literacy rates were Louisiana, Mississippi, and New Mexico, (highest to lowest).

​Literacy Data and its impact on the Economy

3 out of 4 people on welfare can’t read

20% of Americans read below the level needed to earn a living wage

50% of the unemployed between the ages of 16 and 21 cannot read well enough to be considered functionally literate

Between 46% and 51% of American adults have an income well below the poverty level because of their inability to read

Illiteracy costs American taxpayers an estimated $20 billion each year

School dropouts cost our nation $240 billion in social service expenditures and lost tax revenues

​Literacy Data and its impact on Society

3 out of 5 people in American prisons can’t read

To determine how many prison beds will be needed in future years, some states actually base part of their projection on how well current elementary students are performing on reading tests

85% of juvenile offenders have problems reading

Approximately 50% of Americans read so poorly that they are unable to perform simple tasks such as reading prescription drug labels

Literacy Data and its impact in the classroom

Approximately 40% of students across the nation cannot read at a basic level.

Almost 70% of low-income fourth grade students cannot read at a basic level.

49% of 4th graders eligible for free and reduced-price meals finished below “Basic” on the NAEP reading test.

Teacher disposition changes drastically during reading instruction with poor readers.

Student disposition changes when they are made to feel inadequate.

Students struggle in other academic areas.

60% of the behavioral problems occur during reading assignments- group or independently.

Struggling readers suffer socially.

Struggling readers suffer emotionally.

The student's family feels the emotions and social effects.

/snip

Anonymous
‪@youranoncentral.bsky.social‬
"To determine how many prison beds will be needed in future years, some states actually base part of their projection on how well current elementary students are performing on reading tests"

‪Anonymous‬ ‪
@youranoncentral.bsky.social‬
1d
This is why reading is important. 50% of USians read so poorly that they are unable to perform simple tasks such as reading prescription drug labels. At least 45 million are functionally illiterate; 130 million more can't finish a children's book.

thenationalliteracyinstitute.com/post/literac...

November 15, 2024 at 11:21 PM

https://bsky.app/profile/youranoncentral.bsky.social/post/3lb224jww5s27

[Passages]

1. Overwhelmed at how bad these stats are.

[Dennis Donovan]

3. I was too.

It's been 40 years since I had anything to do with a public school. Have things degraded with basic education / public schools that far in 40 years?

I'm not a parent. I'm only basing my question on what I remember about school in the 1970's and early 80's.

[Passages]

6. An article from The Atlantic appears to confirm how bad.

Snip

Nicholas Dames has taught Literature Humanities, Columbia University’s required great-books course, since 1998. He loves the job, but it has changed. Over the past decade, students have become overwhelmed by the reading. College kids have never read everything they’re assigned, of course, but this feels different. Dames’s students now seem bewildered by the thought of finishing multiple books a semester. His colleagues have noticed the same problem. Many students no longer arrive at college—even at highly selective, elite colleges—prepared to read books.


This development puzzled Dames until one day during the fall 2022 semester, when a first-year student came to his office hours to share how challenging she had found the early assignments. Lit Hum often requires students to read a book, sometimes a very long and dense one, in just a week or two. But the student told Dames that, at her public high school, she had never been required to read an entire book. She had been assigned excerpts, poetry, and news articles, but not a single book cover to cover.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2024/11/the-elite-college-students-who-cant-read-books/679945/


GW Bush was a horrendous president on so many fronts, and you'd have to go back to Eisenhower to find a good Republican.

[cachukis]

2. I retired as a high school reading teacher at a

Performing Arts magnet school in the midst of government funded housing.
Occassionally I had some relief to teach level 5 freshmen an AP prep curriculum to teach them how to write. Mostly, I taught seniors who came to me with an average 1.2 GPA and had never read a book.
I took this up after I had retired and spent 15 years at it.
There was no prep for this. I had to figure out how to get these kids to graduate.
Believe me, when trump wants to get rid of the Department of Education, I don't share his sentiments, but it does need serious refinement.
One of the things I learned about success was three primary factors.
One was motivation, you had to get out of bed. I mean you have to pee. You have to break your fast. Beyond that is another issue.
Second, you need determination. You have to want to do something and you need the drive to finish. Its called grit by some social scientists. Distractions are a killer.
The last, most important tool is vocabulary. You are what you understand and how you relate it.
If you cannot understand what someone is saying, think foreign language, the conversation is frustrating. If you cannot explain your idea to your boss, you've lost an opportunity.
Sadly, you have a relatively short time to establish your type of vocabulary. If you become post pubescent with only social language skills, that will be your scope for the rest of your life. Sure some therapy, what I did for my seniors, will help get over a hump, but do people stay on diets?
Think how learning a second language is much easier when you are very young. You lose that perception after puberty.
If you grow up in an academic conversation while you are young, you carry that with you forever.
Learning academic language skills, post pubescent, is like learning a foreign language. It can be done, but you will never become native.
These findings by the National Literary Institute reveal a sad state of our society, but only a deeper dive as to how they impact our social skills will reveal the difficulty we have as an organized education system.

I've gone on too long. This will not change until it stops being a tool in the power game.

[bdamomma]

4. This could be

one of many reasons we have a felon in office. Dumbing down of Americans.

And eliminating the Dept. Education stats will get a lot worse. How he loves the "poorly educated". You can manipulate the masses easier.

[highplainsdem]

5. Probably an unreliable souce - they market educational services & don't give ANY source for their statistics.

[cachukis]

7. I can tell you, from my own findings, these

statistics are quite accurate. Kids today do not read beyond blurbs.
The top 20% of students are in the game. The bottom 20% are not. The 60% in the middle probably don't read beyond sixth grade. My seniors read at less than fourth grade. I tested them. We stop teaching reading in the fourth grade thinking they know how to read. They don't.
Mind you "Lord of the Rings," is written at a sixth grade level.
The big issue regards the ability to infer from complex sentences.
That's the issue. Surface reading. Little depth.

[highplainsdem]

8. I read on Twitter that college-level teachers are encountering students who tell them they've never

had to read an entire book for any course - only short excerpts.

I remember diagramming sentences in grade school, and first reading Shakespeare in school around the same time.

And it's going to get much worse with generative AI like ChatGPT. Teachers are already seeing it dumbing down students and making them less willing to do any work.

[cachukis]

9. I read that as well. We noticed the impact of the

so called smart phone really having an impact in 2007. We have a full generation with reliance on short term memory as its guide. Furthermore, the shared library is the information from their peer group. Mind you, there is brilliance out there, but it tends to congregate with brilliance. What's left is the majority passing on their interpretations.
A sad annecdote: one of my students came to me pregnant asking my guidance. She said she was on birth control. I said it was rare, but she should talk to her doctor. She said she had no doctor. I asked how did she get her birth control? She told me a friend gave her a pill so she would be safe for Saturday night.
I went to the social worker so she could get counselling.
Just a short tale about the impact of social media on all our lives.

[highplainsdem]

10. Oh God... Your poor student... Good for you for taking action to get her counseling.