"We the People, of the United States of America."
Can you read what that sentence fragment says?
If you can, you have a Level One proficiency in literacy.
Can you explain in your own words what that sentence fragment means?
If you can, you now have a Level Two proficiency in literacy.
Congratulations.
A recently released report makes it very clear that US workers don't just lack job skills. The Pro Literacy President's State of Adult Literacy 2006 report, based on a survey released in December of 2005 by the US Commissioner of Education Statistics, spells out a very bleak forecast for employers.
Each day, 99% of all workers perform some reading-related work. The amount of information the average adult in teh US is exposed to daily has increased significantly over the last 50 years.
We multitask at work and at home. Television news "crawls" across our screens 24/7. Text messages about world news, financial markets, sporting events, and even teh weather alert us day and night.
However, nearly half the population can barely read. According to the 2003 National Assessment of Adult Literacy (NAAL) study, with results released in December 2005, only 13% of this country's adults have English reading and comprehension skills considered to be "proficient." This means that after reading a pamphlet about the dangers of high blood pressure that refers to the disease as "the silent killer," 87% of US adults could not answer correctly the question "According to the brochure, why is it difficult for people to know if they have high blood pressure?"
Even more astonishing are the 11 million adults in the US with skills so low that they could not understand enough enough English to take part in the assessment. Another 29% have just the basic skills to complete everyday tasks, as long as the reading is short and the complexity is simple. Far too many workers cannot read and understand a newspaper article written at an eighth grade reading level or complete the type of math problem that is taught in the fourth grade.
With employers scrambling to find skilled workers, the pool of qualified candidates shrinks dramatically when nearly half the population in functionally illiterate.
The US claim, that they are the breeding ground for the world's best and brightest, is nearly empty. The US outperforms only Italy in literacy and numeracy, falling behind Norway, Bermuda, Switzerland, and Canada in both skill areas. This is only due to the high level of poverty and lack of public educational funding in Italy.
The only face the US can save for this indictment on our society is that we are not alone. The United Nations educational, scientific, and cultural organization (unesco) estimates that there are 771 million illiterate adults in the world.
In essence, 1/5 of the world's adult population does not have the ability to read and write, with understanding, a short, simple sentence about one's everyday life.
