Why Is American Literacy So Low?

This week’s “Daily Journal” guest columnist is George Leef, Director of the John W. Pope Center for Higher Education Policy.

In the last two months, two studies have been released that show depressingly low literacy among high school graduates, college graduates, and even people with advanced degrees. Americans who are used to hearing about our “award winning” K-12 schools and “envy of the world” universities will wonder what’s going on with all the money we spend on education.

In December, the National Assessment of Adult Literacy (NAAL) was released. NAAL administered a test to almost 20,000 adults across the entire spectrum of life to see how well they could do in three kinds of literacy task: comprehending prose, understanding documents, and performing quantitative tasks such as figuring out how many cans of paint to buy for a room.

Based on their scores, people were categorized as “proficient,” “intermediate,” “basic,” or “below basic” in each of the three literacy domains. The standards for those levels weren’t terribly demanding. A score around 70 percent qualified for proficiency, and reaching “basic” required scores in the mid-40s.

Most high school graduates are proficient – right? Not even close. The NAAL results show that only about 5 percent are.

For “prose” and “document” comprehension, roughly half of high school graduates are in the intermediate range; for “quantitative” tasks, it’s only 29 percent. Worse yet, 13 percent of them are graded “below basic” in prose and document literacy, and 24 percent are “below basic” in quantitative literacy.

On John Stossel’s recent TV report “Stupid in America,” groups of Belgian and American high school students took the same test. When they found out how much poorer the Americans had performed, one of the Belgians couldn’t resist saying it: “Americans must be rather stupid.” Maybe “ill-educated” would have been a better choice of words, but the point is the same. Our K-12 system isn’t very effective in imparting the most basic skills to students.

One more thing. The trend lines are down. Compared with the 1992 results, the new NAAL shows that literacy is declining – among high school graduates and across the board.

How about college students? Here is where the second study enters the picture. In January, the National Survey of America’s College Students (NSACS) was released. That study used the same literacy assessment tool as NAAL, but gave it only to a random sample of college students nearing completion of their studies in two- and four-year institutions. NAAL and NSACS demonstrate that college is no cure for poor literacy.

Both studies show that the percentages of “proficient” students are much smaller than you’d expect from people who are supposedly immersed in written material for years.
In prose literacy, for example, NAAL found only 31 percent of college graduates (and only 41 percent of those with a graduate degree) to be proficient; NSACS put the figure at 38 percent. Not very impressive.

At the other end of the scale, we find that some students who enter college with weak skills manage to get through without improving them. NAAL found, for example, that while 66 percent of high schoolers had only “basic” or “below basic” quantitative literacy, 26 percent of college graduates were still in those categories. College does more to improve prose literacy. Among high schoolers, 42 percent are “basic” or below, while only 17 percent of college graduates are. But why shouldn’t we expect all college graduates to be proficient?

To Americans who went to college in the 1950s, the idea that students can get into college with what amount to middle school literacy skills – much less graduate – must be astounding. Alas, much has changed since then.

First, many colleges and universities decided years ago that growth was more important than maintaining high standards. Students with weaker and weaker academic profiles were admitted – students who are best described as “disengaged.” They want a degree, but they don’t have the slightest interest in scholarly pursuits.

With colleges accepting nearly everyone, high schools relaxed their standards. The old “3 Rs” emphasis was watered down in favor of trendier objectives.

College curricula were adjusted to make it possible to keep weak and apathetic students enrolled. If Shakespeare doesn’t interest them, how about pop music instead? And many professors made what Murray Sperber calls the “nonaggression pact” with their students: watered down coursework and high grades in return for minimal teaching expectations.

We’re pouring enormous resources into education. More citizens than ever go to college, but literacy is in decline. Will any education leaders acknowledge that there’s something wrong with this picture?