This study was done to analyze the literacy in America rather than the "illiterate" adults that live in America. The National Adult Literacy Survey (NALS) was done to assess adults across many tasks to see their overall performance. 13,600 adults sixteen and older were surveyed for the study in the beginning of 1992, another 1,000 adults in 12 other states, and 1,100 inmates were surveyed to assess the population in prison. Each adult was questioned for an hour to assess their proficiency in prose, document, and quantitative literacy.
The results were interesting. Twenty-one to twenty-three percent scored in the lowest subgroup. Some of these adults could do routine tasks like total up a sales slip but there were many who couldn't answer many of the questions on the survey. There were many factors that assisted in these scores. 25% were immigrants who were still trying to learn English, 62% had terminated education before completing high school, and and 26% had some form of disability.
25 to 28% scored in the level two group. These people were able to make simple inferences, sum up a receipt, locate places on a street map, and provide background information on a simple form.
Close to one-third of the participants scored in level 3. The main identifiers from this group was that they could read much longer text and integrate that information into more dense information.
The last two higher scoring groups had about 18-21% which incorporated many long and dense text that was needed for analysis.
There were lots of statistics included in this report but the most interesting one to me was that Hispanic individuals reported the least amount of years in school. Also those that work regularly scored higher. This makes sense because many times you must have a good education in order to get jobs so you are more literate than those that aren't working on a regular basis. I feel as though these results from this survey are very telling of our education system and what things haven't really changed much in the past twenty years. I feel as though if this same survey was conducted this year we might find very similar results. Adult Literacy is a reflection of what young people are continuing through school and those that strive to do great things later in life. It is our job (mine especially in the school I work in) to help motivate students to stay in school to be able to compete with all other adults in America.
This relates to what we have learned all semester in the Opitz Text. It's important that parents get involved because it has an affect on the child's literacy but if the parent is not literate than that can affect the child's proficiency. The strategies needed are for adults to continue in school as long as possible, allow inmates to read and work with text when in jail, allow opportunities for adults who move from another country to receive instructional help when they move here. Any exposure can help adults progress in literacy. It might actually help for their children to teach their parents what they are learning in school because this can help students progress as much as their parents.
http://books.google.com/books?id=xtJUvvtH7wkC&printsec=frontcover&dq=adult+literacy&hl=en&sa=X&ei=00aiUN6pJsuo0AGBqIHYAg&ved=0CDoQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q&f=false
Got the article from this link but the reference is:
Kirsch , I., Jungeblut, A., Jenkins , L., & Kolstad, A. (1993). Adult literacy in america . United States Department of Education. Retrieved from http://books.google.com/books?id=xtJUvvtH7wkC&printsec=frontcover&dq=adult literacy&hl=en&sa=X&ei=00aiUN6pJsuo0AGBqIHYAg
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