How is it possible that roughly 50% of Americans can’t read above a 6th grade level and how are 21% just flat out illiterate?
How is it possible that roughly 50% of Americans can’t read above a 6th grade level and how are 21% just flat out illiterate?
Question above is pretty blunt but was doing a study for a college course and came across that stat. How is that possible? My high school sucked but I was well equipped even with that sub standard level of education for college. Obviously income is a thing but to think 1 out of 5 American adults is categorized as illiterate is…astounding. Now poor media literacy I get, but not this. Edit: this was from a department of education report from 2022. Just incase people are curious where that comes from. It does also specify as literate in English so maybe not as grim as I thought.
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There are a lot of old people in America. My grandparents didn't go to high school. It wasn't really considered necessary back then. We also have a lot of immigrants who may not necessarily be able to speak English well, let alone read it.
I would imagine that if you look at literacy rates of just young people, they would likely be a lot higher. Still, we do still have a lot of high school dropouts these days, but those numbers have been improving a lot. (According to this, the dropout rates have decreased about 10% over the past decade: https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/coi/high-school-graduation-rates )
High school drop outs should be literate.