A member of the Cincinnati community takes a book off the shelf.
According to studies by the National Literacy Institute in 2024, 21% of American adults are illiterate.
The National Assessment for Adult Literacy found the literacy rate for American adults in 1870 was a gross total of 11.5% from census data. In 1979, that number was at 0.4%.
With most early estimations for literacy and education heading into the 21st century pointing towards an even further downwards trend of illiteracy, we are seeing the highest rates in 155 years.
In a study done by the Kutest Kids Early Intervention organization, illiteracy accounts for $2.2 trillion dollars in taxpayer losses throughout the year.
These losses come in the form of welfare, unemployment and incarceration rates; three out of every four welfare recipients are unable to read, 50% of the unemployed between 16 and 21 years old are not functionally literate, and three out of every five people in prison cannot read, according to The National Literacy Institute’s 2022 study.
This is a trend that has followed in many Western nations, namely the United Kingdom, which dropped from 272 points to 260. From 2013 to December 2023, Germany has indicated a similar drop to 266, however the data from 2013 has been removed with no direct comparison aside from being one of the founding members of the PIAAC, the institute for measuring adult competency globally.
To put the scoring into perspective, The National Literary Institute has equivalated the score to 54% of American Adults reading below a 6th grade level and 20% of that percentage reading below a 5th grade level.
A study done by Westen Oregan University found in 2023 that in their local Beaverton school district, 54% of seventh graders were found to be below proficient in reading and 61% of third graders were below that threshold. Nationwide, only 46% of students were proficient in reading.
Education Professor Tiffany K Smith stated in the study that “…the state’s standards have not been revised, meaning the standards are based on pre-pandemic learning. Secondly, the Common Core Standards, which were adopted in by 41 states and four territories in 2010, focus mostly on what students need to know to be prepared for college.”
From the subreddit r/teachers, many users complain about state standards in English/Language Arts requiring too much time to teach all standards within the allotted school year, leaving many subjects uncovered.
The literacy rates also have financial implications with the lowest scoring states in the PIAAC being Louisiana, Mississippi, and New Mexico; the highest percentage of illiteracy comes from 35% of the total 21% number comprising of low-income Caucasians.
In recent years, 40 state legislatures have been attempting reform through evidence-based reading instruction following the National Reading Panel’s scientific-based Five Pillars of Literacy: phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary and comprehension.
Additionally, 42 states passed laws covering education from kindergarten to beyond the 3rd grade, 31 of these also included preschools.
Despite recent efforts, recent studies are showing no improvements in literacy scores and some areas continue to decline.
Considering the massive drop in total literacy from the illiteracy rate in 1979 being 0.4%, we must ask what has happened since then.
In 1979, the Department of Education was split off from the Department of Health, Education and Welfare. This was hotly contested in Congress and a main campaign promise of Ronald Reagan who called it “President Carter’s new bureaucratic boondoggle” and promised to abolish it. After winning the election in 1980, Reagan almost immediately restrained education spending in 1981, going as far as proposing to eliminate the Department of Education in 1982. The proposal got nowhere in the Capitol.
Reagan’s war on the Department of Education, until 1983, saw the publication of A Nation at Risk by the National Commission on Excellence in Education which criticized the state of public schools and reduced Federal Intervention in education.
The Department of Education would be a hot button issue from then on with the fallout still being seen to this day since it is largely responsible for funding, school improvement efforts and education research. Most of its efforts focused on improving school systems in low-income areas such as South Dakota, Mississippi and Montana, who rely on federal funding for education the most.
From its first technical founding in 1869, which focused on collecting statistics from schools and is where the 1870 illiteracy rate comes from, the Department of Education was small throughout its existence. Slowly growing until it was united with the Department of Health, Education and Welfare.
As we can infer from this, the Department of Education is an important step and evolution for this nation. As more importance was placed on education, The National Defense Education Act of 1958 saw massive funding in education.
Following the Soviet launch of the Sputnik satellite, 1965 saw President Lyndon Johnson pass the Elementary, Secondary Education and Higher Education Act as part of his Great Society Program which granted more funding to education. Two decades later in 1979 saw the creation of the Department of Education as a separate entity from a department that was too large to operate efficiently.
Now, after 46 years of contestation and roadblocks, the nation is less literate than it was 155 years ago.
