Free Republic
Browse · Search
General/Chat
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

Low Literacy Levels Among U.S. Adults Could Be Costing The Economy $2.2 Trillion A Year
Forbes ^ | 9/9/2020 | Michael T. Nietzel

Posted on 03/03/2022 5:11:24 AM PST by EBH

A new study by Gallup on behalf of the Barbara Bush Foundation for Family Literacy finds that low levels of adult literacy could be costing the U.S. as much $2.2 trillion a year.

According to the U.S. Department of Education, 54% of U.S. adults 16-74 years old - about 130 million people - lack proficiency in literacy, reading below the equivalent of a sixth-grade level. That’s a shocking number for several reasons, and its dollars and cents implications are enormous because literacy is correlated with several important outcomes such as personal income, employment levels, health, and overall economic growth.

Commenting on the significance of the study, British A. Robinson, president and CEO of the Barbara Bush Foundation, said, “America’s low literacy crisis is largely ignored, historically underfunded and woefully under-researched, despite being one of the great solvable problems of our time. We’re proud to enrich the collective knowledge base with this first-of-its-kind study, documenting literacy’s key role in equity and economic mobility in families, communities and our nation as a whole.”

Adults who scored below Level 3 for literacy on the PIAAC were defined as at least partially illiterate. Adults below or at Level 1 may struggle to understand texts beyond filling out basic forms, and they find it difficult to make inferences from written material. Adults at Level 2 can read well enough to evaluate product reviews and perform other tasks requiring comparisons and simple inferences, but they’re unlikely to correctly evaluate the reliability of texts or draw sophisticated inferences. Adults at Level 3 and above were considered fully literate. They’re able to evaluate sources, as well as infer sophisticated meaning and complex ideas from written sources.

(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...


TOPICS: Books/Literature; Education; Society
KEYWORDS: deplorables; reading
Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-20 ... 61-8081-100101-120121-137 next last
To: drSteve78

“How many words rhyme with crack, hoe, and bigger?”

OK, now you’re just trying to get me in trouble!


101 posted on 03/03/2022 8:19:00 AM PST by CodeToad (Arm up! They Have!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 57 | View Replies]

To: jpsb

Sorry you hate people correcting people. Asinine was your comment.


102 posted on 03/03/2022 8:19:33 AM PST by CodeToad (Arm up! They Have!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 58 | View Replies]

To: Kevmo

If you cannot write well, I tend to think your comments are also not well thought out. The language is the easy part. If you cannot get that right, what else is retarded?


103 posted on 03/03/2022 8:20:37 AM PST by CodeToad (Arm up! They Have!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 87 | View Replies]

To: stanne

Well, I object to the term GD
***Corruption is damned by God. So it is God damned.

That said, teachers have power like everyone who was mandated to take drugs. They can say no I’m not doing that. I’m not passing that child. The administration can face losing teachers or shaping up.
***They can face losing teachers? Then you acknowledge the corruption inherent in the system: If you don’t pass those disruptive kids to the next grade, you’ll luze your job.

Teachers give away their leverage pretending they need their job.
***It is not a pretense.

They could stop living beyond their means. That’s all
***Even if they ARE living within their means, the system is still corrupt. A teacher who is living within his means will luze his job just as fast as a teacher who is living beyond his means. It is a complete red herring even to bring it up.


104 posted on 03/03/2022 8:30:10 AM PST by Kevmo (I’m immune from Covid since I don’t watch TV.🤗)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 80 | View Replies]

To: CodeToad

That’s completely different than commenting on where a comma should be. A linguist can look at that sentence and understand it completely. A grammarian says what you said, adding essentially zip to the conversation. And now you’re saying what you really wanted to say, but you never did say it in that post because your communication skills are severely lacking. But your grammarian skills are top notch.


105 posted on 03/03/2022 8:33:59 AM PST by Kevmo (I’m immune from Covid since I don’t watch TV.🤗)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 103 | View Replies]

To: Kevmo
I found that it is quite ironic for you to be commenting on literacy

Ouch, that is going to leave a mark.

106 posted on 03/03/2022 8:39:55 AM PST by jpsb
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 96 | View Replies]

To: FarCenter

I’ve had bosses like that. They kiss up and kick down.

Eventually it was that kind of boss that drove me to go back to school and finish an engineering degree. I had several bosses who had college degrees but could barely write a full sentence. I knew that if they could get through college, I could at least do what they did, fall back to a basket weaving degree if I couldn’t make it through engineering.


107 posted on 03/03/2022 8:41:23 AM PST by Kevmo (I’m immune from Covid since I don’t watch TV.🤗)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 92 | View Replies]

To: Kevmo

The correct spelling of lose is lose. Not how you spell it
Otherwise everything you said is also not interesting at least and obnoxious and aggressive as well

So. Stop

Not interested.


108 posted on 03/03/2022 8:43:03 AM PST by stanne
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 104 | View Replies]

To: Kevmo
We have rules here. Mention a babes' name, means you have to post her pic.


109 posted on 03/03/2022 8:45:07 AM PST by jpsb
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 97 | View Replies]

To: MissEdie
"Because teachers can’t crack the heads open and pour information in. Students have to put forth some effort. I have been inside primary school classrooms and have seen first hand great teachers trying to teach kids to read. Unfortunately we have a vast population of people who do not value education and see schools only as their free babysitting service."

THIS

110 posted on 03/03/2022 8:45:54 AM PST by EnigmaticAnomaly ("The truth doesn't damage points of view that are legitimate.")
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 5 | View Replies]

To: CodeToad

Nice, I’m envious.


111 posted on 03/03/2022 8:47:16 AM PST by jpsb
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 100 | View Replies]

To: jpsb

I didn’t go to stripe clubs until that trip to Detroit and by then I was in my 40s. I wasted my youth, lol.


112 posted on 03/03/2022 8:49:11 AM PST by jpsb
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 111 | View Replies]

To: Kevmo
"Having worked in education for over 30 years .... They have had 12 years of education on the taxpayer’s dime and they chose to continually not use that time to improve themselves.

***Nothing changes if nothing changes, to quote a phrase from 12 step programs. If you had spent those 30 years in a system of education with vouchers, where the kids who are motivated to get every penny’s worth of 12 years to get as much college education as they could, and where the kids who were unmotivated get to sit in disruptable babysitting ‘classroooms’ not pulling down others like crabs in a bucket... well then shiite woulda changed where shiite shoulda changed.

it would appear to me that what you are seeing is that it is the behaviors associated with people who are education resistant that lead to low literacy and low incomes and not the other way around. The schools are full of educationally resistant kids, and in the inner cities the numbers of JERKS (Just Educationally Resistant Kids) increases all the time.

The pattern to me seems to be fatherless children, with extremely young uneducated mothers who prefer taking their government checks to get their nails done, and iphones rather than making sure their kids learn and read. No discipline is instilled in their children and they cannot function in a setting that expects personal responsibility and self control. Gang membership, theft, constant fighting and disruptive behavior in classes is the norm. These are the reasons they are not literate, and they don’t care that they can’t read and don’t know anything. Literacy and learning are not culturally supported and not supported in their families.

Teaching them to be more literate, which they will resist, is not going to take away the other causes of lower income. For most that I have seen, they are “poor” because they continually make very poor choices and do not take responsibility for themselves.

THIS

113 posted on 03/03/2022 8:54:26 AM PST by EnigmaticAnomaly ("The truth doesn't damage points of view that are legitimate.")
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 83 | View Replies]

To: stanne
Whether teachers are embarrassed or not with the outcomes, it is really the responsibility of the parents to see to the education of their children.

I went to crappy public schools in the 1970s (think "Welcome Back Kotter"), but my mother ensured that we were reading from an early age and not just watching TV. In fact, we rarely got to sit around and watch TV growing up. I remember Friday nights because that was the one night of the week my parents let us have control of the TV and watch whatever we wanted. The rest of the week, they controlled the dial (remotes weren't a thing then).

One thing my mother did was take us to the library every Saturday morning. We were forced to borrow four books each. We could pick what we wanted to read but it had to be four books every week. And yes, we had to sit down and read them when we got home so we learned quickly to get books that we actually wanted to read!

As a result, all of us were reading at a college level before we even got to high school.

114 posted on 03/03/2022 8:55:29 AM PST by SamAdams76 (I am 28 days from outliving Robert Reed (the father of the Brady Bunch))
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 2 | View Replies]

To: stanne
Why are the teachers not completely embarrassed by this?

Because the teacher's unions are very strong but aren't all that interested in teaching.

115 posted on 03/03/2022 9:00:34 AM PST by libertylover (Our BIGGEST problem, by far, is that most of the media is hate & agenda driven, not truth driven.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 2 | View Replies]

To: jpsb
Dayamn. I hate breaking da rulez.


116 posted on 03/03/2022 9:00:51 AM PST by Kevmo (I’m immune from Covid since I don’t watch TV.🤗)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 109 | View Replies]

To: stanne

I’ve been spelling it that way for you luzers for a long time now, because there are so many who misspell it as “looser” or sumthin even worse.

It’s also a good way to filter out the useless scolding Karen grammarians from the useful edifying linguists... so thanks for cooperating on that score.


117 posted on 03/03/2022 9:03:26 AM PST by Kevmo (I’m immune from Covid since I don’t watch TV.🤗)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 108 | View Replies]

To: SamAdams76

“it is really the responsibility of the parents to see to the education of their children.”

Oh. I know. And for us Catholics, tgat common sense tenet is even in tge Catechism. I am amazed at parents who don’t home school. All Tge complaints and the forced medications over Tge past 2 years

We’ve been gearing so much bleating from tge teaching community. That’s what I’m responding to. And Tge thousands we pay yearly for public schools is what I’m driving at.

They ought to hide in shame

And from a teachers point of view you cannot force parents to take charge or an interest but they will have to charge with God over this. They’ll have to give an account. That’s a personal issue. It does have serious sobietal implications

Parents are Tge worst offenders in educational neglect. It is tgeirvresponsibility. But teachers cannot point Tge finger. Especially when Tge won’t share curriculum with parents. Or allow parents to be deemed enemies of the state for wanting to take charge if their kids’ education


118 posted on 03/03/2022 9:07:18 AM PST by stanne
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 114 | View Replies]

To: Kevmo

Yes. Excellent. Filter me out.


119 posted on 03/03/2022 9:09:34 AM PST by stanne
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 117 | View Replies]

To: stanne

I agree. Filter me out from your bullshiite.

But in the meantime, SINCE you’re a grammarian nitpicker... let’s look at your post, shall we?

The correct spelling of lose is lose.
***Piss poor writing. You need to highlight the word first. Sumthin like “the correct spelling of ‘luze’ is “LOSE”. But since you’re a luzer, we’ll let that one slide.

Not how you spell it
***You forgot the period at the end of that sentence. Also, it’s an incomplete sentence, lacking the verb ‘is’: “That is not how you spell it.”

Otherwise
***Missing a comma here...

everything you said is also not interesting at least
***Poor writing, runon sentence, I didn’t “say” it I “wrote” it, and if it weren’t interestin’ ya wouldn’t have even brought it to attention. Then you throw in that “at least” meaningless phrase because... well, because you simply don’t know how to write, that’s why.

and obnoxious and aggressive as well
***Again you’re missin’ that there period. You’re kind of obnoxious and aggressive about being so anal when you’re not even very good at bein’ anal. That kinda makes you doubly useless. But hey, there’s a silver linin’ on this here cloud, it brings up a joke, a joke I tell you:


Period

The kindergarten class had a homework assignment to find out about something exciting and relate it to the class the next day.
When the time came for the little kids to give their reports, the teacher was calling on them one at a time.

She was reluctant to call upon little Johnny, knowing that he sometimes could be a bit crude. But eventually his turn came.

Little Johnny walked up to the front of the class, and with a piece of chalk, made a small white dot on the blackboard, then sat back down. Well the teacher couldn’t figure out what Johnny had in mind for his report on something exciting, so she asked him just what that was.

“It’s a period,” reported Johnny. “Well I can see that,” she said. “But what is so exciting about a period.”

“Damned if I know,” said Johnny, “but this morning my sister said she missed one. Then Daddy had a heart attack, Mummy fainted and the man next door shot himself.”


So.
***Incomplete sentence.

Stop
***Again, a missing period. Does that mean you’re pregnant?

Not interested.
***you sure write a lot for someone who aint interested. Methinks the lady doth protest too much. Oh, and BTW, that’s not a complete sentence. TTFN.


120 posted on 03/03/2022 9:26:13 AM PST by Kevmo (I’m immune from Covid since I don’t watch TV.🤗)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 119 | View Replies]


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-20 ... 61-8081-100101-120121-137 next last

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
General/Chat
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson