Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (2012, 2014)
The United States participated in the Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC), large-scale assessment of adult skills, which was “developed under the auspices” of the OECD. The PIACC is a “collaborative endeavor involving the participating countries, the OECD Secretariat, the European Commission and an international consortium led by Educational Testing Service (ETS)”. According to the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), the PIACC provides the “most current indicator of the nation's progress in adult skills in literacy, numeracy, and problem-solving in technology-rich environments” and is a “large-scale assessment of adult skills.”
In 2012, 24 countries participated in the large-scale study; thirty-three countries participated in 2014. The 2013 OECD report “First Results from the Survey of Adult Skills”, which published the results of tests conducted in 2011 and 2012, said that the “skills of adults in the United States [had] remained relatively unchanged in the decade since the previous report,[clarification needed] while other countries have been showing improvements, especially among adults with low basic skills.” The 2011 literacy test for was altered: “Before the PIAAC 2011 survey, however, essentially all that one could infer about the literacy skills of adults below Level 1 was that they could not consistently perform accurately on the easiest literacy tasks on the survey. One could not estimate what literacy tasks they could do successfully, if any.”
In 2016, PIAAC 2012 and 2014 data were released. Participating adults in Singapore and the United States had the largest number of adults scoring “at or below Level 1 in literacy proficiency” compared to other participating countries in their performance in “all three reading components”. According to the authors of the OECD report, “These results may be related to the language background of the immigrant population in the United States.”
Results from the first round of U.S. data collection were released in 2013. Results from the combined U.S. PIAAC 2012/2014 data (from the first and second rounds of U.S. PIAAC data collection), released in 2016, are available at: https://nces.ed.gov/surveys/piaac/.
Adult Literacy and Life Skills Survey (2003)
The United States participated in the Adult Literacy and Life Skills Survey (ALL) with Bermuda, Canada, Italy, Norway, Switzerland, and the Mexican state of Nuevo León. Data was collected in 2003, and the results were published in 2005. Adults were scored on five levels of difficulty in prose, document and numeracy literacy. In 2003, only eight percent of the population aged 16 to 65 in Norway fell into the lowest skill level (level 1). The highest percentage was 47 percent, in Italy; the United States was third-highest at 20 percent.
National Assessment of Adult Literacy (2003)
The 2003 National Assessment of Adult Literacy is a nationally representative assessment of English literacy among American adults age 16 and older. It was sponsored by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) as one of its assessment programs. NAAL is the nation's most comprehensive measure of adult literacy since the 1992 National Adult Literacy Survey (NALS). The study included comparisons to the 1992 survey.
Adults over sixteen years of age were scored on their prose, document, and quantitative literacy. Although there was no significant change in prose and document literacy between 1992 and 2003, quantitative literacy improved. The study maintained the practice of the 1992 National Adult Literacy Survey of dividing literacy into three aspects, each measured on a 500-point scale. Scores in each aspect were again grouped into five different levels, using a new numerical scale which differed for each aspect.
National Adult Literacy Survey (1992)
In 1988, the Department of Education was asked by Congress to undertake a national literacy survey of American adults. The National Center for Education Statistics, part of the Department of Education, awarded a contract to the Educational Testing Service and a subcontract to Westat to design and conduct the survey.
The 1992 National Adult Literacy Survey (NALS) provided detailed information on the skills of the adult population as a whole. The survey interviewed about 26,000 people aged 16 and older: a nationally-representative sample of about 14,000 people and an additional 12,000 surveys from states which opted into state-level assessments. Its results were published in 1993. That year, the NALS was described as a nationally-representative, continuing assessment of the English-language literary skills of American adults. The study avoided a single standard of literacy, assessing individuals in three aspects of literacy with each aspect defined on a 500-point scale. Scores in each aspect (prose, document, and quantitative) were grouped in five levels: level 1 (0-225), level 2 (226-275), level 3 (276-325), level 4 (326-375), and level 5 (376-500).
English Language Proficiency Survey (1982)
In 1982, funded by the United States Department of Education, the United States Census Bureau conducted the English Language Proficiency Survey (ELPS): an in-home literacy test of 3,400 adults. The Education Department considered this direct measure of literacy more accurate than a 1979 estimate which inferred literacy from the number of years of education completed. Data from the ELPS were presented in a 1986 Census Bureau report which concluded that 13 percent of adults living in the United States were illiterate in English. Nine percent of adults whose native language was English (native speakers) were illiterate, and 48 percent of non-native speakers were illiterate in English but not necessarily illiterate in their maternal language. That report is summarized here.
In his 1985 book, Illiterate America, Jonathan Kozol ascribed the very-high figures for literacy to weaknesses in methodology. Kozol noted that in addition to this weakness, the reliance on written forms would have excluded many individuals who did not have a literate family member to fill out the form for them. The Census Bureau reported a literacy rate of 86 percent, based on personal interviews and written responses to Census Bureau mailings. The bureau considered an individual literate if they said that they could read and write, and assumed that anyone with a fifth-grade education had at least an 80-percent chance of being literate. Kozol suggested that because illiterate people are likely to be unemployed and may not have a telephone or permanent address, the Census Bureau would have been unlikely to find them.