Recent claims about American literacy statistics are misleading

New data published Tuesday revealed that an increasing number of American adults struggle with literacy, with more than a quarter showing low proficiency in the results of a years-long survey.

But weeks before the data was revealed, different claims about literacy statistics went viral online. 

A post in early November with nearly four million views said, “The latest US literacy stats have just dropped and they are every bit as grim as you might imagine.”

Attached to the post were four screenshots labeled “Literacy Data” that include startling statistics such as “21% of adults in the US are illiterate in 2022” and “54% of adults have a literacy below 6th grade level.”

The post prompted severe reactions with many comments about the state of the American education system. And some of the numbers have circulated in other viral posts and cited in news articles. But are those figures accurate?

THE QUESTION

Is it true that 21 percent of American adults are illiterate, and 54 percent read below a sixth grade level?

THE SOURCES

• Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)

• U.S. Department of Education

• Gallup

• APM Research Lab

• National Literacy Institute

THE ANSWER

Both statistics are misleading. They are misrepresentations of years-old data.

WHAT WE FOUND

The statistics referenced in the viral posts misconstrue what was published by the primary source for that data by using an over-expansive definition of “illiterate,” arbitrarily applying American grade levels, and incorrectly stating the data was recently published.

The initial viral post does not include a source for the statistics, but the author followed up with a link to a website titled the “National Literacy Institute.” Other posts and articles referencing these figures cited the same source.

While it may sound like a government agency, an academic institution, or a non-profit organization, the National Literacy Institute is actually another name used by a private company called National Literacy Professional Development Consortium, LLC. NLPDC is based in Houston and sells workshops aimed at improving literacy education.

The NLI has twice posted what it purports to be biannual data on literacy in the United States, but cites no sources in either post. VERIFY reached out multiple times to ask the company where it got its numbers, and never received a response.

When it comes to literacy statistics, there’s one main authoritative source: an international survey called the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies, which is coordinated by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development. This is the source that published new results on Tuesday.

We were able to trace much of the data published by the National Literacy Institute back to versions of this study, but the figures were misrepresented in several ways.

Timing

The screenshots included in the viral post claim the literacy data is current to 2022. The NLI also published another blog post claiming some of the same data is current to 2024.

But the PIAAC survey is not published annually. At the time these posts were made, the most recent data was actually from 2017.

The previously mentioned new version of the PIAAC, released Dec. 10, is the first new data in several years. The social media posts and web articles were published before this data had become available, and based on the specific numbers cited, it’s clear the claims are based on the 2017 version of the study, despite their claims of recency.

VERIFY found no other more contemporary source for the literacy data cited in these claims, only other articles and analyses about the 2017 PIAAC data.

Defining literacy

Even in citing the 2017 study, the claims misrepresent the data. For instance, the NLI claims that 21 percent of American adults are “illiterate.”

According to an analysis of the US-specific PIAAC data conducted by the U.S. Department of Education, 21 percent of American adults had difficulty completing certain core literacy tasks, such as “comparing and contrasting information, paraphrasing, or making low-level inferences.”

But the Department of Education did not classify those people as illiterate. 

Instead, it deemed only people who were “unable to successfully determine the meaning of sentences, read relatively short texts to locate a single piece of information, or complete simple forms” to be “functionally illiterate” – a classification just 8.1 percent of American adults met, not 21 percent.

In the 2024 version of that study, that number grew to 12 percent. 

The total percentage who had difficulty with certain core tasks – the group the NLI had inaccurately labeled “illiterate” – actually rose from 21 percent to 28 percent.

Applying grade levels

The claims also mislead by using grade level as a reading metric. The PIAAC is an international study, and so did not use American grade levels in its research, nor did the U.S. Department of Education in its analysis.

The 54 percent figure appears to have originated from an article by American Public Media Research Lab, which attempted to translate the international skill levels applied in the survey to American grade levels.

Importantly, APM Research Lab recently retracted that assertion, writing “While some have associated PIAAC assessments with grade-level reading, the PIAAC has discouraged such comparisons.”