Skip to content

Three-quarters of American adults read above a 6th grade level

Over at Bob Somerby's place he's pondering the question of whether half of all Americans read at less than a 6th grade level. Long story short, if you follow the links from a recent George Will column they lead you to a report that places everybody at one of three different reading levels. The report says that only 46% of adults can read at "Level 3," which a different report casually interprets as "the equivalent of a sixth-grade level."

But my interpretation is different. "Level 3" sounds to me like basic adult proficiency. I'd say that Level 2 is closer to 6th grade proficiency, and something like 70% of US adults can read above that level.¹

But even that might be too pessimistic. Here's an easier way of looking at it based on NAEP tests given to 12th graders:

Since the NAEP is given to 4th, 8th, and 12th graders, it's easy to interpolate the average scores for 6th graders. That in turn makes it easy to figure out the grade-level reading scores for graduating 12th graders. This chart tells us that 90% of grads read above a 6th grade "basic" level and 75% read above a 6th grade "proficient" level.

Unless lots of adults lose a significant chunk of their reading skills later in life, this suggests that about 75% of Americans read above a 6th grade level. My interpretation of the other test pegged it at 70%. Put together, I'd go with 75% since I suspect the NAEP is the better and more easily interpreted test. But feel free to go with 70% if you're feeling pessimistic in this day and age—which no one could blame you for.

In any case, it's well over half.

¹You can read a description of the levels here.

28 thoughts on “Three-quarters of American adults read above a 6th grade level

  1. azumbrunn

    Most American adults do not read in significant quantity. it is so much less laborious to get your "information" from FOX news or from youtube videos. It stands to reason that these people lose quite a bit of proficiency over their life spans. Reading is not like swimming or bicycling, skills that most people no not lose once they acquired them, no matter how little they use them.

    I would not trust projections from 12th graders the majority of whom is at the maximum reading capability of their lives.

    The only way to find out is to test adults which is hard to do in the US as one would have to find volunteers. And they would almost by definition better than the average person.

  2. middleoftheroaddem

    While I appreciate your optimistic take, perhaps let me take the opposite point of view.

    Sixth grade reading is not a high bar. Stated differently, perhaps one third of American adults are functionally illiterate (I admit I don’t know the formal definition for functionally literacy).

    Forget being a knowledge worker, this means a significant portion of American adults would likely struggle in tasks such as reading directions on how to operate or repair a machine or perhaps struggle to read a medical chart with detailed instructions such as when to deliver meds. While my examples might be off, I think my basic point holds: lots of ‘blue’ or ‘pink’ color labor still requires some reading skills….

  3. bluegreysun

    Don’t they always say newspapers are written about the 8th grade level? I bet 70% of Americans can follow most of the leftie media stories, the emotional appeals, “so and so is bad because he said something about someone of another race or about a woman”… The inference that he thinks this about all of said group is usually unprovable, but we all get the point. And then we can feel superior because we’re on the Good Team and we don’t do that.

    Right wing media stories have “minorities acting badly.” The intended extrapolation to the whole group is left to the reader. My grandma use to get Readers Digest, which had a “Stupid Criminals” feature - this is 40% of Fox News now.

    And both sides have articles about bombing and killing people in foreign countries that think bad thoughts about us, and might do something some day. I think that’s something we can all get behind.

    I think we have more than enough reading ability to consume our media diet and play our role!

    1. Spadesofgrey

      Right wing media is dialectical. I blame them for all the black gangs with illegal guns. So right wingers by your logic are arming black gangs to run contraband. See how your post falls apart???

  4. cephalopod

    My totally anecdotal comment:

    I worked for an open enrollment graduate institution that had no entrance essay requirement. Students simply needed the previous degree to get in.

    You wouldn't believe how often we had to walk them through the assignment directions. Those were written at about a 4th grade level, but they just could not comprehend them. And these were people who had already been given bachelors degrees! (Although those degrees were probably not from "selective" universities.)

    Things got much better once they required an application essay.

    But that experience really made me wonder just how much the average person can comprehend in a written passage.

  5. seymourbeardsmore

    ~10-15% of americans don't graduate high school, and there are estimated to be ~40 million currently without a hs diploma.

  6. bokun59elboku

    That sounds about right. The NY TIMES is written at about a 7th grade level and people complain it is too hard to read. The vast majority of people can barely read instructions/warnings on various items. And listen to the tv news- very low level.

    America is not Lake Woebegone.

  7. rick_jones

    “Hey, it’s three quarters not one half!” does not come across as a ringing endorsement, especially if the comparison is to early middle school…

  8. Perry

    Drum extrapolates from 12 graders on the NAEP to all adults, forgetting that there are high school dropouts who must be taken into account. Those dropping out are likely to have much poorer reading skills than those who graduate from high school, so the adult population (including dropouts) is not going to be the same as adults who have graduated from high school. This is why Somerby doesn't analyze NAEP scores at the 12th grade level. It is a subset that excludes those who drop out at the point when they are legally allowed to do so.

    The % may not be 50% but it certainly isn't 75% either.

    1. middleoftheroaddem

      Great point. Sadly, "How many people in the US don't finish high school?
      Every year, over 1.2 million students drop out of high school in the United States alone. That's a student every 26 seconds – or 7,000 a day. About 25% of high school freshmen fail to graduate from high school on time."

  9. SecondLook

    “A useful distinction can be made between pure illiteracy and functional illiteracy.
    Purely illiterate persons cannot read or write in any capacity, for all practical purposes. In contrast,
    functionally illiterate persons can read and possibly write simple sentences with a limited vocabulary, but
    cannot read or write well enough to deal with the everyday requirements of life in their own society.”

    Add those who are functionally innumerate: unable to say, to do something as basic as calculating 15% on a bill, or even adding up said bill.

    About a third of people seem to be unable to function in a modern society.

  10. Spadesofgrey

    I think Drums point is, going by useless "grades" is irrelevant. Many people read better than reported because your learn from everyday living. Teaching yourself modern reading is not that hard.

  11. ScentOfViolets

    Good God! Per Kevin's first link, Somerby sez that George Will has 'a reputation for being careful' when it comes to facts. I think we can all stop reading right there; Will's schtick is posing as an intellectual ... while making it quite clear in every single column that he is anything but.

    Me? I don't have much truck with anyone who's not a college graduate or about to graduate these days. Except on the intertubes, of course.

  12. illilillili

    "... 90% of grads read above a 6th grade "basic" level and 75% read above a 6th grade "proficient" level. Unless lots of adults lose a significant chunk of their reading skills later in life, this suggests that about 75% of American [adult]s read above a 6th grade level."

    You aren't taking into account graduation rates. Which is about 90% among American adults. Taking that into account might get you back down to the 70% of the other study.

    1. illilillili

      Also, immigrants. My wife is Thai. She wasn't measured by the NAEP. Reading anything significantly longer than family text messages takes great focus and effort. Of course, my Thai reading skills are much worse: I can recognize one of the 70-some Thai letters.

  13. jeffreycmcmahon

    So how many adults can read at an "adult" reading level, that seems like the most important piece of information here,

Comments are closed.