If the
figures on US adult illiteracy aren't stunning enough, just hear those people's
stories
Circa.com:
2.04.2019 by Deniz
Kofteci, Ryan Eskalis and Cori Kipps
32
million adults in America can't read above a third-grade level. That means 14
percent of the adult native speaking population is considered functionally
illiterate.
Cheryl
Haeseker-Mikuliak is an educator with Literacy Volunteers and Advocates (LVA), a nonprofit organization based in
Washington, D.C., that provides reading, math, and other classes for adults who
test at or below a sixth-grade reading level.
Since
1983, more than 10 million Americans reached the 12th grade without having
learned to read at a basic level.
"lliteracy [sic] can mean numeracy, it can mean reading. It can mean trouble with numbers or it
can mean trouble with reading," she said. "At Literacy Volunteers and
Advocates, we work only with adults who read at or below the sixth-grade level.
What we have found through testing at LVA is that all of our learners read
below that sixth-grade level, but 80 percent of them read at the first- or
second-grade level.
"The
test we use is called the Word Identification and Spelling Test (WIST). It really digs
in very deeply into how well they know letters, letter sounds and forming
letters into words."
"I
certainly don't think it's an issue of ability, because I do think they're
incredibly resilient," Haeseker-Mikuliak said. "I think that they're
incredibly intelligent in ways that don't involve decoding words. I would blame
the D.C. school system before I would blame anything else."
Todd
Campbell, 51, earned his high school diploma from the Academy of Hope in
Washington, D.C.
One
of our learners went all the way through and got a diploma and couldn't read
the words on the diploma. His name is Willie Nolan.
Monica
Masterson grew up in the District of Columbia and attended Eastern High School
in Northwest D.C. before dropping out her senior year to take care of her son. WATCH
03:35
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