Adult Literacy in America - National Center for Education Statistics ...

NALS
Percentages of Adults with Selected Characteristics, Prose Level 1
and Total Populations
18 ......Section I
Prose
Level 1
Population
Total
Population
Country of Birth
Born in another country 25 10
Highest Level of Education Completed
0 to 8 years 35 10
9 to 12 years 27 13
High school diploma 21 27
GED 3 4
Race/Ethnicity
White 51 76
Black 20 11
Hispanic 23 10
Asian/Pacific Islander 4 2
Age
16 to 24 years 13 18
65 years and older 33 16
Disability or Condition
Any physical, mental, or health condition 26 12
Visual difficulty 19 7
Hearing difficulty 13 7
Learning disability 9 3
Source: U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, National Adult Literacy Survey, 1992.
kept them from participating fully in work and other activities, and 19 percent
reported having vision problems that made it difficult for them to read print.
In sum, the individuals in Level 1 had a diverse set of characteristics that
influenced their performance in the assessment.
Across the three literacy scales, between 25 and 28 percent of the
individuals surveyed — representing as many as 54 million adults nationwide
— performed in Level 2. On the prose scale, those whose proficiencies lie within
the range for this level demonstrated the ability to make low-level inferences
based on what they read and to compare or contrast information that can easily
be found in text. Individuals in Level 2 on the document scale were generally
able to locate a piece of information in a document in which plausible but
Table 1.1