The long-awaited preliminary results from the 2003 National Assessment of Adult Literacy (NAAL) were released  by the Department of Education on December 15, 2005.  The full report as well as a link to the archived webcast press conference and other related information can be found online at http://nces.ed.gov/naal/.  ProLiteracy conducted several discussion about the NAAL during December, and those reports are available online at www.proliteracy.org.

Approximately 19.000adults participated in the survey, of whom just over 1,000 were inmates in state or federal prisons.  Variable data including age, sex, race, language background, education and employment status were collected for each participant.  Three categories of literacy were assessed - prose, document and quantitative - and five levels of literacy proficiency were defined.  The NAAL was not administered with the same criteria as the 1992 National Adult Literacy Survey (NALS), but the NALS findings have been recalibrated so that they can be compared with the NAAL.  The NAAL report, "A First Look at the Literacy of America's Adults in the 21st Century" is well worth reading in its entirety.

In very simplistic terms, the comparison between the two surveys reveals only small percentage shifts in proficiency over the past 10 years.  2% of participants in 2003 (as opposed to 3% in 1992) are considered non-literate in English.  They were not able to understand enough English or Spanish to follow instructions and participate in the assessment.  Fewer participants in 2003 tested at "below basic" literacy than in 1992, by about 2 percentage points.  However, more participants in 2003 tested at "basic" level by about one percentage point.  At the "intermediate" level, the largest group in both surveys, there were more participants in 2003 by about 3 percentage points.  Fewer participants in 2003 tested at the highest "proficient" level by about two percentage points.  So, while the group with the lowest skill level is growing proportionately smaller - a good thing - the group with the highest skills is also growing smaller - not so good.   Typically, adult literacy programs serve adults who assess at the basic or below basic literacy levels.  That's 43% of the adult population, or about 93 million adults in the U.S., as estimated by the NAAL.  

So, why haven’t we made more progress over the past 10+ years?  In his 2003 State of Literacy report, ProLiteracy President Robert Wedgeworth suggested that there are two main factors contributing to the growing population of low literate adults: immigration, and inadequate skills learned in school due in part to factors such as increased student mobility and drop-outs.  The full report is available online at www.proliteracy.org, or access the link from the "Resources" tab above.

What does the NAAL mean for Tennessee ?  The NAAL did not assess adult literacy on a state-by-state basis except in the case of six states that paid to have their sample sizes increased.  Tennessee was not one of the six.  Later in 2006, the NAAL intends to release, as did the NALS in 1992, a synthetic projection for states and counties based on data collected in those states and data from the 2000 census.  Stay tuned.