NEA reading stats
Nov. 19th, 2007 03:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
wombat1138Our local paper had a short page-two blurb about the latest NEA stats on US reading skills, and then ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
eeedge reposted another press release/report about the same story, which made me wonder about the underlying stats. A PDF of the full report, "To Read or Not to Read", can be read here.
(Tangent: last week, the local library tried out a new literacy program in which small groups of children took turns reading to "therapy dogs", on the theory that the dogs would reduce the stress for diffident readers and provide general warm fuzzies.)
The news reports (and arguably the NEA's own studies) aren't very good at clearly presenting the various statistics-- frex, when the AP story says "[t]he number of adults with bachelor's degrees and 'proficient in reading prose' dropped from 40 percent in 1992 to 31 percent in 2003", they do not mean that 31% of the total population has a bachelor's degree *and* is proficient in reading prose, but rather that (brace yourself) only 31% of all people with bachelor's degrees have reading proficiency. Conversely, when The Chronicle of Higher Education says that during the same period, "the share of college graduates who could reliably find their way through a piece of prose declined by 23 percent", the 23% figure is not based on the total population of college graduates, but rather on the the relative difference between the proficient subgroups in 1992 (40% of all four-year graduates) and 2003 (31% of all four-year graduates). [The underlying stats for both statements are in the table on p. 65 of "To Read..."]
The report's proficiency metrics are based on the National Center for Education Statistics' reading levels as scored on a 500-point scale, of which a few benchmarks are described here. The kids' stats were collected by the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), which is administered every two years to 4th-, 8th-, and 12th-graders; the competence levels for all three age groups are described here. As a sample point, the "Proficient" threshold for 12th-graders is a score of 302:
For the curious, some finer-grained NAAL results from 1992 and 2003 can be seen here; the latest study limits itself to the "prose literacy" level rather than the "document/quantitative literacy" levels. Some sample questions for all three subtypes can be seen here; the menus also allow you to select more specific criteria, such as only the questions from the "prose" category.
eeedge reposted another press release/report about the same story, which made me wonder about the underlying stats. A PDF of the full report, "To Read or Not to Read", can be read here.(Tangent: last week, the local library tried out a new literacy program in which small groups of children took turns reading to "therapy dogs", on the theory that the dogs would reduce the stress for diffident readers and provide general warm fuzzies.)
The news reports (and arguably the NEA's own studies) aren't very good at clearly presenting the various statistics-- frex, when the AP story says "[t]he number of adults with bachelor's degrees and 'proficient in reading prose' dropped from 40 percent in 1992 to 31 percent in 2003", they do not mean that 31% of the total population has a bachelor's degree *and* is proficient in reading prose, but rather that (brace yourself) only 31% of all people with bachelor's degrees have reading proficiency. Conversely, when The Chronicle of Higher Education says that during the same period, "the share of college graduates who could reliably find their way through a piece of prose declined by 23 percent", the 23% figure is not based on the total population of college graduates, but rather on the the relative difference between the proficient subgroups in 1992 (40% of all four-year graduates) and 2003 (31% of all four-year graduates). [The underlying stats for both statements are in the table on p. 65 of "To Read..."]
The report's proficiency metrics are based on the National Center for Education Statistics' reading levels as scored on a 500-point scale, of which a few benchmarks are described here. The kids' stats were collected by the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), which is administered every two years to 4th-, 8th-, and 12th-graders; the competence levels for all three age groups are described here. As a sample point, the "Proficient" threshold for 12th-graders is a score of 302:
Twelfth-grade students performing at the Proficient level should be able to show an overall understanding of the text which includes inferential as well as literal information. When reading text appropriate to twelfth grade, they should be able to extend the ideas of the text by making inferences, drawing conclusions, and making connections to their own personal experiences and other readings. Connections between inferences and the text should be clear, even when implicit. These students should be able to analyze the author’s use of literary devices. [from latest link]Adult stats seem to be drawn from the 2003 National Assessment of Adult Literacy, whose sample population is described here-- in brief, 18k individuals (min. age 16) who each received an incentive payment of $30, within an initial selection pool of 30k households who were roughly representative to census figures; "Black and Hispanic households were oversampled at the national level to ensure reliable estimates of their literacy proficiencies. Special accommodations were made for adults with disabilities or with limited English proficiency" [latest link]. There was also a separate pool of 1200 inmates of federal/state prisons.
The "Proficient" threshold for adults is 340, which corresponds to an ability "to read 'lengthy, complex, prose texts,' synthesize information and make complex inferences. According to the NAAL, this literacy level includes the ability to compare viewpoints from two different newspaper editorials, to 'compare and contrast the meaning of metaphors in a poem,' and to 'infer the purpose of an event described in a magazine article.'" ["To Read..." p. 63]As mentioned above, only 31% of people with bachelor's degrees qualified as "Proficient", and only 41% of people who'd undergone advanced post-grad studies of any kind. Within the prison pool, only 3% of inmates scored as "Proficient".
For the curious, some finer-grained NAAL results from 1992 and 2003 can be seen here; the latest study limits itself to the "prose literacy" level rather than the "document/quantitative literacy" levels. Some sample questions for all three subtypes can be seen here; the menus also allow you to select more specific criteria, such as only the questions from the "prose" category.