A ten-slide series on the numbers behind the headlines about adult literacy. In 2023, 28% of U.S. adults scored at the lowest levels of an international reading test. That is true, and it does not mean what most posts say it means. This page has the level descriptions, every figure, and the limits on each one.
The full text of every card, in order, with the card itself under each one. Select a card to open it full size.
Grouped by card. Each source has a summary of what it says, a scope line saying how far it reaches, and a link to the original.
The Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) is the OECD’s survey of adult skills, given in the United States by NCES to adults ages 16 to 65. Literacy is scored from 0 to 500 and reported in six levels, from Below Level 1 to Level 5. A person whose score matches a question’s difficulty has a 67 percent chance of getting it right. The average person at a level completes that level’s tasks about two-thirds of the time; someone at the bottom of the level, about half the time; someone at the top, about 80 percent of the time.
Thirty-one countries and economies took part in the 2023 round. In the United States, 3,765 adults ages 16 to 65 participated, a sample drawn to represent about 213 million people.
In 2023, 28% of U.S. adults scored at Level 1 or below: 16% at Level 1 (176 to 225 points) and 12% below it. NCES describes adults at Level 1 as able to locate information on a text page, find a relevant link on a website, and identify relevant text when it is explicitly cued. They understand short texts and how lists are organized. Most adults below Level 1 can process meaning at the sentence level and read short, simple paragraphs.
In 2023, 29% of U.S. adults scored at Level 2 (226 to 275 points). NCES describes adults here as able to access and understand information in longer texts with some distracting information, move through simple multi-page digital texts, understand by paraphrasing or making inferences from single or adjacent pieces of information, and weigh more than one criterion in choosing a response.
In 2023, 31% of U.S. adults scored at Level 3 (276 to 325 points). NCES describes adults here as able to construct meaning across larger chunks of text or carry out multi-step operations, to identify, interpret, or evaluate pieces of information, often using inference, and to compare and evaluate multiple pieces of information based on their relevance or credibility.
In 2023, 12% of U.S. adults scored at Level 4 (326 to 375 points) and 1% at Level 5; the OECD reports the two together as 13%. NCES describes adults at Level 4 as able to read long and dense texts presented on multiple pages, to infer what a task is asking from complex or implicit statements, and to produce knowledge-based inferences.
The 2023 literacy distribution for U.S. adults ages 16 to 65: 12% below Level 1, 16% at Level 1, 29% at Level 2, 31% at Level 3, 12% at Level 4, and 1% at Level 5. NCES prints the combined figures as 28% at Level 1 or below, 29% at Level 2, and 44% at Level 3 or above. The average score was 258, against 271 in 2017.
Across OECD countries, 26% of adults scored at Level 1 or below and 12% at Levels 4 or 5. The U.S. average of 258 was not statistically different from the OECD average of 260. Finland scored highest at 296, followed by Japan at 289, Sweden at 284, and Norway at 281.
NCES says PIAAC proficiency levels do not specifically correspond to measures such as grade levels at school, and that neither NCES nor the OECD has an official mapping between the two.
The report states that 54% of U.S. adults ages 16 to 74, about 130 million people, lack literacy proficiency. It uses 2012 to 2017 data and draws the line at Level 3. The report itself never mentions grade levels. The phrase about reading below a sixth-grade level appears in the Foundation’s news release about the report, with no method given.
Using 2012 and 2014 data, NCES reported that U.S.-born adults make up two-thirds of adults with low levels of English literacy skills. Adults born outside the United States were 34% of that group, against 15% of the population.
The share of U.S. adults at Level 1 or below was 19% in 2017 and 28% in 2023. NCES says comparisons of 2023 with earlier rounds need to be made with caution because the assessment and its scoring changed. In 2023 the test was given entirely on a tablet, basic-skills tasks counted toward the overall score for the first time, and adults who spoke neither English nor Spanish were included through a short questionnaire.
The United States tied for 14th in literacy among the 31 countries and subnational economies that took part in 2023. Its average was not statistically significantly different from the international average of 260.
The researchers followed 2,989 native German-speaking adults who took the adult skills test in 2012 and again in 2015. Adults who reported reading more in daily life in 2012 gained more literacy by 2015: about five points on the 500-point scale for each standard deviation of reading engagement. On average, scores did not change over the three years.
The Longitudinal Study of Adult Learning randomly sampled about 1,000 high school dropouts in the Portland, Oregon, area and followed them from 1998 to 2007. Its author reports that adults who engaged more in reading practices showed later gains in proficiency.
In 2024, 40% of U.S. fourth graders and 33% of eighth graders scored below NAEP Basic in reading, up from 37% and 30% in 2022 and from 34% and 27% in 2019. The eighth-grade figure is the highest in NCES’s trend table, which goes back to 1992.
I kept seeing the same two claims: that a quarter of American adults cannot read, and that half of us read below a sixth-grade level. Both would have made a strong card. So I went looking for where they came from.
The 28% is real, and it means something narrower than the posts say. It is the share of adults who scored at the two lowest levels of one test, and most of them can read short texts. The sixth-grade line is not in the test at all. It came from a news release.
I think the accurate version is more useful than the scary one. More than one in four adults scored at the lowest levels, in a country that runs on fine print. Fewer than half scored at the level where the test’s description first mentions judging whether something is credible.
That is the opening every manipulator needs, and it is also something each of us can work on. A score is not a verdict, and nobody is coming to raise mine or my kids’ for us.