Americans Aren't Geniuses But They Aren't As Illiterate As Claimed

This meme is floating around on Facebook:

These kinds of dubious statistic are thrown out there to unjustly discredit public education and push for things like vouchers and home schooling, and to attack K-12 educators, by creating a "moral panic."

The ranking is, as noted, grossly inaccurate - there is a huge difference between 36th place and 125th place in a world with 195 countries. This flaw should undermine the credibility of the entire meme.

The definition used is also problematic.

What is the "6th grade level"? The 54% read below the 6th grade level figure is surely not referring to the reading level of the median 6th grader, which would be 50% in 6th grade, as the term would naively imply without a definition.

The high school graduation rate is 87% and 61% of adults over age 25 have some college. While many people don't improve a whole lot in reading ability between 6th grade and 12th grade, or after graduating from high school and then going to college but not graduating, more than 4% of people, for example, people who were slightly below average in 6th grade but ultimately graduate from high school and then go to college for a year or so, improve at least beyond the level of the median 6th grader in their next six to nine years of formal education after the 6th grade.

The statistics claiming that 54% of adults read below the 6th grade level also can't be squared with other data showing that 20% of adults read below the 5th grade level uncritically quoted by some advocated in the same breath (which is about the reading level at which general public oriented regional newspapers like the Denver Post are written). The literacy acquisition curve is not a mesa that gets super steep for one year and then almost completely flattens out. Other studies claim that the average American reads at the 8th or 9th grade level, a statistic which shares the same definition issues but less acutely.

The 54% read at the 6th grade level statistic must really based on measuring what some overoptimistic education researcher believes a 6th grader should be able to read that is divorced from reality. It is probably closer to the median reading level of 9th graders which is commonly used as a benchmark for functional literacy.

Also, the true literacy rate in the U.S. is well over 90%. Almost all adults (even those who are legally developmentally disabled) know the alphabet and can read street signs, children's books, etc. in their native language. "Functional literacy" set at a level needed to function reading things like medicine labels and tax forms and instructions for purchases that adults sometimes need to know is shared at a lower rate (and is about the reading level of the median 9th grader).

Yes, the average person is less functionally literate than the average functionally literate person believes, and yes, it would be better if more people had a higher level of literacy. But we aren't nearly as far gone as this meme implies.