Are Literacy rates higher or are employers expecting more?
• The dropout rate among 16- to 24-year-olds (which counts General Educational Development (GED) recipients as completers) suggests some decreases over the past twenty years. • Undergraduate enrollment rose 6 percent between 1998 and 2000 More people are completing college • Between 1990-91 and 2000-01, the number of associate, bachelor’s, master’s, and doctor’s degrees rose. • For more information on these statistics, please go to http://nces.ed.gov//programs/coe/ Americans are educated at higher levels than ever – but employers are still raising the bar on productive skill levels. Literacy is seen in terms of three scales: • Prose literacy, or the skills and knowledge necessary to understand and utilize information from prose materials such as newspaper articles, magazines, and books. • Document literacy, or the skills and knowledge necessary to identify and utilize information included in tables, charts, forms, or indexes. • Quantitative literacy, or the skills and knowledge needed
