Researchers Push For Spectrum of Skills To Describe Literacy

By Peter West

When the U.S. Education Department released a landmark study last month on adult literacy in America, media reports focused heavily on the dismal news that roughly 47 percent of the nation's adult population scored at the lowest levels on the tests used to define literacy.

But few noted that the authors of the report were defining literacy in a new and unusual way.

"Many past studies of adult literacy have tried to count the number of 'illiterates' in this nation, thereby treating literacy as a condition that individuals do or do not have,'' argued the authors of the report, entitled "Adult Literacy in America.'' "We believe that such efforts are...