How to End Our Literacy Crisis: Almost Half of Those Learning to Read English Become Functionally Illiterate Adults

Your first question may be, “Do we really have a literacy crisis?" Almost every American can read at least one or two thousand simple words they learned in grade school. If that is all they can read, however, they are functionally illiterate — defined as being unable to read and write well enough to hold an above-poverty-level-wage job. An honest examination of government reports available on the internet (http://nces.ed.gov/pubs93/93275.pdf and http://nces.ed.gov/NAAL/PDF/2006470.PDF) issued in 2002 and 2006 prove that a shocking 48.7% of U.S. adults are functionally illiterate by this definition, that 31.2% of these illiterates are in poverty, and that they are more than twice as likely to be in poverty because of their illiteracy as for all other reasons combined.
There are several reasons the U.S. public does not know the seriousness of the problem. One of the most important reasons is that the media does NOT present the results of these reports in a way that would show the true extent of the literacy crisis. The news media will not report on the well-hidden problem of millions of students not learning to read. How to End Our Literacy Crisis shows nine other reasons that functional illiteracy is so well-hidden.
These reports were based upon the most statistically accurate and comprehensive reports of U.S. adult illiteracy ever completed. The 2002 report was from a five-year, $14 million study based upon lengthy interviews of 26,049 adults chosen by gender, ethnicity, age, and location (urban, suburban, and rural sites from twelve states across the U.S. and 1,100 prisoners from 80 prisons) to statistically represent the entire U.S. population. The studies were based upon predetermined absolute standards measuring functional literacy, and all results were confirmed by Educational Testing Service. The 2006 report, based upon a database of 19,714 U.S. adults, verified the conclusions of the 2002 report.
Jonathan Kozol's shocking 1985 book, Illiterate America, showed the serious problems that functional illiterates must endure — problems that we would consider a crisis if WE had to endure them. Functional illiteracy not only causes physical, mental, emotional, medical, and financial costs for those who are functionally illiterate, but their illiteracy also costs those of us who are literate an average of more than $5,000 per year per adult and costs U.S. businesses additional recruiting, training, and error correction costs.
The proven solution is based upon the lifetime work of Dr. Frank Laubach, who is arguably the world's foremost teacher of reading. Dr. Laubach spent almost his entire adult life teaching thousands of students to read in more than 300 languages. He prepared reading primers for 313 languages and even invented spelling systems for 200 unwritten languages. Dr. Laubach's books revealed that he could easily teach students in 95% of the languages in which he taught to read fluently in from ONE TO TWENTY DAYS! It takes most U.S. students at least two years of instruction to begin the process of becoming fluent readers.
Cleckler, in collaboration with Gary Sprunk, M.S. English Linguistics, has perfected Dr. Laubach’s teaching method. Dr. Laubach stated on page 48 of his book, Forty Years with the Silent Billion, that if we instituted his proposed solution to illiteracy in English, "...American children could be taught to read in a week." In the late-1960s Sir James Pitman verified the accuracy of Dr. Laubach’s statement with a trial study in elementary schools in both the U.S. and the U.K. Our very real but well-hidden literacy crisis is much more serious and costly than most people realize, In addition to presenting a simple, proven solution to our literacy crisis, Cleckler’s ground-breaking book also contains a wealth of information about the English language, how the language has changed over the years, and statistics on the use of English as the most-used second-language around the world.