"When you can't read it's like being a blind man. You have to trust people with everything."

— LVL student

Literacy Facts

WHAT IS LITERACY?

• Literacy is the ability to read, write, and speak proficiently in English, to compute, and use technology, and to solve problems in order to be a life-long learner and to be effective in the family, the workplace, and the community (National Institute for Literacy, 1993).


THE LITERACY CHALLENGE

• South Carolina has thirteenth highest rate of functional illiteracy in the U.S:

– 27% of adults in Jasper County

– 11% of adults in Beaufort County

lack basic prose literacy skills (National Center for Education Statistics, 2009)

Click here to see information about the National Assessment of Adult Literacy (2003) and how these literacy statistics were gathered.

LOW LITERACY ADULTS 

Have difficulty ...

--filling out a simple job application
--reading maps, schedules, documents
--understanding their pay stubs 
-- reading a story to a child
--reading instructions for taking medicines


LITERACY CHALLENGE IN BEAUFORT COUNTY

• 10,700+ lack basic literacy skills
• 17% of adults lack a high school education
• 50%+ gaps between businesses’ needs and applicants’ communication skills
• 62 percent of individuals receiving services from DSS in South Carolina have not completed high school (United Way of South Carolina Alliance for Adult Literacy, 2005)
• Over 15,000 Latinos are estimated to reside in Beaufort County. Latinos constitute 19% of total student enrollment in the Beaufort County School District. (Beaufort County School District website, 2011)

ECONOMIC IMPACT

• $60B is lost to American business annually (National Council of State Directors of Education, 2008)
• Communities can’t attract or retain businesses
• Businesses can’t compete in global economy
• Low literacy adults earn 40% of what high literacy adults earn (National Institute for Literacy) 
• 50% of chronically unemployed have low literacy (Ohio Literacy Resource Center, 2003)
• 60% DSS clients have dropped out of HS (United Way Assn. of SC Alliance for Adult Literacy)
• $106-238B added to annual cost of delivering healthcare (ProLiteracy, 2010 )

CIVIC IMPACT

• Low literacy adults are ...
– half as likely to vote
– half as likely to participate in civic activities


EDUCATIONAL IMPACT 

• Educational level of a parent is the most important indicator of a child’s success
• Children of parents w/o high school education are twice as likely to drop out of school
• Functional illiteracy is Intergenerational