There has been a growing concern and call to action by teachers across the nation about the literacy capabilities of young students in America. Teachers have claimed to see ineptness with reading and comprehension unlike they have experienced before. Some have linked this to the recent COVID-19 pandemic, which has certainly contributed to the downswing (AECF 2024), though the beginning of the decline is indicated as early as 2013 (NAEP 2024). The literacy rates in America are deeply entwined with socioeconomic status, race and ethnicity, nativity, disability or impairment, and childhood language development.

According to the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC), literacy is defined as, “the ability to understand, evaluate, use and engage with written texts to participate in society, to achieve one’s goals, and to develop one’s knowledge and potential”. Current statistics on literacy in America are primarily tracked by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) which administers the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), and the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) which administers the PIAAC. These statistics will be investigated to determine the link between the falling literacy rates and the multitude of societal factors. Revealing this link may assist in developing programs to improve literacy alongside organizations already working to do so, as well as professionals such as speech-language pathologists (SLPs).

Research

Initial language development occurs between birth and 3 years of age and has distinct milestones: cooing (‘ooh’ and ‘aah’), babbling (‘ma’, ‘pa’, ‘ba’), holophrase (single nouns to create a sentence), and telegraphic speech (two-word speech) (Licht 2025). The National Institute of Deafness and other Communication Disorders, or NIDCD, offers a language development checklist ranging from birth to 5 years that parents can use to track their child’s language milestones. Generally, between birth and 1 year of age children should gain the ability to recognize their caretaker’s voice, coo and babble, imitate sounds and words, regularly acquire and understand new words, and be able to put together short phrases.  There is a consensus among scientists that these milestones are components of a critical period for language acquisition, and if they are neglected, it can lead to future difficulty with language development and comprehension. Tracking language milestone completion is also critical for identifying signs of speech disorders or deafness and proactively addressing them to allow for appropriate development. However, monitoring milestones is dependent on a fairly active parenting style which may be difficult for those in poverty with limited time to spend with their children, and limited resources to encourage language acquisition, such as books. 

Exposure to reading material and social interactions that include an abundance of words and concepts has been named ‘Language Nutrition’ by the Journal of Pediatric Health Care: “Language Nutrition, a term created to describe language exposure that is rich in quality and quantity and delivered in the context of social interactions, is crucial for a child’s development and is strongly associated with his/her future literacy, academic achievement, and health.” This nutrition is argued to be as necessary as food nutrition in young children and so contributes to overall health in a similar manner.

According to the 2019 study When Children Are Not Read to at Home: The Million Word Gap, “Parents who read 1 picture book with their children every day provide their children with exposure to an estimated 78,000 words each year.” This exposure to an abundance of new words supports children in their language acquisition and often encourages cognitively challenging conversations between the child and the caretaker. This encouragement of literacy may also be linked to overall health and socioeconomic success according to a 2024 study published in the Frontiers in Pediatrics. They assert that, “Children from homes that encourage literacy are more likely to achieve future academic success, as those with more books at home achieve, on average, three years more schooling, regardless of their parents’ education, occupation, and economic status… Perhaps most powerfully, a longitudinal study found that those who read books live almost 23 months longer than non-readers.” (Shulman 2024). They describe this correlation between childhood literacy and adult physical and mental health as a, “strong positive relationship”, encouraging pediatricians and other primary care physicians to discuss literary education with parents to improve literacy and, in turn, overall health outcomes in children. 

Literacy, numeracy, and adaptive problem solving rates around the world are tracked by the OECD through the PIAAC, which is administered to participating countries. It was performed in 2022 through 2023 and found, “In the United States, adults aged 16-65 scored, on average, 258 points in literacy…”,  which is a 13 point difference from 2017, which was 271 points. PIAAC also accounts for race, nativity, gender, age, education, and employment status and tracks possible disparity between said groups. In the 2022-2023 testing, PIAAC found, “Statistically significant performance gaps exist between White adults and Black and Hispanic adults and adults in the “Other” race category… For both literacy and numeracy, the White–Black score gaps were larger in 2023 than in 2017.” This disparity may be influenced by poverty rates in America, with 19.5% of the Black population living in poverty (Fay 2023). Those who are impoverished have a significantly more difficult time accessing and focusing on quality education, likely due to location and underfunding of nearby schools. This lack of access or poor quality of education directly impacts literacy capability and puts those in poverty at a disadvantage in the socioeconomic world. 

This disparity is further seen in NAEP, the National Assessment of Educational Progress administered by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), the federal agency that tracks statistics on education ability in the US, which shows a gradual decline for all students beginning in 2013 and 2017 in grade 4 and 8 literacy. “In 2024, the average reading score for the nation at grade 4 (and grade 8) was 2 points lower compared to 2022 and 5 points lower compared to 2019.” Additionally, NAEP tracks scores through percentiles and is able to see progress made by said percentiles, they found that, “compared to 2022, scores were lower at the 10th, 25th, and 50th percentiles.” This decline between 2022 and 2017 can be linked to the pandemic and the unprecedented switch to online learning which disproportionately affected impoverished families, particularly Black and Hispanic communities, with limited access to consistent internet (AECF 2024). According to an article published in J Rural Health, “Of 105,312,959 households, 32.29% were without a desktop or laptop computer with high-speed internet (WDW), 21.51% were without a smartphone with a data plan for wireless internet (WSW), and 14.02% were without any digital access (WDA)” (Curtis 2021). This lack of access to the internet likely contributed to an increase in chronic absences recorded by schools, which nearly doubled in the 2021-22 school year (AECF 2024). Parents of lower income families may have also had a more difficult time engaging with their student’s at-home learning due to remaining at in-person jobs. This combination of factors all likely contributed to the decrease seen in NAEP reading scores over 2022 and 2024.

There are many consequences to lower literacy rates, particularly with involvement in democratic government, understanding of laws and the judicial system, critical thinking capability, and loss of employees in cognitively difficult fields. A democratic government requires its citizens to engage through voting; it is more difficult for those with lower literacy levels to comprehend the language used in government writing, including in the judicial systems. Civic literacy of 8th grade students as tracked by NAEP showed the first ever score decrease from initial testing in 1998, landing at 150 points in comparison to 2018 with a score of 153 points. This could indicate a nationwide decrease in civic understanding in our youth. Statistics from NAEP concerning reading comprehension could also be an indicator of struggles with critical thinking, the ability to objectively consider information to make an adequate decision. This combined with the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) has led to students relying upon heuristics and easy solutions instead of searching for their own conclusions and practicing critical thinking. A lack of practice with critical thinking may have also contributed to a rise in plagiarism as noted by the Academic Guide Research Association. 

Application of Sociology Concepts

There are specific groups affected by this literacy crisis, with some suffering more than others. In sociology, these significant groups or roles of people in society are referred to as ‘master statuses’. These can be race, class, disability, gender, age, or other traits as determined by a society. Viewing issues such as race or literacy through the lens of these master statuses can help identify why certain groups are more affected than others. This is referred to as intersectionality, or the understanding that individuals can have many roles in a society, all of which are relevant to, or intersect with, their life experiences. Literacy is an issue which inherently intersects with many different roles in society, particularly socioeconomic status, nativity, race, and disability.

The American Psychological Association (APA) finds, “Approximately 37.9 million Americans… live in poverty, according to the U.S. Census Bureau…[and] Approximately one in six kids, 16% of all children, live in families with incomes below the official poverty line” (2023). These children are at an inherent developmental risk as a JAMA Pediatrics article finds when looking at the relationship between brain development in children and poverty, “On average, children from low-income households scored 4 to 7 points lower on standardized tests (P < .05). As much as 20% of the gap in test scores could be explained by maturational lags in the frontal and temporal lobes” (Hair 2015). This puts children of impoverished families at a significant disadvantage in normal development, likely contributing to abnormal language development and therefore lower literacy levels. 

There also exists a cycle of poverty, or intergenerational poverty, which occurs when multiple generations of a family are unable to attain social mobility into higher classes. According to Outreach International, these families will spend their entire lives focusing on obtaining their most basic needs, and have no time or opportunity to address the reasons behind their poverty.  Children of these impoverished families are also at risk for what is called intergenerational stress, where, “Severe stress exposure in a parent—the kind that can result in mental disorders such as depression, anxiety, or post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)—is a risk factor for a number of adverse outcomes, including psychopathology, in offspring” (Bowers 2015). This is likely due to the environments both parents and children live in, usually high-crime neighborhoods, and the constant stress of financial insecurity. 

Compared to children of middle class families, children of families below the poverty line are extremely disadvantaged: intergenerational stress and mental disorders, improper brain development, lack of access to the internet, under-resourced schools, and lack of parental involvement in education and language development.

Additionally, children in families below the poverty line are also more likely to be from Black and Brown communities: “Compared to 8.2% of White Americans living in poverty, 26.8% of American Indian and Alaska Natives, 19.5% of Blacks, 17% of Hispanics and 8.1% of Asians are currently living in poverty….35.5% of Black people living in poverty in the U.S. are below the age of 18…40.7% of Hispanic people living below the poverty line in the U.S. are younger than age 18, and 29.1% of American Indian and Native American children lived in poverty in 2018. In contrast, approximately 21% of White people living in poverty in the U.S. are less than 18 years old” (APA 2024). This disparity in socioeconomic status between races results in illiteracy disproportionately affecting Black and Brown communities, revealing the intersection between socioeconomic wellbeing and race.

14.3% of the US’s population are immigrants, according to the American Immigration Council, with 22.8% originating from Mexico. According to results from PIAAC, which is only offered in English, non-native born individuals in America ranked 220 points in literacy, 48 points behind native-born Americans (NCES 2023). However, learning a new language is hard, and assimilating to a new country is an even more difficult ordeal. The first priority is to secure financial stability, resulting in English education being done on the go, through exposure and social interaction rather than formal learning. Though, this impacts the quality of literacy learned, often leaving foreign-speaking immigrants struggling to understand government and judicial writing. 

There is a special education teacher shortage in America as documented by NCES through their School Pulse Panel. They found that in the 2024-25 school year, “34% of public schools reported being understaffed in special education positions… [and] 72% of public schools with vacancies in special education experienced difficulty filling the position with a fully certified teacher for the upcoming school year.” With limited support in special needs education, parents may need to seek alternative assistance, which adds additional stress for impoverished families who must prioritize financial stability, forcing them to remain at work and limiting the engagement they can give to their children. There is also a barrier in acquiring specialized services for children with disabilities, such as cochlear implants, speech generating devices, or autism care. While these devices and services are available, it can be difficult for parents who are not educated in their children’s disability to know what to look for. For low-income families that cannot afford health insurance or are not offered health insurance through their work, there is a financial barrier to these services as well.

Social Change Agents

There are many organizations and medical professionals working to address literacy decline through the promotion of effective language and literacy development. These organizations focus support for impoverished families and Black and Brown communities, and work with medical professionals including pediatricians and speech-language pathologists to promote early language learning and disorder recognition.

Reach Out and Read is an organization focusing on increasing literacy in children through pediatricians and primary care physicians. The strategy is to give developmentally appropriate books to children ages 1 through 5 and ‘prescribing’ daily reading with parent involvement (Shulman 2024). Reach Out and Read also encourages parents to incorporate talking, singing, and reading into everyday life (Reach Out and Read 2025). This organization is currently working on a longitudinal study researching the effectiveness of its own initiatives in early development and relationships. 

Pro Literacy is an organization focused on adult literacy in the US, offering education, research, and funding to schools and other organizations working to improve literacy. They have given $1.2 million in funding to programs and organizations improving adult literacy in the US, helping over 1.1 million people (ProLiteracy 2024). 

Save the Children is an organization focused on providing education as a “ladder out of poverty” (2025). They offer a multitude of programs including Emergent Readers for kindergarten through 1st grade, Developing Readers for 2nd through 6th grade, and math for kindergarten through 6th grade. They encourage parent involvement and offer support to schools. “Save the Children’s school-based literacy programs reached 14,994 children, and math programs reached 5,221 children.” in 2024. Additionally, “76% of children from our target population achieved significant growth on their literacy assessment, and 70% of children from our target population demonstrated significant progress on their math assessment.” (Save the Children, 2025). 

Adult Literacy League is a central Florida-based organization which primarily assists foreign speakers, particularly Latino/a, with learning English. In their 2024 annual report, almost 70% of their 1,649 students in their programs were Latino/a, and 79% were taking classes focusing on English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL). They share statistics of their student successes with 51 entering the workforce, 52 entering post-secondary education or training, 80 applying and interviewing for jobs, 69 filled out medical forms on their own, and 64 increased involvement in their children’s education (Adult Literacy League 2024). 

The National Center for Improving Literacy is a US Department of Education funded program which focuses on providing literacy programs to low-income individuals and families through free online resources. Utilizing statistics and information gathered by the NCES, these programs address literacy-related disorders throughout the nation.

Speech-language pathologists are also able to support language learning and literacy with both children and adults suffering from speech or sound related disorders and illiteracy. The University of St. Augustine for Health Sciences lays out the ways speech-pathologists work to assist speech disorders: “…early assessments for language or phonological challenges, identify children at risk of reading/writing problems, support children with expressive/receptive language needs, provide targeted interventions… [and] collaborate with parents and educators to create customized literacy goals.”

There are currently limited resources which specifically address literacy rates in low-income Black communities. Additionally, online resources are not as accessible to those without consistent access to technology, and in-person resources are heavily dependent on location. These organizations mentioned and other resources must be promoted in low-income areas to properly address socioeconomic disparity.

Conclusion

Literacy is a complex issue with a multitude of intersections in race, nativity, socioeconomic status, and disability. While there is a current decline in the US Literacy rates, likely exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, many organizations are working to address it through supporting early language learning in schools and at home. Pediatricians and speech-language pathologists, among other medical professionals, are able to assist the community through early detection of speech difficulty and encouragement of parent involvement. Low-income and impoverished families, particularly Black and Brown communities, should receive the majority of the support from organizations working to address disparity in literacy. Immigrant communities should also be supported with language learning resources to assist them through the naturalization process and in their careers. Addressing literacy rates swiftly through both government reform and private organization resources is necessary to bounce back from the gap that COVID-19 has inflamed. An overall increase in literacy rates will help the US’s economy by allowing individuals to reach their career goals, particularly in intellectually challenging careers such as in the medical field, in its nationwide health through the connection between reading and positive health, and in civic engagement through increased understanding of government language.

References

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