A fifth of American adults can't read

Larissa Phillips,  Free Press -   Forty-eight million adults in the U.S. read at or below the third-grade level, and many of them struggle in ways that are almost impossible for a fluent reader to imagine: They can’t order off a menu, check in for a telehealth appointment, or fill out a job application. Low literacy skills correlate heavily with poverty and crime, and are associated with an estimated $2.2 trillion per year of social services, healthcare, and lost wages....

Having worked in adult education for 20 years now, I can tell you the shocking reality: There are very, very few programs that do this. Federal dollars that were earmarked decades ago for helping adults with low literacy mostly go to programs for adults reading at or above third-grade level, such as citizenship classes or English as a Second Language, or ESL. For the adult who can’t read at all, or can’t read well enough to pass the GED, the options are terrible.