This document is housed on the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) server.
It focuses on key findings for the United States from the Survey of Adult Skills, a product of the OECD’s Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC), and offers a number of recommendations for dealing with problems the survey reveals.
The results show that low levels of basic skills are more common in the United States than in other countries. For instance, one adult in six in the U.S. has low literacy skills, compared with one in 20 in Japan.
The relatively weak performance of the United States may be caused by failings in initial schooling, lack of improvement in educational attainment over time, and poor skills in some subpopulations, including migrants, the authors note. There are few signs of improvement, with adults in the U.S. today having literacy skills that are the same as or weaker than those of their counterparts in the mid-1990s.
The authors call on the United States to take concerted action to improve basic skills and tackle inequities affecting sub-populations with weak skills. Their recommendations include strengthening initial schooling for all, with effective interventions to help those who are struggling; ensuring accessible education opportunities for young adults; linking efforts to improve basic skills to employability; building awareness of the implications of weak basic skills among adults; and supporting action with evidence.
