Illiteracy Abounding in Detroit

According to a study by the National Institute for Literacy, 47% of Detroit's citizens are functionally illiterate.



-The National Institute for Literacy estimates that 47% of adults (more
 than 200,000 individuals) in the City of Detroit are functionally illiterate,
 referring to the inability of an individual to use reading, speaking, writing,
 and computational skills in everyday life situations.

-We also know that of the 200,000 adults who are functionally illiterate,
  approximately half have a high school diploma or GED, so this issue cannot
  be solely addressed by a focus on adult high-school completion.

-The remaining 100,000 of these functionally illiterate adults (age 25 and
  older) lack a high school diploma or GED, another prerequisite for
  employment success.

The second and third statements above are the most shocking--half of the illiterate people graduated with a high school diploma or GED--that means teachers KNEW they couldn't read or write yet they still passed them all the way through their senior year of high school.  Why is this the case?  Thomas Sowell explains some of the reasoning in the following video:



  If you want to read the rest of the initial article, you can find it here.