CNBNews

Amidst all of the pressing issues facing Detroit, it is understandable how corporate media missed a very important article about adult literacy published this week by Data Driven Detroit. The article challenges the oft repeated statistic that 47 percent of Detroit’s adult population is functionally illiterate. The statistic, and so-called “new study” that produced it, is not neither “new” nor true.

The notion that half of the adults in Detroit cannot read swept through media like a tornado. Local media outlets, CBS, Fox, NPR and Huffington Post all reported some version of the “alarming new study” that stated, “nearly half of Detroiters can’t read.”

As schools are labeled failing and local government cast as incapable of governing, many Detroiters absorbed this new statistic with a weary sigh. This was just another sign of the inability of our city to produce capable, intelligent, thoughtful citizens. Emergency managers were beginning to sound like a good idea, even to some Detroiters.

The statistic was released last spring in the report “Addressing Detroit’s Basic Skills Crisis,” published by the Detroit Regional Workforce Fund (DRWF). Data Driven Detroit asked the critical question: Where did the statistic come from? How do we know this to be so? Here is what they found:

READ via michigancitizen.com

by Shea Howell
link submitted by John Branin