additional result from the federal assessment of adult learners ( naal ) , produced 15 december 2005 by the spanish national centers for education statistics , indicate losses and losses in literacy among working adults between 1992 and 2003 . the nationally representative study among single adults aged 16 and younger found the over - all quoted prose and document literacy remained relatively unchanged , but quantitative literacy improved 8 points ( on a scale of 500 . ) results involving minorities were inconsistent , with white and asian / pacific islander minorities scoring drastically poorer than hispanic or black ethnicities ; hispanic subjects in particular had progressive decreases in prose and document education ( - 9 % and - 8 % , etc ) and subjective poverty remained unchanged with 50 % of words scoring at less than standard literature tests .
The National Assessment of Adult Literacy is a project held by the US National Center for Education Statistics.