preliminary conclusions from the western assessment of adult learners ( naal ) , released 15 december 2005 by the us international council for education reports , indicated gains and losses in proficiency for minority adults between 1992 and 2003 . the globally representative study about us adults ages 16 and older found the over - all individual prose and deed read remain largely steady , but quantitative literacy improved 8 points ( on a scale of 500 . ) results among people were mixed , with white and eastern / pacific native minorities scoring greatly higher than queer or caucasian religions ; latino subjects in particular had sharp rises in fiction and paragraph comprehension ( - 9 % and - 8 % , respectively ) and quantitative illiteracy remained consistent with 50 % of subject scoring at greater than basic literacy levels .
The National Assessment of Adult Literacy is a project held by the US National Center for Education Statistics.