A Need to Address Illiteracy Problems in the Military Services

Gao ID: FPCD-77-13 March 31, 1977

The problem of illiteracy among some enlisted personnel and the services' attempts to deal with it were reviewed.

The services spend over $3 million annually to improve reading ability of selected individuals and have committed some $8 million in an attempt to reduce the difficulty of the written material. Compared to the normal recruit population, poor readers tend to have higher discharge rates, experience more training difficulty, perform less satisfactorily on the job, and lack the potential for career advancement.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

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