60% of the American people have below a 6th grade reading level.

The claim is that 60% of Americans read below a 6th-grade level, as of 2026-05-09. Use national literacy measures: NCES PIAAC (2017 and 2023 cycles), NAAL, and the commonly cited estimates (for example 'about 54% of adults read below a 6th-grade level', a figure derived from PIAAC Level 2 and below). True: an authoritative source shows about 55–65% of Americans or US adults below a 6th-grade equivalent reading level. Mostly true: the best-supported figure is about 50–55% or 65–70%. Mixed: the figure is roughly 40–50%, or it rests on a contested mapping of PIAAC levels to grade levels. Mostly false: the figure distorts a real statistic, for example taking an 'at or below Level 2' share (about 50%) or a share that applies only to a sub-population and calling it 60% below 6th grade, or the best data show well under 40%. False: the data show a clearly different figure (for example under 25%) with no supporting basis.

Set before the research began.

1. E1 PIAAC Results (Highlights of the 2023 U.S. PIAAC Results) U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics · 2024

   “The percentages performing at the highest level (i.e., Level 3 or above) in 2023 were 44 percent in literacy, 38 percent in numeracy, and 32 percent in adaptive problem solving.”

2. E2 PIAAC Results (Highlights of PIAAC 2017 U.S. Results) U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics · 11 August 2019

   “The percentages performing at the highest levels (i.e., Level 3 or above in literacy and numeracy and Level 2 or above in digital problem solving) in 2017 were 48 percent in literacy, 37 percent in numeracy, and 38 percent in digital problem solving.”

3. E3 PIAAC U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics

   “While NCES, as well as the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), which coordinates the PIAAC study internationally, does not have an official mapping between proficiency levels and grade levels at school,”

4. E4 Do More Than Half of Americans Read Below 6th-Grade Level? Snopes · 2 August 2022

   “meaning that more than half (54%) of Americans between the ages of 16 and 74 read below the equivalent of a sixth-grade level, according to a piece published in 2022 by APM Research Lab.”

The commonly cited estimate, reported by Snopes from APM Research Lab, is that 54% of Americans aged 16–74 read below a sixth-grade equivalent (E4). That puts the claim in the criteria's 50–55% band for "mostly true." The official PIAAC results give 44% of US adults at literacy Level 3 or above in 2023, so 56% were below it, and 48% in 2017, so 52% were below it (E1, E2). Both shares are close to, but under, the claimed 60%. NCES says there is no official mapping from PIAAC levels to school grade levels (E3), so any "sixth-grade" figure is an approximation and somewhat uncertain.