User:Nyahbenett/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Literacy in the United States

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
I chose this article because it highlights the importance of early elementary literacy and how it translates into adult life.

Evaluate the article
To begin, the article does a great job of setting the stage for the topic of literacy by explaining that the definition has changed overtime. It is not overly detailed but if someone did not know about what literacy means, they could definitely learn from the first section in the article.

The contents of this article is extremely relevant to the main topic as it goes through the history of literacy and moves to adult literacy, survey findings, and elementary literacy. A lot of the content is from the late 1900s and early 2000s, so it would be helpful to add information and evidence that is more recent especially with the pandemic and its effects of education. It addresses the disproportionate negative effects on Black and Brown people especially. Another important group mentioned are those who are not native English speakers and how that community has trouble with literacy in different ways.

All statistics and detailed information is correctly cited. There are a few sources from 2019 and relatively recent ones but there are many that ore from the late 1900s and early 2000s. The citations are from a diverse group authors, organizations, government, and scholars. The links work for the citations as well which is extremely helpful.

The organization of the article is very clear and no grammatical errors were found. There are subheadings that are straightforward and in an order that helps the reader add on information as they progress through the reading.

There is one image at the beginning of the article and it is captioned with detailed information as well as citation links. It would be helpful to have more images throughout the article.

On the talk page there are conversations about the tone of the lead section that it is too long. Also there is talk about renaming some of the subheadings. It looks like some of the suggestions were applied to the actual article such as shortening the lead section.

The article's overall status is listed as a C, because it does need more detailed information added onto the existing content. The History section needs more work in terms of more information on the communities affected.The Elementary Literacy section also needs more information and detail. Overall the article is extremely organized; it a really great foundation for a more developed article. Maybe there could be separate sections talking about bilingual students, another for low income elementary students, etc.. There should definitely be a section solely dedicated to the ways in which systematic racism is directly related to the trends of literacy in different demographics.