Who’s More Literate Than Congress?


The Sunlight Foundation—a non-partisan organization promoting government transparency—recently produced an analysis of Congressional Record using the Flesch-Kincaid test, which determines someone’s reading level. In 2005 Congress read at a grade level of 11.5. By last year that figure had fallen to 10.6. The folks at Politics Pa rounded up the results for all of Pennsylvania’s members of Congress, including Rep. Jim Gerlach who scored an average of 14.19 throughout his tenure and outscored all of Pennsylvania’s other Senators and Representatives by more than three grade levels in 2010. [Politics PA]