I had a job grading the written portion of tests for one of the big testing companies. One year I did English, one year science - both for the seventh grade level for different states.

You might be completely shocked at how illiterate way too many seventh graders are. The grading rubric is set by teachers in those states, so they make it as liberal as possible, to the point that it's kind of a joke. Like if the question is "What happens when you add oxygen to a fire?" you might get some chicken scratch response - you stare at it for a couple seconds and realize the kid has shakily spelled "BOM", by which we now have to assume means "BOOM", an explosion, and is therefore a correct answer. Even with the scoring allowing as much leeway as possible, the kids are bombing these tests left and right. Our section would only graded seven questions and there were shifts were we graded 600 tests and not one kid got a top score on all seven. Part of the problem is reading comprehension and basic literacy, so to hold science teachers responsible for that seems unfair.

But the larger question is, if the kid got to seventh grade and is still basically illiterate, what is the likelihood that the problem is going to be addressed by the people evaluating him or her in the student's school district? You need some sort of evaluation from outside the district and some sort of follow up intervention if a majority of the students in that district are failing. Otherwise there's no reason to expect that the students will continue to be passed up the line until they graduate high school, completely illiterate. Maybe those gathering the data aren't using it to really address the problem, but there absolutely needs to be some sort of perspective outside of the school district to determine if the students are meeting appropriate standards for their grade level. Because way too many aren't.