According to me, that sounds like an incredibly dubious measure of "able to read proficiently". If only 4% of students are passing that means something is wrong with the test, because experience tells us that the majority of people are quite capable of reading normal passages and understanding what they mean.
What experience? I know quite a few people (not the HN crowd) who are reasonably smart, but give them a newspaper editorial by itself and they'll be lost. Not 96% of people I know, but a decent amount.
