Shining a Light on Virginia’s Adult Literacy Crisis

Virginia Issues and Answers (www.via.vt.edu), a public policy journal published by Virginia Tech, has just released its summer issue, focusing on literacy.

The feature story, Virginia’s Not-So-Hidden Secret: The Adult Literacy Crisis, was written by Resource Center staff members Victoire Gerkens Sanborn and Hillary Major. The article highlights national and state statistics which reveal that more than 2 million adults in Virginia struggle with basic or below basic literacy skills.

To download the article and find information you can share with your local legislators, community leaders, funders, potential funders, and colleagues, click here or go to:

http://www.via.vt.edu/summer08/feature2.pdf.

We encourage you to download the full article to distribute to your community leaders.

Overcoming the Crisis in Our Nation’s Workforce

DVD’s Available of the Report: Reach Higher America: Overcoming Crisis in the U.S. Workforce

The National Commission on Adult Literacy’s recently published report, Reach Higher, AMERICA: Overcoming Crisis in the U.S. Workforce, calls for a dramatically revamped service system with the capacity to effectively serve 20 million adults annually by the year 2020. It also calls for resetting the educational mission of this new system to demonstrated readiness for postsecondary education and job training.

The panel presentation and Q&A are now available in 5 short DVD segments from the Commission’s website: www.nationalcommissiononadultliteracy.org. Go to the Get Reports page and scroll to the bottom for the link. You will be able to view the segments on both PC and Mac platforms with current Flash or QuickTime players.

Note that the full DVD can also be purchased from CAAL for a nominal sum (contact bheitner@caalusa.org for instructions and cost).

U.S. Census Update for Virginia: 2006 – 2007

Double click on the image for a larger view:

Finding American Community Survey Data in American FactFinder:

• Click on this link (http://factfinder.census.gov/home/saff/main.html?_lang=en)
• For the New User: Type in your city/town or county to access a fact sheet with the newest data from ACS. Fact sheets have selected general, social, economic, and housing characteristics. The fact sheet defaults to the latest data available for the geographic area. There are 2006 data available for population areas over 65,000. Additional tables and maps are available in the people and housing sections.
• For the experienced User: Experienced users will want to go straight to the detailed results of the ACS by accessing Data Sets then American Community Survey.
  • Data Profiles - Highlights demographic, social, economic, and housing characteristics along with a narrative summary for all geographies.
  • Selected Population Profiles – View highlighted characteristics for race, ethnic, and ancestry groups that meet a population threshold a the national and state levels.
  • Ranking Tables – compare key indicators across available states.
  • Subject Tables – See more detail on frequently requested information for a single geographic area.
  • Detailed Tables – Access hundreds of data tables indexed by topic and available geography.
  • Geographic Comparison Tables - Compare data across available geographies in the same table (i.e., all the available counties in a state by topic).
  • Thematic Maps – Develop customized maps that reveal geographic data patterns for dozens of themes
  • Reference Maps - View boundaries and identifiers of a selected geographic area.
  • Download Center - Download up to 50 selected tables or whole data sets where available.

Regional Office Contact: Charlotte – 1-800 – 331 -7360

Wayne Hatcher, 704-424-6400

or contact the Census Bureau’s Customer Services Center at 301-763-INFO or 1-800-923-8282

Technology

Online Usage Statistics

Sharing Privacy and Trust in Our Networked World is filled with information, graphs, and statistics about online usage and searches. The following graphs show internet use by age and activities. Click on the link above for more detailed information (this 280 page PDF document takes a long time to download). Double click on the images below for the full size: