State and County Estimates of Low Literacy

This link will lead you to 2003 estimates of low literacy in adults 16 years and older in counties and cities in Virginia. The information is more recent than the Stephen Reder Synthetic Estimates, which were based on the 1990 census.

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).

Workforce Report

The National Commission on Adult Literacy

published its final report, Reach Higher America: Overcoming Crisis in the U.S. Workforce, in June, 2008.

REACH HIGHER, AMERICA, the report of the National Commission on Adult Literacy, was released at a public event in Washington, DC, on June 26. The report documents the adult education and skills crisis facing American workers, proposes a fundamentally new approach to adult basic education and workforce skills preparation in America, and lays out the fiscal and social benefits that will result from substantially increased public expenditures for programs and services. Focus is on the need of the unemployed, low-skilled incumbent workers, immigrants with limited or no English, parents or caregivers with low basic skills, incarcerated adults, high school dropouts, and high school graduates not adequately prepared for college.

Among other things, the Commission recommends transforming the current system, which reaches about 3 million adults annually, into an adult education and workforce skills system with the capacity to enroll 20 million adults by the year 2020 and a mission of moving adults to readiness for postsecondary education and job training. The report offers a kind of “domestic Marshall plan” for meeting workforce education needs-including bold recommendations for state government, business and labor, philanthropy, and the general public. A clear message of the report is that unless the nation gives much higher priority to the basic educational needs of the workforce-adults 16 and older beyond the reach of the schools-America’s standard of living, its status as a leading world power, and its very social fabric will be further eroded. This important report and various related materials are available in PDF from the Commission’s website.

Instructions are given there for purchase of hard copies.