This first "OECD Skills Outlook" presents the initial results of the Survey of Adult Skills (PIAAC), which evaluates the skills of adults in 22 OECD member countries and two partner countries. The PIAAC survey was designed to provide insights into the availability of some key skills and how they are used at work and at home through the…

Discusses the undereducated U.S. workforce and the resulting need for workforce education. Highlights include personalized systems of instruction; individualized instructional programs; cognitive processing; prior knowledge; time on task; feedback and assessment; metacognition; motivational links; and the need for a multilayered approach to…

According to testimony delivered by Franklin Frazier, Director of Education and Employment Issues at the U.S. General Accounting Office, at a Joint Economic Committee hearing of the U.S. Congress, the United States falls short in preparing noncollege youth for employment. The foreign countries reviewed in a study (England, Germany, Japan, and…

By the late 1960s, the most offered courses in American community colleges were remedial reading, remedial writing, and remedial arithmetic. The success of the early efforts in community colleges was marginal at best, as is evidenced by a 1968 study indicating that nearly 90 percent of all remedial students failed or dropped out of remedial…

American society is based on work. The industrial revolution exposed a growing proportion of the population to unemployment, underemployment, and dislocation. Early theoreticians believed that unemployment was a temporary labor market imbalance that would correct itself with downward wage adjustments. John Maynard Keynes, on the other hand, argued…

A study explored the effectiveness of secondary school textbooks as tools for developing attitudes or skills that are essential for lifelong learning. During the study, a student textbook review questionnaire was administered to about 60 students from five high schools in the Portland, Oregon area. The students were asked to evaluate eight social…

Intended to serve as a briefing book on issues concerning basic education in the United States and around the world, this report describes the proceedings of a conference. Following written greetings from Barbara Bush and the president of USCEFA, the report features a summary of the opening and closing plenary sessions and the panel discussions,…

Today, this country is facing awesome challenges. Technology is changing all aspects of life, while work force requirements shift rapidly, swelling the numbers of workers who need to be retrained. At the same time, information technologies are creating changes in the automated office. Higher-level literacy is required for most workers in this…

American education is not as inadequate as public opinion indicates. The literacy and skill of American youth are higher today than forty years ago because of our high achievement standards and commitment to equal educational opportunity. These opposing principles have been reconciled by the diversity encouraged in institutions, teachers, and…

This book contains 13 papers examining innovations in measuring adults' basic skills and analyzing adult literacy policy. The following papers are included: "Series Preface" (Daniel A. Wagner); "Foreword" (Torsten Husen); "Introduction" (Albert Tuijnman); "Adult Basic Skills: Policy Issues and a Research…

This document contains background information on the school-to-work (STW) movement and 20 essays written by employers and intermediaries involved in STW program planning and implementation. Four points are highlighted: (1) it takes time to assemble an STW system; (2) the number of students participating in structured work-based learning remains…