Understanding the health literacy of America's adults is important because so many aspects of finding health care and health information, and maintaining health, depend on understanding written information. Many reports have suggested that low health literacy is associated with poor communication between patients and health care providers and with…

Discusses the need to consider those adults in America with less than high school diplomas as a national priority. Notes statistics and information on educational finance and adult educational attainment. Suggests national objectives that focus on these individuals' unalienable rights, and provides a 1- or 5-year plan for reaching these…

Reviews research on the average reading level in the United States, on how well the average American needs to read, and on what the average American can and does read. (MKM)

Broad agreement exists in the society about the desirability of U.S. residents speaking English. Policymakers, community and civic leaders, and social scientists--and especially non-English speakers themselves--agree that knowledge of English is the gateway to full participation in U.S. society and its many rewards. Yet learning a language is…

This interim report describes the first few months' work of a task force that developed a set of procedures for conducting a literacy task analysis. A literacy task analysis could be used by employers, union delegates, human resource personnel, trainers, and adult educators to understand better the specific workplace training needs of employees,…

"Illiteracy" is still a powerful concept in adult literacy education. St. Clair and Sandlin examine the use of the term and the policies and programs it currently justifies. The authors argue that the concept of illiteracy should be avoided due to its inherent deficit focus.

Consisting of testimony and prepared materials presented to a joint session of House and Senate subcommittees, this report deals with the problem of illiteracy in the United States. The report contains statements from Richard C. Anderson, director of the Center for the Study of Reading; Samuel L. Banks, president of the Association for the Study…

Examines the increased recognition of widespread adult illiteracy in industrialized countries; the origins of such recognition in voluntary bodies and advocacy groups; and the extent to which true adult-literacy policies have been developed. Compares adult-literacy efforts in the United Kingdom, France, and the United States with regard to…

Reading specialists, as well as members of the general public, have long sought to understand why so many children in the United States read below grade level and why so many of its adult citizens are illiterate. While problems associated with reading are not unique to the United States, it is noteworthy that some nations do not experience major…

Mexican immigrants working at a wholesale nursery were involved in developing user instructions for a computer-based instruction system. Sixty-one Latinos with 0 to 16 years of education completed user instructions delivered on the computer, and all but 3 completed training content about the nursery. Based on objective criteria, program use was…

The Kentucky Adult Literacy Survey, which was based on the National Adult Literacy Survey (NALS), was conducted to determine the prose, document, and quantitative literacy levels of the state's adult population. Trained interviewers conducted hour-long interviews with 1,492 Kentucky citizens between the ages of 16 and 65 who had been selected…

At a time when economic competitiveness is determined to a considerable extent by the education levels of a nation's workforce, the United States is at serious risk of losing its edge in this realm. While the U.S. still has the best-educated workforce in the world, the advantage arises because of the superior education attainment levels of the…

This third annual National Education Goals Report continues the work begun at the Charlottesville (Virginia) Education Summit in 1989, when the nation's governors and President Bush agreed on six national goals for education to be achieved by the year 2000. The goals were intended to energize public opinion and ongoing education reform efforts by…

The Conference proceedings include an Introduction by Demetrios Papademetriou. Two panels presented speakers as follows: Panel I: Elementary and Secondary (K-12) Education: (1) Immigrant Integration and "Bilingual" Education (Alec Ian Gershberg); (2) Absent Policies: Canadian Strategies for the Education and Integration of Immigrant…

This publication reviews and summarizes the findings of the major benchmark studies and reports in adult literacy--beginning with the University of Texas' Adult Performance Level Study of 1977 and continuing through the 2006 NAAL survey results, A First Look at the Literacy of America's Adults in the 21st Century.